Mauritius
Stamps may sound like a bland topic for a play, but Theresa Rebeck, playwright of the Pasadena Playhouse’s Mauritius, stirs together two vintage stamps with five disparate characters, turns the heat up to 100 degrees and we get to watch them bake.
The big treat for women everywhere is the recognizable family relationship between the two central characters, the damaged Jackie (Kristen Kollender) and her icy, older half-sister, Mary (Monette Magrath). It seems that Mary’s paternal grandfather loved to collect stamps. The collection is about the only thing left after the girls’ recently deceased mother decimated whatever was left of his fortune. Jackie already suspects their worth, but Mary’s strange behavior and insistence on the collection as her inheritance, confirms it.
Enter a trio of opportunists bent on purloining the crown jewels (or perhaps I should say stamps) of the collection–- two antique stamps from the tiny British protectorate of Mauritius. Dennis (Chris L. McKenna) hangs out at the local stamp shop owned by Philip (John Billingsley), the resident philatelist (That’s a stamp collector to you and me). The two stamps are so valuable that the two men hatch separate schemes to wrest them from Jackie, who happens to possess them momentarily, with dreams of making plenty of money from their sale. But in order to succeed they must lead the girl to believe that the two “post offices,” as they are called, have very little value. The third member of their party is Sterling (Ray Abruzzo), a man of very shady dealings who doesn’t give up easily and, perhaps not surprisingly, turns out to be the straightest shooter in the bunch. Happily for the plot, Jackie is just not that gullible.
Rebeck’s Ph.D. in Victorian Melodrama serves her well to keep the surprises coming. She has hung her story around two scenes that are gems – one for each act. The first reveals the relationship between Jackie and her sister in a clever blend of expository information interlaced with underlying emotional baggage. The second entails the final showdown between all five intertwined characters with even more well plotted revelations. In fact, that last scene is so much fun might have happened that Rebeck wrote it first, and then plotted backwards to the beginning.
Jessica Kubzansky has traveled cross-town to lend her crisp direction to the proceedings. Although the first scene is a bit mannered, the action soon takes off and maintains a steady build until the spectacular climax, ably abetted by fight choreographer, Tim Weske. Kubzansky has assembled a cohesive cast with plenty of bounce. Fiery Kollander and icy Magrath balance each other perfectly as the two sisters; Billingsley manages to convey slime even during his most obsequious moments; and McKenna is the love/hate interest that makes us forget he has no back story. Abruzzo as the shady Sterling is the surprise, taking an enigmatic character and suffusing it with deft specificity.
The flap over “two pieces of paper measuring less than 1 square inch” might pale
if not for the angular revolving set reminiscent of New Stagecraft as designed by Tom Buderwirth; the infusion of suggestive original music by John Zalewski ( known for his “sonic environments, narrative noises and musical mutterings”); the expressive backlighting by Jaymi Lee Smith and the descriptive wardrobe by Maggie Morgan. Despite our current financial straits, the Playhouse’s Mauritius is richly conceived.
What a timely tribute, then, to celebrate the issuing of the theatre’s commemorative stamp on April 11th from 12 Noon to 3:00 PM. One and all are invited to receive the free “hand-back service” issue stamp, designed by Eric Pargac. See the Playhouse website for more details.
Mauritius continues Tuesday through Friday at 8:00 PM; Saturday at 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM; Sunday at 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM through April 26, 2009 (no performances Tuesday and Wednesday, April 7 & 8, with a matinee on Wednesday, April 15 at 2 PM only).
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Theater: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South Molina Avenue, Pasadena.
Web Site: http://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org/
Tickets: (626) 356-7529
Dates: through April 26, 2009