Civic Theatre whips up enjoyable 'Pillow Talk'

Movie-turned-play offers charm, humor

• Friday, March 7, 2003
  BY CHRISTOPHER POTTER
  News Arts Writer
  
  
  So what if it bulges with cynicism, duplicity, and the hypocrisy of phony innocence? For all that, "Pillow Talk" - currently playing at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre Downtown - is an engaging and possibly endearing comedy-romance.
  
  I speak as one of the half-dozen Americans over age 40 who've never seen the 1959 Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie on which Christopher Sergel's play is based, and thus approached the show with no ironclad notions of what it ought to be. What I saw was a late-'50s Manhattan-set show cleverly staged by director Lorna Colon and performed with choice comic gusto by four of its five lead actors, with plenty of eager assistance by a large supporting cast.
  
  Interior decorator Jan Morrow (Melissa White) and Broadway songwriter Brad Allen (Kevin Gill) share a party line but nothing else save their mutual singles status: Bachelor Brad croons love songs to a half-dozen girlfriends over the phone (thus tying up the line 25 hours a day), while workaholic Jan seems to have no love life at all (Sergel thus pays homage to Doris Day's "virginity" status in her romantic flicks).
  
  It's of course inevitable that these dissimilar protagonists will eventually fall deeply in love. But not before love-'em-leave-'em Brad tries to woo Jan in the guise of Texan Rex Stetson; and not before millionaire Jonathan Forbes (Brian Parrish), by coincidence a mutual friend, does his best to torpedo Brad's hopes because he loves Jan himself. Toss in the matchmaking wisdom of Jan's maid Alma (Susie Berneis) and the neuroticism of Jan's business partner Pierot (Jeremy Wardle), and you've got a very engaging evening of theater despite the prevailing atmosphere of mendacity and dirty tricks.
  
  That's not to say mendacity and dirty tricks can't be funny when exercised inventively, and I'd gladly return for a close-up look at hideous lamps and "chair that bites" and other such bric-a-brac with which Jan has vengefully (but not too vengefully) re-done Brad's penthouse. I do wish White would loosen up a bit: Her Jan is too much of an ice princess, inhibitions notwithstanding. But Gill hits just the right notes as a nice-guy Lothario who simply needs the right woman to turn him lovingly monogamous.
  
  Wardle's prissy Pierot is very funny indeed, given that "Pillow Talk" - which busts with homosexual allusions - dates from a very different, pre-PC era. Big, booming-voiced Parrish takes on the bully-boy persona of a rich spoiled brat, while Berneis' Alma affects a wonderful look of slumped weariness while spewing worldly wisdom - though her love life's more paltry than Jan's. But hey, it's only a movie. And a dandy stage show.
  
  "Pillow Talk" continues Thursday- Sunday through March 16 at Ann Arbor Civic Downtown, 408 W. Washington St. For reservations and information call (734) 971-2228.