The Gods of Comedy @ Allen Contemporary Theatre
—Sam Lisman
When normal people daydream about finding lost treasure, they think of gold, diamonds, and jewelry. I have whiled away many an hour imagining finding one of the hundreds of lost plays by the Greek masters. As such, I was greatly pleased when I learned that Allen Contemporary Theatre (ACT) was producing Ken Ludwig’s The Gods of Comedy, a play based on just that premise…and then some.
The plot practically writes itself: a college Classics department is vacationing in Greece. Daphne, a mid-twenties professor (Kelsey Korman) is spending too much time working, causing a local street vendor (Beau Dameron, in the first of his three roles) to encourage her to live more. Daphne’s new colleague Ralph (Grant Palmore) thinks he’s on the trail of a lost play by Euripides, and needs her help. This begins a budding romance between the two shy, socially awkward classicists. On the side, Daphne averts a disaster from befalling the vendor, who gives her a magical talisman.
Back at the college on the eve of Homecoming Weekend, Ralph arrives in Daphne’s messy office with the ancient tome he’s discovered—leaving it with her while he goes to tell the Dean (Penny Elaine) about his discovery. (Are there no emails?) As so often happens in FarceWorld, when Daphne goes to answer the door, the precious volume falls off her desk and into the wastebasket (or, on the evening I attended, near the wastebasket).
Enter the custodian (Beau Dameron, in his second role) through the back door, to empty—and possibly destroy—the trash. Finding the book missing, desperate Daphne makes use of the vendor’s talisman. And before you can say deus ex machina, both Dionysus (Blake Aaron Rice) and Thalia (Charlotte Dameron)—the ancient Greek god of Theater and the Muse of Comedy, arrive to save the day.
Except that they’re not very good at saving the day. The funniest bit of this very funny play comes when the two recall a previous assignment that didn’t end so well—a tale we’re very familiar with. So not good, in fact, that when they summon Apollo to assist them, they actually raise the war god Ares (Beau Dameron again, in his third and funniest role). Meanwhile, the Dean plans to use the Homecoming dance to announce the discovery of Andromeda by Euripides—and a vampish, somewhat washed-up actress/alumna (Heather Walker Shin) sets her sights on the title role, and the fellow who found the script.
Considering that ACT is a non-professional theatre in the hinterlands of DFW (I’m not casting aspersions—it happens to be one of the closest theaters to my house), I think the cast and director Robyn Mead (with assistant director Kristina Rosette) have done a fine job with this challenging play by the prolific Ludwig.
Credit for the excellent set (completely changed out at intermission) goes to director Mead and her co-designer, Bill Wash, while the detailed lighting design is handled by Greg and Melinda Cotton. The props designers, Debbie Stephenson and Rosette, (who along with director Mead also handled costuming), add a special touch to the bound edition of Andromeda that is not only funny and touching, but so very appropriate. The projection design isn’t credited, but is used to excellent effect.
There are a few issues: at times Rice’s professor was so cartoonishly boyish and giggly that I wanted to remind him of Aeschylus’s famous point that knowledge is only gained through suffering. And couldn’t a tee shirt be found to go under Ares’s breastplate, with sleeves long enough to cover the glaringly modern tattoos on the war god’s arms? And nothing will jar an audience out of the suspension of disbelief faster than a modern twenty-something able to translate a centuries-old play perfectly, poetically, and without a pause—sprinting through a cold reading of an ancient Greek text she’s never seen before. For crying out loud, even Major-General Stanley in Pirates has to pause for a moment to find a word with the proper rhyme and meter, and he wasn’t spot-translating. Lattimore, Greene, Fitzgerald, Fagles, Knox, Pope all have nothing on Professor Daphne.
But putting that aside, the sheer fun of the script is infectious—and there should be a special nod to the Damerons (recent transplants to DFW), who very nearly steal the show. Beau is excellent in all three of his roles, while Charlotte is delightful in the critical role of Thalia—a part she stepped into less than a week before the curtain went up. If late- or post-pandemic crises have taught us nothing else, it’s that we have a number of performers who can step up and learn to perform a show well in almost no time.
WHEN: Through February 12
WHERE: Allen Contemporary Theatre, 1210 E. Main St., Allen
