Weak script can't wilt simple fun

• Civic Theater cast and audience provide the pleasure in an otherwise hard-to-like comedy
  Friday, May 2, 2003
  BY CHRISTOPER POTTER News Arts Writer

  For the second time in just over a week a local theater production defies conventional criticism.

  Last weekend the entertainment virtues of The University of Michigan's 1890s musical reminiscence "Police Gazette" so outweighed script and acting weaknesses that one was glad for the simple fact of the show's existence. Deja vu: Ann Arbor Civic Theater's "The Girls of the Garden Club" brings its audience and cast so much pleasure that the fact that I hated every minute of this lewd low-I.Q. sitcom seems irrelevant.

  John Patrick's lame 1979 comedy - about a housewife named Rhoda (always-excellent Erica Dutton) who decides to run for the presidency of her women's garden club so her husband will buy her a greenhouse (Don't ask why) - creaks and groans even as the playwright shovels gobs of grossness into it. "I hardly have a pot to plant in," twitters heroine Rhoda as she tends to a flora-filled living room while forcing Vincent (Fred Kahle), her mute hubby (Don't ask why), to keep moving from chair to couch to chair.

  If Rhoda can win the club's upcoming flower contest, she'll automatically bump current president Lillybelle (Kathleen Beardmore) - an ultra-affected rich bitch and a horticulture ignoramus - from office. Perky Rhoda's counting on a secret weapon to bring her victory: a pair of exotic "sleeping virgin" bulbs sent by a nun in Burma (!).

  Patrick squeezes the bulbs for all they're worth: "You've seen one virgin, you've seen 'em all;" "Some like 'em big, some like 'em little." Evie (Cherie Nichols), the club's foul-mouthed elder, compares the bulbs to testicles - twice. She also discusses her hemorrhoids ("Don't you have an inner tube I can sit on?"), her sex drive, and bowels.

  Now and then Rhoda and the other gals catch the anal bug ("Your gluteus is your buttocks!"). Whenever Patrick's sense of gross-out humor runs dry, the women are consigned to the ninth circle of Cliche Hell: "Things aren't always as bad as they seem." You're right. Sometimes they're worse. And let's not even talk about sensible Rhoda's brain-cell drop in believing her beloved virgin is speaking to her - via a practical-joke speaker implant that wouldn't fool Homer Simpson.

  And yet you should have seen the smiling faces on Civic's full-house audience, listened to their cascades of laughter, enjoyed their joy at forgetting their own worries for a couple of hours. The sense of goodwill extended to director Francyn Chomic's large, nearly all-female cast, many of whom had never acted before and were having the time of their lives being in the spotlight. It's what community theater is supposed to be about: The gathering of ordinary people to have an extraordinarily good time.

  I think that mattered a lot more last night than the carping of a single critic. While I can't recommend the show, I'm utterly in favor of happiness in a world needy for all it can get.

  "Girls of the Garden Club" continues tonight-Sunday, and also May 8-11 at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, A2CT Downtown, 408 W. Washington St. Call (734) 971-2228.

  •