Just desserts

Light in August at Williamstown

by Steve Vineberg

LIGHT UP THE SKY

By Moss Hart. Directed by Christopher Ashley. Set design by Klara Zieglerova. Costumes by Michael Krass. Lighting by Rui Rita. With Eric Stoltz, Jessica Hecht, Cynthia Harris, Frank Wood, Ron Rifkin, Peter Bartlett, Angelina Phillips, T. Scott Cunningham, Enid Graham, and David Wohl. At the Williamstown Theatre Festival through August 27.

The Williamstown revival of Light Up the Sky is so much fun that you might not notice at first that it isn't a very good play -- and once you do, it hardly matters. Moss Hart wrote this comedy of manners about the Boston tryout of a Broadway show in 1948, and the bitchy, dishing tone, the parody of celebrity, and the insider details recall Once in a Lifetime and The Man Who Came to Dinner -- plays Hart wrote with George Kaufman in the '30s -- as well as The Royal Family and Stage Door, which Kaufman wrote with Edna Ferber.

But Light Up the Sky isn't of the same caliber as these classic comedies. It starts off high but loses its momentum after the first act and, despite Hart's attempts to pump more blood into it in act three, the material feels tired. All he succeeds in doing is toppling the already shaky structure by slathering on a layer of unconvincing moralism about how the undying hope of the theater resides in the challenges invoked by courageous new playwrights. It's unconvincing because the play that the cast of characters is readying for Broadway, the debut of a self-serious young Midwesterner named Peter Sloan (Eric Stoltz), sounds like pretentious crap that deserves to close out of town. In Once in a Lifetime, which is laid in Hollywood at the dawn of the sound era, the studio turns out a hilarious mess of a picture and the credulous critics mistake its ostentatious incompetence for art and turn it into a hit. Here, however, when the Boston premiere of Sloan's allegory draws enthusiastic reviews, Hart confirms the critics' judgment.

The joke at the center of Light Up the Sky is the one that energizes most backstage comedies: the vanity, self-absorption, and insincerity of show people. The seasoned professionals who have seized on Sloan's play flatter him shamelessly and make him feel that he's discovered a community of soulmates; then, the minute they appear to have a bomb on their hands, they turn on him. But Hart indulges a bit of playwright's self-pity here: when Sloan, stung by their betrayal, delivers a judgment on their two-faced vindictiveness, we seem meant to side with him. It would be a lot funnier if Sloan turned out to be as narcissistic as his collaborators -- and if Hart had realized how absurdly self-important this character sounds when he mouths off.

Christopher Ashley, who helms the Williamstown production, rescues the play by setting it at downhill speed and shining up the flamboyant qualities of the characters. It's a peacock parade, with the actors gotten up in elegantly preposterous outfits (the witty costumer is Michael Krass) and rushing around a honey of a set (designed by Klara Zieglerova), a stylized version of a mahogany suite at the Ritz. The gifted Jessica Hecht, working her marvelous, sad-sack face, plays the star, Irene Livingston, whose diction suggests Ethel Barrymore crossed with Kate Hepburn and who pitches every sentence for an imagined audience. (Hart reportedly created Irene in the image of the famously temperamental Gertrude Lawrence, to pay her back for her behavior during his musical Lady in the Dark.) Peter Bartlett draws merry curlicues on the role of the director, Carleton Fitzgerald, who matches Irene affectation for affectation. Ron Rifkin gives a splendid old-pro performance as the producer, Sidney Black; when the threat of failure unleashes Sidney's vulgarity and mean-spiritedness, you see exactly how this guy clawed his way to the top. Best of all, Cynthia Harris (Paul Reiser's mom on Mad About You) wrings a laugh out of every sardonic line as Irene's pragmatic mother, Stella, who's the first among the crew to smell a turkey.

Stoltz is perfectly okay as Sloan; it's the role that's something of a stiff. T. Scott Cunningham manages to inject some humor into the underwritten part of Irene's cardboard country-club hubby, Tyler Rayburn. I could have done with less of Angelina Phillips's squeaky-voiced Frances Black (Sidney's ice-skater wife), an attempt manqué to echo brassy dames with tin vocal cords like Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain and Jennifer Tilly in Bullets over Broadway. And perhaps Frank Wood, as Sloan's predecessor (a playwright who made his name furnishing hits for Irene), was simply off his game at the early performance I saw, but he seemed rather distracted and unfocused.

Ashley's idea is to engage us by filling the stage with larger-than-life personalities, and it works. We grow fond of these preening monsters; that's our stake in what happens to their precarious enterprise. Meanwhile the actors give the impression that they're having the time of their lives, and their enthusiasm infects the audience. This summer dessert of a show is a very pleasing way to round off the Williamstown season.