'Mercy of a Storm.
Mercy of a Storm by Jeffrey Hatcher. Directed by Sheila Saragusa.
Sexual rendezvous is always a wonderful thing to watch.
To be a fly on the wall and witness the games being played by lovers escaping from their significant "others" for just a while, to be together in some furtive way, in some foreign place, in some dangerous setting, that is exhilaration in the extreme.
George and Zanovia have chosen a country club pool house on New Year’s Eve at 10 p.m. in 1945 for their special tryst. At the Chester Theatre Company’s new production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s play "Mercy of a Storm" (seen at the first public performance, prior to opening), that is what you think you’re getting, and you think it for about 20 minutes even when your entire nervous system is cranking up the "no-no" in your loins, your heart and mind are saying, "yes, it is."
Trust your nerves.
George’s special "other person" is his 25-year-old daughter, Tootsie, and Zanovia’s guy is her divorce lawyer. That is the best this thwarted couple can manage on this special night, until they run away together to the locked up and deserted boat house. What follows is a convoluted, romantic, silly, peculiar and overwhelmingly emotional two hours of struggle and love between two ill-suited people who are trying valiantly to save what little there is to save in their relationship.
This is the sort of play where little is what it seems to be and the answers sought by each of the characters is hard-won, difficult to come by, and definitely disturbing to each of them and to us as well.
We want romantics to win the day. We do. It’s our nature as Americans. Clark Gable must win Norma Shearer, Vivien Leigh or Joan Crawford, or anyone else he sets out to win. He must. Bette Davis has to make her men suffer if they want to be worthy of her, they must, whether they are Henry Fonda, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart or Paul Henreid. She just has to do it. So it is with George and Zanovia. In some way or other he has to win her over and she must make him suffer for it.
This is a play with many, many surprises. The first one, or perhaps it’s the first revelation, comes finally at about 20 minutes into the first act. The last one comes just before the lights dim out on the second act. To reveal more than one of them would be unfair to a theater-goer, so this reviewer will not tell you what’s going on here. I will tell you that the odd changes are characteristic of this writer, Jeffrey Hatcher, and that as in his play "A Picasso" seen locally earlier this season at Barrington Stage Company’s other space, every quixotic deviation is worth its impact in gold.
Director Sheila Saragusa has made the most of the confinements of the space that comprises this elegant pool house. She has played her couple on and around almost every inch of the stage set, avoiding the obvious bar stools and the telephone table’s side chair, providing us with playing areas that make us as aware of this couple’s sexual magnetism as they themselves are aware of it. Whether the period gestures, stances and movement are hers, or are supplied by her actors, the effect is almost a delirious one, transporting us flies on the wall into the time of this play without a single serious fault anywhere. They are living in 1945 and so we are also.
It is that finesse brought to the characters by Chandler Vinton as Zanovia and Steve Hendrickson as George that make this event so special. He does stuffy superior brilliantly, underplaying it whenever possible but leaving it visible on the table, as it were, as he diverts his eyes when making accusations, stares down his sexual opponent as he bargains his deals, wears his heart on his large lapels and allows it to be visible when he loses his senses to the sensual being he is playing for a fool.
Zanovia, however, is no fool. In Vinton’s hands she makes an occasional mistake, but that mistake is part of her charm and she is charming. She buttons gestures. She elides phrases. She could be a ballet dancer with just her head and her voice, although her graceful arms and her fluttering hands complete the picture nicely.
Vocally she is symphonic while his voice is a solo instrument playing an odd enharmonic melody. She could be a floozy, but she’s not. He could be a sucker, but he isn’t. When things turn table and turn them again, it is marvelous to watch and even more marvelous not to be one or the other of them caught in their dance of seduction and release.
All of this is done on a gloriously 1940s set designed by Charles Corcoran in excellently elegant costumes by Arthur Oliver. Subtle and suggestive lighting by Lara Dubin completes the stage picture which is enhanced, now and then, by the gossamer sound design work of Tom Shread.
Jeffrey Hatcher is one of the busiest and most successful playwrights working today and this is one of his finest pieces. I have begun to think that anything with his name on it would be worthy of a trip over a mountain and this play certainly was. If you don’t feel the same way after seeing "Mercy of a Storm" you’ve no soul in you. That’s all there is to that.
Mercy of a Storm plays at Chester Theater Company through August 12. Ticket prices range from $22.50-$27.50. Information, tickets and directions can be found at 413-354-7771 or on their website: www.chestertheatre.org.