Trippin' through literature with Bunbury

If you were surprised when you heard that the Bush White House called former President Jimmy Carter irrelevant, imaging how Bunbury, felt when he found out he wasn’t even a real person. Oh! But  I’m getting ahead of myself.

Diversionary Theatre in Hillcrest on Park Blvd. is currently mounting Tom Jacobson’s Bunbury, a serious play for trivial people. It’s so much fun that it defies reality and almost makes you wonder what you would do if you could travel through time. It’s clever enough to test anyone’s literary recall and not so trivial as to make one think aloud, “What if?” Bunbury is the final show of the 2006-‘07 season through June 17 (with an added Mon. June 4 performance) and it‘s a fantastically fun  way to spend two hours of your time.

Jacobson’s story takes off right at the starting gate when a proper Bunbury (a perfect  fit for David McBean), is  reading Romeo and Juliet  and commenting  aloud to his rather snooty butler, Hartley, (a talented Tom Zohar) about how Romeo’s life would have turned out differently had he kept with his Rosaline and never met Juliet at the ball. He insists she is simply a fictional character, or less than fiction and

David McBean, Aaron Marcotte

falls off the radar screen after Romeo meets Juliet. Before we know it, he gets a visit from Rosaline (Melissa Fernandes is right on target) telling him that she may be a ‘blob’ on paper, but lest he forget,  both she and he are mere characters in plays; he right out of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and she straight out of  Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. And no matter how hard he tries to convince her that he is, in fact, the real friend of Algernon Moncrieff, who unbeknownst to Bunbury has invented him for his own pleasure, she knows better. In a one upsmanship, he relates to her, that even though she is spoken of in Romeo and Juliet,  no one ever sees her.

After they finally accept that they are who they are, they conspire to travel back and forth through the looking glass of literature to change the outcome of  many of the classics that end in tragedy. It’s a romp that takes us to the death scene in Romeo and Juliet  and imagines that the lovers both live; to Beckett’s Godot;( yes we get to see Godot, the waiting is over) to the young gay, alcoholic husband, Allan (Aaron Marcotte) of Blanche DuBois in Streetcar  (Interestingly enough  they save  Blanche from the likes of Stanley Kowalski when Blanche finally sees the light and  forgives her husband  for all he’s done);  to Albee’s Virginia Woolf  and the talked about son we never see but who is always at the center of their hate, to Faust being a saint? to Edgar Allan Poe sans the Raven and oh, so many more that it’s fun to not only see the resulting changes and what they bring, but to guess the plays from whence they come.

Alas, however, reality sets in for the two and even though they are now more than discarded characters and  they know they can influence the world of literature, they also appreciate that by changing the outcome of the stories, or life for that matter, where would the drama, the tragedy, the reality, the fear, the disappointment be? “Fiction would become so damned boring." And so they go back to the literary drawing boards and correct what they have done realizing that they can, as we all can, make a difference. Jacobson’s play poses so many questions for us, the audience (up to and including the present condition) to ponder, that just the exercise alone will conjure many pictures.

Director Esther Emery has surrounded herself with a talented (overall) cast who under her deft direction, are a pleasure to watch and try to match wits with. David McBean, long remembered for his outstanding one man show at Cygnet’s Fully Committed, is no less committed to being the quintessential character straight out of Oscar Wilde’s wicked imagination. Dressed the perfect dandy in a butterscotch checkered, vested suit (Jennifer Brawn Gittings costumes were a mixed bag) he prances, paces, cajoles and is in just about every scene. Catch his body language, it’s classic David McBean. In other words, this is Bunbury/McBean’s shining hour.

Melissa Fernandes, back after giving birth to her beautiful Isabella, is right on track and sharp as a tack as Rosaline, Romeo’s spurned love. Tom Zohar, who not only plays the piano (He composed the original music for Subject to Change, a play in which he appeared) while playing the butler to McBean’s Bunbury, he never misses a beat in his multiple roles. As a side bar, he is also fluent in Hebrew. I happened to overhear him chatting away with friends in that ancient language one afternoon while waiting to see a play in Carlsbad. It took me by surprise because it was so out of context. In his credits, he does claim to be proficient in many accents and  speak Hebrew fluently. I can attest to both. One never knows when one will happen upon a find  like this.

John Rosen, last seen in Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home at Diversionary recently, plays several characters including the Friar in Romeo and Juliet, George in Virginia Woolf and an older, more disillusioned  Algernon. Rosen is a versatile actor who is most convincing. Wendy Waddell who also plays multiple roles along with  Aaron Marcotte and Chris Buess and Diane Addis add to the overall taste of the production.

Nick Fouch’s simple set design with curtains separating scenes and places makes it easy for the characters to move about. His lily lamps set on either end of the wide stage are a curiosity only until we see McBean carrying a lily around as a prop,  and Christian DeAngelis’ takes credit for the lighting design which works well. All in all, this final production of Diversionary Theatre’s  season is surely going to leave patrons with a willingness to see what they have to offer in the coming seasons.

For information about it’s season; tickets and prices call 619-220-0097 or log on to www.diversionary.org

See you at the theatre.