With a weekend of gloom, doom and depraved love stories covering local stages like a blanket of blizzard, “Round and Round the Garden,” strong on flowers, foolishness and the wit of Alan Ayckbourn, brought to the Black Cat Theatre on Sunday the same feeling that the sunshine and balmy temperatures provided for the rest of the city.
“Garden,” written in 1973, is one of three plays set over the same weekend with the overall title, “The Norman Conquests,” in honor of the lead character, Norman. An assistant librarian in a small English town, he is convinced he is God’s gift to women and moves on them with the rapidity of a machine gun delivering bullets. They can be produced as one play over three performances or as separate plays, have the same cast of six and are set in the dining room, the living room and the garden, respectively.
It’s the home of a never-seen invalid, being taken care of by Annie (Rachel Hartmann), who wants a weekend off to have an assignation with Norman (Mark Kelley). Annie’s sister, Sara (Christina Rios) and her husband, Reg (Scott Sears) will take care of Mum for the weekend. Also involved are Tom (Justin Ivan Brown), a veterinarian and a goofus who thinks he loves Annie but isn’t sure, and Ruth (Ellie Schwetye), sister to Annie and Sara — and wife to Norman.
The production, nicely directed by Edie Avioli, suffers primarily from the fac t that most of the actors are too young to be as experienced in life as the script demands. Sears, the bumbling, fumbling, nearly middle-aged man, is excellent, playing confusion with the right style. Kelley comes close to carrying off the role of Norman as a naive deceiver, and Schwetye is charmingly sardonic and ruefully accepting of her husband. “Been there, done that, have the T-shirt,” could be her motto.
Brown is delightful as Tom, who couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted him the first two letters, but Hartmann and Rios fall short, the former because of her youth, the latter because she overacts to a fare-thee-well. Todd Schafer’s set is splendid, his lighting good, and Bonnie Kruger’s costumes are satisfactory.
Round and Round the Garden, by Alan Ayckbourn, is on stage at the Black Cat Theatre through Feb. 26
—Joe