FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| THEATRE Bell, Book and Candle Leading up to Halloween, when the trees are depressingly shedding their cargos of orange and gold, we can all do with a little magic. Unfortunately, Morpheus Theatre's production of Bell, Book and Candle makes up in length and ambition what it fails to deliver in wit and the most stageworthy magic - charm. In fact, antiquated as it might sound, wit and charm is precisely what viewers tuned in for when this 1950 comedy by John Van Druten spawned the popular television series, Bewitched. Samantha's twitching button nose and Tabatha's naughty antics were a recipe for a sitcom of another kind - one where style and derring-do were at the heart of humor, and where deforming the narratives of a conventional marriage was considered good clean fun. But alas, the comparison is fiendishly unjustified. What director Sean Anderson attempts here is less deliciously wicked and more humanistic by far. Bell, Book and Candle is meant to be a reminder of the mystery and magic of ordinary human love. Here magic is not a playful part of the couple's relationship, but something the witch must forever lose in order to be with her man. When accomplished witch Gillian Holroyd (Andrea Hopkins) discovers that an old rival is about to marry her chosen man, Shepherd Henderson (Rob Savage), she casts a spell that makes him forget about everything but her. In the ensuing mayhem, she alienates her brother, Nicky (Jay Newman), and loses her feline familiar, Pyewacket (Dudley). Her aunt (Diane Falck) falls in with a rival witch, and Sidney Redlitch (Greg Spielman), whose manuscript reveals a few too many secrets about the ancient art, is prevented from publishing just before Gillian's powers run dry. You see, although this is a modernized love story, the old maxim that a witch loses her powers when she falls in love still holds true. Behold Gillian at the end of the play: broken, unexceptional and powerless - an ordinary woman who we're asked to believe is extraordinarily in love. In modern-day New York City, this is harder than ever to swallow. Performances are largely uneven, with lines forgotten or ad-libbed. Only Falck manages to modulate her portrayal in any substantial way. Newman almost makes up for a sameness in delivery with a sinister stage presence that recalls Mickey Rourke's terrifyingly quiet smile in 9 1/2 Weeks. |