Lakewood Theatre Company’s yuletide offering, The Man Who Came to Dinner, is an enjoyable family production. A period piece, the play is set in the early 1940s and tells the story of a celebrity author and radio personality who is stranded at the home of a wealthy couple during the holidays.
Sheridan Whiteside (Tobias Andersen), a media sensation, comes to dinner at the small-town Ohio home of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley (Scott Malcolm and Jane Fellows, respectively). This is no small matter for the wealthy couple, who treat the occasion as a social coup. Unfortunately, Whiteside slips on their icy front steps and fractures his hip, resulting in a forced stay at the couple’s home. Immediately, Whiteside takes over the household with his demands, threatening to sue his hosts, effectively placing them under house arrest and terrorizing their domestic help.
If this play were about a curmudgeon though, it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. Soon, Whiteside reveals his penchant for the absurd. He receives phone calls from Walt Disney and H.G. Wells, Christmas gifts from Shirley Temple and is the recipient of a taxidermy octopus, four live penguins and an antique Egyptian sarcophagus. He proves himself to be a delightful eccentric as he mentors the Stanleys’ likeable children, June (Alyssa Roehrenbeck) and Richard (Todd Tschida). Whiteside is a complex, ambiguous character, and teeters between acting like a spoiled child and a truly loving father.
Whiteside’s disagreement with his personal assistant, Maggie (Jill Westerby) is the crux of the play. Maggie has fallen in love with small-time newspaper editor Bert Jefferson (Jeff Gorham) and threatens to leave her job to pursue a relationship with him. Whiteside’s response is to trick actress Lorraine Sheldon (Margie Boulé) into seducing Jefferson, who is an aspiring playwright. The ensuing drama and manipulation is clever and suspenseful, and justifies the play’s three acts and extended running time.
Director Joe Theissen has done an excellent job using the large, two-story set, which is modeled after a Craftsman mansion. The huge cast enters and exits smoothly and their movements on set, particularly in large group scenes, are close to a dance routine. The script’s humor is still fresh after 70 years, and ensures that there is never a dull moment.
The play seems to be about Whiteside’s development as a person—from his self-serving beginning to his turn in a Scrooge-like redemption when he understands that Maggie has found true love. Unfortunately, his Christmas-flavored brand of personal growth rings somewhat false.
In 2009, it seems inconceivable that a well-educated woman would sacrifice her life and career in order to settle down with a man she’s only known for two weeks. Consequently, Whiteside emerges as the only sane character in the play—albeit one with deep communication problems. Watching a parade of men based on prominent actors of the day stroll in to try to convince Whiteside that Maggie has “finally fallen in love” is jarring, and reduces Maggie—a competent, no-nonsense businesswoman excellently portrayed by Westerby—to a pining girl who remains desperately in love even as her man cheats on her. It’s a shame to see such a strong female character reduced to the show’s most illogical, desperate player.
The flip side of this simplistic, sexist treatment of Maggie is that Whiteside becomes an even more nuanced figure. The play, after all, is a vehicle for Whiteside, and Andersen gives a suitably virtuoso performance that carries the play evenly throughout, delivering cutting witticisms. Gorham as Bert exudes charm and desperation in equal measures and Boulé is a welcome example of an old-fashioned diva, even if her character is at times a negative female stereotype.
Anne Hargreaves’ cameo as a frazzled, but ultimately self-reliant nurse is a standout for its humor and Hargreaves’ studiously dour stage manner. It’s a shame that she’s the only female character who isn’t manipulated by the show’s men and the turning point of the show from drawing-room comedy to sexist garbage is the entrance of bit player Banjo (played by the likeable Garland Lyons), a lewd comedian who is a perfect example of the script’s willingness to sacrifice women for comedic purposes (Banjo’s first appearance onstage involves him touching Miss Preen in a manner that, in the 21st century, would be grounds for a workplace harassment suit). Bert, likewise, is still meant to be a hero even as he proves himself a starstruck philanderer. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Stanley is also depressing.
The Man Who Came to Dinner is certainly enjoyable and Lakewood Theatre Company’s production is of the highest caliber. It’s a shame that the source material is so dated—its jokes would have been far more enjoyable were they advancing a less misogynistic plot. For an audience comfortable watching women get reduced down to vapid plot devices, The Man Who Came to Dinner is hard to beat as seasonal entertainment. For the more critical out there, this play will fail to inspire Christmas cheer—unless your idea of holiday fun involves thinking about how patriarchy can ruin just about everything.