Murder with music at Shotgun Players
To kill for love. Othello did it in a play, and a millionaire nutcase famously did it for real in turn-of-the-century New York–the turn of the 20th century, that is. It happened in 1906. While an earthquake was rocking the Bay Area, a juicy scandal was rocking the Big Apple. Sex and power and green-eyed envy were at its heart, as was the man who designed the Washington Square Arch and Madison Square Garden. He was Stanford White, the “architect of Manhattan,” and he was shot to death by Harry Thaw because he’d been fiddling, to put it politely, with Thaw’s wife, notorious beauty, Evelyn Nesbit, whose sobriquet is probably what we remember most of her: “The girl on the red velvet swing.”
All this led to what William Randolph Heart’s brand of yellow journalism insisted was, “The murder trial of the century!”
Now, more than 100 years later, White and Thaw and Nesbit are back, in Laurel Meade’s syncopated retelling of their overheated entanglement, Harry Thaw Hates Everybody, in a peppy production at Shotgun Players in Berkeley. Meade constructs her version as a sort of vaudeville, in which four principle characters, the love triangle squared by Nesbit’s mother, each gets a chance to have his/her say. It’s Rashomon-like but in an impish, satirical way that draws us, the audience, cheerfully into the fray. The actors talk directly to us, seeking to win our good opinion, and not always in a period style (there are references to E.L Doctorow’s Ragtime, to the 1956 Joan Collins/Ray Milland movie The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing, even to the Beatles). They sing and they dance, too, in a manner wittily choreographed by Chris Black, to piano accompaniment by Dolores Duran-Cefalu, in numbers that are among the highlights of the show.
There are other highlights as well. The production is a case of a theater company finding a just-right play for it. Working with director M. Graham Smith, who orchestrates the tale with brisk wit, Shotgun Players takes to the play like ducks to water. Its raffish aspect suits Shotgun’s nervy style, and the result effervesces.
Much credit is due to Maya Linke for a set whose details evoke early 20th century New York, which is as much a player in the drama as its personae, and to Miriam Lewis (costumes), Heather Basarab (lighting), and Theodore H. Hulsker (sound). Micah Steiglitz’s videos and projections are indispensable.
The limber, fine-voiced cast does spirited ensemble work: Steven Hess as Stanford White, Rosie Hallett as Evelyn Nesbit, Keith Pinto as Harry Thaw, Carla Pantoja as Florence Nesbit; and Will Dao (Poire) and Michelle Drexler (Mirabelle), who provide engaging pre-show songs.
Subtitled “A Killer Musical,” Harry Thaw Hates Everybody plays at the Ashby Stage until November 16th, followed by Our Town, written by Berkeley High’s own Thornton Wilder. For tickets/information call 841-6500 or visit www.shotgunplayers.org
–ROBERT HALL.