NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Oct. 30.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to incorrect information provided to the PDN, this report corrects the date of the pay-what-you-will performance to Wednesday.
SEQUIM — Here is “The Man Who Came to Dinner” as only Olympic Theatre Arts can bring him.
Sheridan Whiteside — “Sherry” as his secretary calls him — is a singularly arrogant man with a fancy mustache and a penchant for name-dropping. He’s also a New York City radio personality on a lecture tour.
Naturally, Whiteside takes a fall.
It’s a little before Christmas 1939 in little Mesalia, Ohio, when he slips on the ice outside the home of well-to-do factory owner Ernest Stanley and his family. The world-renowned Whiteside has been invited to dine there, but with his hurt hip, he suddenly becomes the Stanleys’ house guest.
This visitor is not nice to them, nor to his secretary Maggie Cutler and nurse Miss Preen. Whiteside is insufferable, we can all agree — but he’s far from the only guy wreaking havoc in this story.
“The Man Who Came to Dinner,” opening tonight for a three-week run at Olympic Theatre Arts, tosses together an ensemble of veteran theater artists and stage novices, from the teenage to the 70-something and proud of it.
Together they bring on a story about love, lies, employment and eviction, all from the pens of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The pair put this comedy on the Broadway stage 76 Octobers ago, where it ran for nearly 750 performances.
In staging “The Man” in Sequim, director Olivia Shea had her mission firm in mind: to show people a good old time, a show they could relive and re-laugh about long after.
Besides casting Ron Graham, one of Clallam County’s best-known actors, in the title role alongside seasoned fellow performers Mark Valentine, Pat Owens and Carl Honore, Shea brought in high school students Raven Gelder and Jared Kneidl plus Monica Ostrom, who is on stage for the first time in her life.
“I decided it’s never too late,” said Ostrom, 78.
She’s surrounded by experts. Jayna Orchard, along with designing costumes, plays Miss Preen; Mindy Gelder is Mrs. Stanley; Angela Poynter-Lemaster portrays Lorraine Sheldon, the seductive actress and friend of Whiteside. Sara Nicholls, a newcomer to Sequim, is Maggie, another juicy part.
“She is a hard-bitten, cynical woman who falls in love for the first time,” said Nicholls, who like her sisters on stage gets to wear some prim-yet-sharp vintage dresses. The show is lush with those outfits and a script to match.
Kaufman and Hart were “two of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century,” added Shea, who has had her hands full with a cast of 23.
This is a fast-paced, three-act production, but that didn’t deter the director from slipping in a little something of her own. It appears in the form of a creature walking onto the stage. Of course, Shea didn’t want this reporter to give it all away. Be warned: the thing is small but packs a comedic punch.
To Graham’s mind, “The Man” has a message embedded in the hilarity.
In his portrayal of Whiteside as something more than a jerk — the guy has feelings of love and longing, after all — Graham explores how multi-faceted people are.
“On the surface, you’re going to have a blast” watching this play, he said. But look under the veneer, and you’ll see what the characters are made of. Whiteside is mean to Maggie and Miss Preen.
They don’t put up with it forever.
See the show more than once, Graham advises.
The actors “grow together as a group. We find new things, nuances [in our characters]. And we learn more about each other,” in each performance.
When he’s not busy acting in a play, Graham goes to both the opening and closing nights of other productions, to see how they’ve evolved.
“Theater,” he said, “is a reflection of real life.”
