Live Theatre Workshop is giving James Prideaux’s The
Housekeeper a mixed-blessing production.
Director Christopher Johnson and actors Michael Woodson and Kristi
Loera manage to bring sensitivity and nuance to the rather cartoonish
characters, making this seem like a better, more substantial, more
psychologically adept play than it really is. But in the process, the
production slightly downplays some of the cheap and easy laughs that
would attract an audience simply looking for some light late-summer
entertainment.
The setup is simple, the outcome predictable; the only real interest
is in how Prideaux and his characters travel from the story’s beginning
to its end. The first scene takes place on the fourth day of Annie
Dankworth’s employment as housekeeper to Manley Carstairs, a reclusive,
curmudgeonly novelist. Annie is a terrible housekeeper, and we
eventually learn that Manley’s literary skill is equally abysmal. Right
off the bat, they declare their hatred for each other. Right off the
bat, you know exactly how things will turn out for the couple.
The details of their sparring and manipulation aren’t very
believable, and too often, Prideaux seems content merely to dance his
two stock characters back and forth across the stage. The playwright
does, however, give each character an interesting, rather sad back
story. Johnson and the performers take this material seriously, rather
than deploy it as gigglefodder, and here, at last, the characters
become more sympathetic to each other and the audience.
What Annie and Manley have in common is that each is convinced of
his or her greatness, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Annie
declares herself to be an incredibly desirable femme fatale; the
reality, as she realizes when she catches a glimpse of herself
reflected in a window, is that she’s become a dumpy bag lady, and her
need for a job in Manley’s house—and for Manley himself—is
greater than she’ll readily admit. For his part, Manley is the
smothered son of an oppressive and recently deceased mother; he writes
execrable prose in the style of Poe edited by James Joyce. He also
harbors some fairly innocent sexual fantasies that have him convinced
that he is a potentially dangerous pervert.
Sexual politics and class warfare figure in the characters’
interaction, but only a few not entirely coy sexual references suggest
that this play dates from the early 1980s rather than the 1940s.
There’s something antiquated about the whole thing, and not just the
regressive figure of Manley Carstairs.
Whatever you think about Manley—and your opinion is likely to
drift during the course of this play—Michael Woodson plays the
character to the hilt. Woodson is an expert in hammy, smug,
self-important roles like this, and it’s a testament to Woodson’s skill
that Manley is always amusing, never a bore. Similarly, Kristi Loera
(who appeared in LTW’s production of this play a few years ago)
slouches and flops around in her dowdy dress and workboots, but she’s
full of coiled energy, suggesting that there’s more to Annie than meets
the eye (or the ear, via Prideaux’s dialogue).
Director Johnson keeps things flowing, and manages to cast some
figurative darkness around Prideaux’s overbright characters without
plunging the whole thing into gloom. Richard and Amanda Gremel have
assembled a simple but functional in-the-round set whose old-fashioned
furniture and superfluity of doilies neatly convey how stuffy life had
been under the supervision of Manley’s mother.
Some theatergoers might wish for a broader, more guffaw-laden
approach to the material, and that would certainly fit the script and
create greater buzz. But there’s much to be said for this even-keeled
navigation of Prideaux’s slightly murky script.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.
