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Thackaberry and Kahn shine in a pleasantly funny take on Garson Kanin's 1946 play
By Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal
Published on Sunday, May 04, 2008
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, right? Especially if you're a bullying, junkyard baron whose dumb blonde girlfriend gets enough smarts to turn the tables on you.
That's the premise of Garson Kanin's 1946 classic Born Yesterday, which, although it may not reach screwball comedy heights in its Actors' Summit production, is a pleasantly funny ride.
The 1946 play made Judy Holliday a star, with its movie version winning her a 1950 Oscar. The late Kanin's play is a comedic retelling of Shaw's Pygmalion, with crooked empire builder Harry Brock attempting to transform his unrefined, chorus girl mistress into an acceptable specimen of Washington, D.C., society.
It's a predictable but fun plot that works, thanks to Kanin's witty way with words, fun sense of play and well-written lead characters.
Harry (Neil Thackaberry) pushes everyone around, including his cousin who is his assistant (actor Daniel Taylor), his attorney (Dana Hart) and the senator he's in bed with (Steve Ryan.)
The play, meant to be a political satire, doesn't have that kind of bite at Actors' Summit. That may be because Ryan is too mild as Senator Hedges for much of the story's political intrigue to come to the forefront. (The actor also vacillates between a slightly Southern-sounding accent to one with a British-sounding clip.)
Here, the story's more about one man's boorish, never-ending pursuit of more wealth and more power and the underestimated woman who ultimately gets in the way.
Thackaberry's strong characterization as Harry makes nearly all the other personalities pale in comparison. He does a great job of disguising his normally refined elocution with a Tony Soprano-ish tough guy way of speaking. His Harry is coarse and dense at best, and vicious and threatening at worst.
Alicia Kahn is darling as former chorus girl Billie Dawn, Harry's mistress. She perfects the dumb blonde's vacant-eyed stare but also creates a believable evolution as Billie learns to become an actual thinking person.
In an example of Billie's ditz factor, when Harry challenges her to define the word ''peninsula,'' she declares, ''It's that new medicine! ''
Kahn — with her cutesy-pie, high-pitched voice — is especially funny in the play's famous gin rummy scene, where Billie does everything in a dingbat manner but reveals that she actually has a brain. The actress is also a knockout in her beautiful 1940s costumes, especially a pencil-slim, fur-trimmed number.
On the problematic side, Peter Voinovich comes across as disinterested as reporter Paul. He's not geekily charming enough for us to love him as Billie learns to.
Rounding out the cast, Linda Ryan, playing the senator's wife, has a wonderful way of looking perpetually startled by Harry, who's threatening even when he's trying to be hospitable.
Does this play come across as timeless? No.
Politicians could be bought then and can be bought now. But the post-World War II era in which the play is set was a gentler, more innocent time — albeit a sexist time, when dames were dames and only men conducted business.
Born Yesterday paints a broad-stroked lesson against the backdrop of today's presidential election, warning about the dangers the power-hungry can pose to our personal freedoms. As reading opens Billie's eyes to the democratic ideals upon which our country was founded, she reminds us that our government was created ''of the people, for the people and by the people.''
Staff writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com. See her theater blog at http://kerryclawson.wordpress.com.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, right? Especially if you're a bullying, junkyard baron whose dumb blonde girlfriend gets enough smarts to turn the tables on you.
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