Food for the Funny Bone

Long before it became trendy to comment on it, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart knew all about the culture clash between Middle America and the two coasts--Hollywood and New York. Their use of this clash for satire resulted in the remarkably durable “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” And even though the comedy’s Christmas setting is odd to see during the heat of summer, it is comfortably settled in for a revival at the outdoor Muckenthaler Cultural Center’s Theater on the Green in Fullerton.

The Muckenthaler estate lends itself to Kaufman and Hart’s Ohio setting, where the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Stanley (Cheyenne Wilbur and Susan E. Taylor) find themselves besieged by America’s No. 1 radio star of the late 1930s, the pompously cynical Sheridan Whiteside (David Allen Jones). Whiteside, friend to Hollywood celebs, Gertrude Stein, Mohandas Gandhi and anyone else who matters, has tripped on the Stanley’s icy front porch and landed in a wheelchair for several weeks’ recuperation.

Unfortunately for the Stanleys, Whiteside takes over their house as his rest and work studio--and as a Grand Central Station for an endless parade of eccentric friends and presents. (Admiral Byrd, for one, sends him a crate of penguins.)

Balancing this whirl of eccentricity is the human drama pitting Whiteside against his loyal secretary and aide de camp, Maggie Cutler (Jane Macfie, in a wonderfully subtle performance). Whiteside simply will not have Maggie run off with likable local newspaperman Bert Jefferson (Doug Tompos) and settle down.

Slyly structured, Kaufman and Hart’s three-act play painstakingly sets up the situation in Act 1, then brilliantly turns the plot screws in the Whiteside-Maggie match in Act 2. “The Man Who Came to Dinner” is now the playwriting equivalent of that great old Victrola in the folks’ house--solid, stylishly prewar, funny-looking yet admirable.

A great revival should be uproarious, which director Kevin Cochran’s is not. Instead, this is a good, confident staging with a shrewdly cast ensemble. Few actors here--Jo Bond’s unconvincing kooky Stanley sister is one of them--feel out of period; there’s a nice balance of actors comfortably in their roles, yet aware of the special voice and behavior patterns--slightly formal, clipped, elegant--that are true of the era.

The slender Jones isn’t the classic, larger-than-life Monty Woolley-style Whiteside one associates with the role, but he gives it comic heft with his theatrical delivery of an endless stream of ‘30s-style verbal smack (of a pestering doctor, he declares that he is “the biggest argument for mercy killings”). Macfie is his quiet, dutiful-to-rebellious other half, and she richly conveys all of Maggie’s conflicting desires for an exciting life with Whiteside and a secure love with Bert.

Tompos’ unmannered way of expressing Bert’s gentlemanliness lets us see what Maggie wants--crucial for this comedy to work. But he can also get turned around by the temptress-actress Lorraine Sheldon, a role Pamela Hudacek struggles with early on until she lets loose with the raging neuroses churning under Lorraine’s Vogue-like surface.

The parade of comic turns is led by Beverly Turner’s wild Banjo, an unleashed pants-wearing gal who is too much even for Whiteside. Following is Barry Scott Silver, whose accent as actor-celebrity Beverly Carlton wobbles in a way Beverly wouldn’t tolerate; Susan Haynes, wonderful as Whiteside’s favorite ant scientist Professor Metz; Tom Lenihan as the continually frustrated local doc; and Melanie Ewbank, with a flurry of reactions as Whiteside’s abused nurse Miss Preen. Also strong on the reaction uptake is Wilbur’s Mr. Stanley, whose offstage world is another great three-act comedy.

Befitting the Grove Theater Center’s usual production values (it is in residence here through the summer, on a better physical stage space than the Festival Amphitheatre home base), Mark Klopfenstein’s set is a homespun yet affluent abode. Elegantly gracing the space are Don Nelson’s costumes and David Darwin’s lights.

BE THERE

“The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Muckenthaler Cultural Center Theater on the Green, 1201 Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Thursdays-Sundays, 8:15 p.m. Ends Sunday. $18.50-$20.50 ($32.50 on Friday-Saturday, including dinner). (714) 741-9555. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.