Alice Sit By The Fire

Alice Sit By The Fire is a delightful play by J.M. Barrie about educating your parents and teaching them how to the ideal. This rarely performed work is being presented by Pacific Resident Theatre in one of their smaller theatres. Just because the theatre is small doesn’t mean that any production values are any less than a main stage production.

The set(s) by Stephanie Kerley-Schwartz are beautifully executed and have some great period touches from the hand painted furniture to a gorgeous floor lamp. The lighting by Dan Weingarten and the costumes by Ruby Dillon are just right (I especially liked “Alice’s” clothes). The direction is by Joe Olivieri an acting professor at U.C.L.A.

The cast is stellar featuring the one-and-only Orson Bean as the droll playwright/narrator and his beautiful wife and talented actress Alley Mills as the title character. Miles Marisco plays their son Cosmo who must teach his father not to kiss and hug so much now that Cosmo is older. You see, the parents have been away in India for five years fulfilling the father’s military obligations (a perfect uptight but loveable Barrie creation well played by Bruce French)) The parents arrive home to discover they no longer know their own children. This parental absence may seem mystifying to a modern audience but not to Barrie who undoubtedly saw much of this. He sympathized both with the children the daughter (wide- eyed Betty Wigell) who had learned all she knew about life from the movies and Cosmo who only knew military behavior he learned as a cadet. Barrie understood the parents who didn’t realize that getting close to their children again was not a matter of force or ordering them.  The parents and the kids must learn new ways to love each other and it is Alice who discovers the way and changes from a flighty girl to a regular “Alice by the fire”, or stay- at- home mom, by letting her children love her in their own way.

Two of my favorite characters were the parent’s best friend Stephen Rollo (marvelously underplayed by Neil McGowan) and his maid, the very funny Ashley Cardaman. There was also nice work done by Kristina Harrison and Clarinda Ross (subbing for Judith Montgomery who had become ill the night before).

The premise of the play may take some getting used to but once you give yourself to the story and period you will be totally charmed by this delightful production of a relatively unknown Barrie play.

Alice By The Fire has an open-ended run at Pacific Resident Theatre www.pacificresidenttheatre.com