When they tell you something is too good to be true, don't count on it. It's a lie.
Damon Runyon used to relate some of his father's advice: "Son, when a man comes up to you with a sealed deck of cards in his hand, and offers to bet you that he can make the jack of clubs jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear, don't you do it, because sure as Hell, you're going to get an earful of cider."
But the confidence games go on, and the con men–and women–are all over your e-mail, and licking their chops right now, during the holiday season, because the marks have plenty of cash, and all the confidence in the world. "As Bees in Honey Drown," a strong Stray Dog Theatre production, proves it once more. It opened over the weekend at Tower Grove Abbey and will run through Dec. 18
Take Evan Wyler (Martin Fox), a young gay novelist with good prospects. He's even on a magazine cover. Then he gets a call from a woman who calls herself Alexa Vere de Vere (Sarajane Alverson). She wants him to write a screenplay based on her life and offers him a thousand dollars a week, a great deal of money to a struggling novelist, even one with good prospects. They hit the fast track, the club scene, the Hollywood scene, all the necessary scenes. She's beautiful, but she likes cash, not credit cards. But she carries less and less, and he uses his credit card more and more, and one day the credit cards aren't honored, and he's $15,000 in debt, and Alexa has run off to the south of France with a new protege.
Wyler's pain, however, is for far more than $15,000, or so he says. He's gay, and he took her to bed, and he feels used, abused, not true to himself. It comes across almost as a throwaway line, however, and it seems as if he is blaming her for his weakness, though he seemed very happy to accompany her to the bedroom. It simply is not enough to serve as a major plot turn.
So he goes after Alexa, seeking both refund and revenge, and a record company titan Morris Kaden (Kevin Boehm), puts him on the right track with the help of his secretary (Anna Skidis) and another victim (Bess Moynihan). He eventually finds her first victim, an artist named Mike Strabinsky (Stephen Peirick), and her history begins to be revealed, with a few more twists along the way
Douglas Carter Beane's comedy, first produced in 1997, is a first-rate play, well-plotted and with plenty of good humor. Alverson shows considerable range, snapping off one-liners and creating the con smoothly. Later, when Fox looks for reasons for her action and a refund of his money, she snaps, "Call it tuition." The two actors work very well together under Gary F. Bell's focused, intelligent direction. Bell also designed the multi-level set which is extremely effective in helping spell out relationships. The other four actors play multiple roles, with Moynihan grabbing everyone's attention in the opening scene as a photographer's assistant who speaks of herself in the third person. She's strong in her other roles, too.
Skidis is a delight as the secretary, filled with New York bluster and flouncing with great charm, and she and Boehm also play off one another in high style. Peirick, as the painter who was a high school classmate of Alexa, then known as Brenda, is at his best when he and Alverson are planning their first cons.
Good work by Stray Dog, and a comedy that has held up well since I first saw it in1997.
As Bees in Honey Drown, by Douglas Carter Beane, is a production of Stray Dog Theatre at the Tower Grove Abbey, and will run through Dec. 18
—Joe