Drama lite

Mount struggles with Lend Me a Tenor's punch line

by Steve Vineberg

LEND ME A TENOR By Ken Ludwig. Directed by

Michael Dufault. Costumes designed by Jaime Cellitti. Lighting by Cindy Baer. With Ben Dio, Tim DiRusso, Laurie Marcinkewicz, Bob Thomas, Kim Osborne, Carolyn Aliskevicz, Pattie Pichette, and Jason Russell. At Theatre at the Mount, Gardner, through May 9.

Theatre at the Mount's Lend Me a Tenor is the second production I've seen of Ken Ludwig's farce (the first was at Foothills in 1995). And though it doesn't improve much at a second viewing, I hold to my original theory that it could be a lot crisper and funnier than it keeps coming across. Ludwig is a mechanical wordsmith without a single original idea in his head, but his inspiration -- the canon of bedroom roundelays and theatrical parodies -- can yield a fair amount of entertainment even at second and third hand. Unfortunately, Michael Dufault's production at the Mount is mostly flat.

The story unfolds in a Cleveland hotel room in the mid-'30s. A world-famous tenor named Tito Merelli (Tom DiRusso) has been imported for one night to sing Otello with the local opera company. But he arrives exhausted and overfed, in the company of his wife, Maria (Carolyn Aliskevicz), who invited herself along at the last minute to prevent her husband's traditional on-tour womanizing. When the daughter of the company's general manager, an ardent fan of Merelli's (Laurie Marcinkewicz), sneaks into his hotel room closet for a glimpse of the great man, Maria catches her and, assuming the worst, walks out on Tito, leaving him a melodramatic farewell note, which he discovers moments after downing a handful of sleeping pills to ensure a pre-show nap. So when the assistant to the manager, a nervous would-be tenor named Max (Ben Dio), discovers Tito's limp body and the note, he assumes that their guest is dead and that what he's holding in his hand is a suicide's last words. He ends up going on stage in Tito's place, the exotic Moor's costume and make-up disguising his true identity.

The plot is an elaborate excuse for a series of stock farce routines, and it's so improbable -- even for this kind of comedy -- that it needs to be played very, very fast, so the audience doesn't have time to think about how dumb it is. Dufault and his cast win that round: the production is well paced. And the set, which the program credits to no one, shows off the Mount's generous space handsomely and gives the company a lot to work with. A hotel suite with the wall between the two rooms implied rather than constructed, it sets up the climactic visual moment in Act II when the two Otellos -- Max, returning from his triumphant performance in Tito's place, and Tito, who woke up from his drugged sleep and donned a duplicate costume, unaware that someone else had gone on for him -- stand on either side of the door that separates the two rooms, each with one arm on his hip and the other flat against the door between them. This mirror-image joke is, of course, lifted from Duck Soup, but it's a guaranteed laugh.

Unfortunately, the moment doesn't quite come off in this production (though it gets its laugh anyway). Dufault's staging, here and elsewhere, lacks the precision necessary to pull off the farce, and the show doesn't have much style, the other requisite element. The cast doesn't seem to get the period, and though there's a lot of energy on stage, it isn't the right kind. Happily, there are exceptions: Tom DiRusso as Tito, Carolyn Aliskevicz as his booming, overzealous wife and, in a couple of his scenes, Jason Russell as the intrusive hotel bellhop, who wants to sing for Merelli. (This particular joke is borrowed from Kaufman and Hart's Once in a Lifetime.)

Some of Dufault's choices puzzle me. Whenever Saunders (Bob Thomas), Max's boss, envisions a moment on the stage of his theater, he's suddenly spotlighted, and the shift from realist lighting is so jarring it feels Brechtian (which I assume wasn't intended). More crucially, since Dufault doesn't have the voices to pull off the pivotal scene where Tito -- before lapsing into sleep -- gives Max an informal singing lesson, I wonder why he didn't just have them lip-synch a tape of real singers. The big, lush voices would provide the satisfaction for an audience that a play like this one is meant to give. The idea is that when Max comes on stage and sings with confidence and brio, everyone in the audience, men and women alike, swoon as they would for the genuine Merelli -- i.e., that Verdi, sung well, is sexy as hell. And without that effect, Lend Me a Tenor doesn't make comic sense.