Is He Dead? could well be described as a melodrama of manners. St. Louis Shakespeare has brought in director Ed Coffield, a guy possessed of a fine hand with comedy, to handle this Mark Twain story, found only a few years ago and turned into a play by David Ives. Let me tell you, it’s pretty darned funny.
The artist Jean-Francois Millet, or, more accurately, Twain’s idea of him seen fifty years or so later, is at the center of the play. He’s young, struggling, and like all his friends, in debt to a scoundrel art dealer/loan shark. His pals persuade him to manufacture his death and pose as his widowed sister.
It’s a delightful cast, obviously carefully chosen for their fine dentition, as chewing the scenery is called for right and left. There’s nothing wrong with that; we’re not talking Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill here. Zac McMillan (above, left) is both Millet and Daisy, his “sister”. McMillan is fun to watch, especially in drag, and his posse keep up their ends of the bargain by running interference for him. They’re Chicago, Jack Zanger, with an unexplained Southern accent, O’Shaughnessy from Jacob Cange, and Dutchy, John Fisher, whose Germanic accent occasionally slipped into Irish early on, but whose body language and singing voice in one short scene, more than made up for things.
Ben Ritchie (above, right) gives us Bastien Andre, a classic villain, complete with curled moustache, swirling cape and fabulous eyebrows. (Extra points to sound designer for the great entrance theme for him.) Molly McCaskill is Millet’s girlfriend and Natalie Walker her sister with a thing for Chicago-the-Southerner, roles they seem to delight in; their father M. Leroux is Timothy Callahan, whose health improved remarkably when his debts were paid. Nicole Angeli and Jennifer Quinn carry their considerably less ladylike personae with high spirits and a notable amount of makeup and quaffing.
The guy with the most hats to wear, though, is Joe Cella, whose chapeaus included a crown. Between buttleing, reporting, reigning and a few other gerunds, he must have had a fine time, managing to outline all his characters with particularly bold strokes.
No moral uplift, no social message, a certain amount of slamming doors and off-color jokes. Just what we need this summer, I say. It’s almost illegally fun.
Is He Dead?
Through August 13
St. Louis Shakespeare
The Ivory Theatre
7620 Michigan Ave
http://www.stlshakespeare.org/