One-person shows, especially about actors, are major problems for small theater companies. With few exceptions, these are about great actors, and small St. Louis companies don’t have great actors. They have very good actors, like John Contini in "Barrymore," which opened over the weekend as a production of the Avalon Theatre Company at its space in Crestwood Court, where it will run through July 12. And it isn’t really a one-person show.
Playwrights also have problems when they write about great actors, because playwrights realize that they cannot find actors as good as John Barrymore to recite their lines. So William Luce, who specializes in plays of this type, has written one in which the actor does not have to create the magical Hamlet or Richard III that Barrymore supposedly did. He must merely show the actor at his worst, caviling about the world and how badly it has treated him – and he it. Luce won a Tony for "The Belle of Amherst," about Emily Dickinson, and also wrote about Zelda Fitzgerald, Isak Dinesen and Lillian Hellman, among others.
As a result, the Avalon production of "Barrymore," keenly directed by Erin Kelley, provides sufficient entertainment while it shows an old man, addled by drink, remembering his youthful successes on stages and in bedrooms past, forgetting his lines on stages present.
Luce’s conceit is that Barrymore, in 1942, considered a comeback, rented a theater, hired someone to be the prompter and stage manager and began what he laughingly called rehearsals. Scott McMaster handles that task excellently, though we don’t see hm until the curtain call. In truth, we see him rearranging the furniture during intermission, though those of us who do not know him will not be able to put a name to the face.
Contini gives Barrymore more dignity than he deserves, and the play is fitfully entertaining, though I wonder if Luce’s Barrymore is like the New York media’s Yogi Berra, credited with lots of funny lines he never said.
At the Crestwood Center through July 12
-Joe