Howling along with the Hound of the Baskervilles

It's strange the way theatre has set about mocking itself and its means, isn't it. Or perhaps it's not so strange - the theatre has to grapple with the current culture, of course, and in the current culture, knowingness is all; our collective self-image no longer trades in the romantic, or even the heroic, but merely in the self-aware. The avatar of the age is the viewer who has already seen it all, and seen through it, too.

Enter The Hound of the Baskervilles, another romp through the narrative thickets of a naïve classic and the broad tropes of matinee melodrama. After such local hits as The 39 Steps, Hound feels a bit formulaic itself, frankly; I'm more than ready for a parody of this kind of show. But Hound is also frisky and fun as a post-modern puppy, for the most part, and it's blessed with a crack comic cast (at left, doubling and tripling in all the roles, as required) and very tight direction from Thomas Derrah (who's more on top of this particular case than even Sherlock Holmes, methinks).

It helps a bit that - dare I say this? - The Hound of the Baskervilles isn't all that good to begin with. Before you start baying at the moon yourselves, I should add that while I enjoy the character of Holmes - who doesn't like hanging out with drug-addicted homosexuals? - the stories in which he stars are . . . hmmm . . . how to put this . . . "usually a clumsy mess" sums it up rather nicely, I think. Hound is a particular howler - the writing seems even more arcanely flat-footed than usual (a sample: "I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure?"). And alas, this time Holmes is off the scene much of the time, and the plot only counts as a "mystery" because its structure is so convoluted. I'd take a random episode of Scooby-Doo (the apotheosis of this particular form) any day.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm undoing my own argument a bit here; perhaps parodying this stuff is the only way to put it over! And if Hound has no underlying themes or subtext of its own (unlike, say, Irma Vep), at least it's not looking down its nose at its source (like 39 Steps); it thinks Sherlock Holmes is a hoot, and in the end it's pretty much faithful to the text (although wasn't Laura Lyons AWOL? I confess I 'rested my eyes' here and there, so maybe I missed her).

At any rate, let's be grateful that this particular cast has such sharp comic chops. Lead Remo Airaldi (late of the ART) is an odd physical match for Holmes, and he doesn't really do a "characterization" (or even a parody of one), but he consistently brings to bear that squeaky comic pique that he brought to everything he did at Harvard, and that makes most of the jokes work in an almost abstract way. And once he's in drag (a particularly peculiar form of meta-drag this time, with a bowler and braids) he's really a scream. Meanwhile Bill Mootos makes a perfectly clueless foil as Watson, and talented newcomer Trent Mills clowns his way brilliantly through the wide, wacky supporting cast of Baskervilles, et. al. Plus the show is smartly designed, and there are witty music and sound (and costume!) effects, too. I confess I think an adult may feel that this Hound gets a little long in the tooth before it's over, but as a kid's show it's one of the best bets in town.

Talking 'bout an evolution

The criticisms leveled at Melinda Lopez's From Orchids to Octopi (at the Central Square Theater through May 2) are basically on target: its structure is a chick-lit cliché, and so are its sexual politics. But I still thought it was okay, particularly as it was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health to put over the theory of evolution in dramatic terms, and it manages to do that, pretty much, in an entertaining fashion.

Indeed, it's when the show is at its most didactic that it's also the most fun, thanks to some delightful costumes and props, broad but tight playing by the bemused cast (as they essay the roles of various fish, mammals and dinosaurs), and especially David Fichter's wonderful mural (at left, with the artist), which is slowly assembled over the course of the play, before being revealed in its entirety in a brilliant coup de théâtre.

Alas, it's true that Lopez's "frame story" is too much like too many other plays of late: contemporary professional woman (here "Emma") becomes obsessed with a figure from the past (here Darwin), and before you can say "Voyeurs de Venus!" or "Legacy of Light!" past and present have become intertwined, figures are popping in and out of space-time, reproduction has been muddled with creativity, and warm, uplifting life lessons have been dusted off from back episodes of Touched by an Angel. To make matters worse, the central relationship between modern "Emma" and her husband "Charles" (do I have to remind you of the names of the historical Darwins?) is likewise direct from chick-lit-journal-land: Emma's sweetheart of a husband is just becoming too successful, and isn't paying enough attention to her as she juggles the pressures of both an unexpected pregnancy and a commission for a mural about you-know-who.

These, I'm sure, are like the real problems of many couples, but let's just say that the original Darwins faced worse - plus these are problems (pregnancy, success) that a lot of other couples would kill for. So it's hard to feel too much sympathy for our New Age Emma and Chuck, particularly as Emma seems kind of high-maintenance to begin with. There's a more intriguing plotline revolving around the fears she entertains about that "genetic lottery" once she has learned more about it - but we get the feeling as these issues edged toward questions of reproductive rights (and even, possibly, "smushsmortion") they were trimmed back, more's the pity. And as for the quite-dramatic (and highly relevant) arc that Darwin himself traced - from Anglican trainee to biblical debunker - well, somehow that's never in the dramatic cards at all.

Still, even if her structure is both predictable and unwieldy, Lopez does craft her individual scenes well, and she has dreamed up some clever skits to convey the essence of that "genetic lottery," complete with Wesley Slavick slicing the ham deliciously as a kind of cosmic carnival barker who passes out mutations like prizes at a county fair to hopeful Paleozoics who line up for their big chance. There are also some snappy scenes with Debra Wise as a no-nonsense OB/GYN, and the play even generates a few chills with Tom O'Keefe's turn as the ever-mutating tuberculosis bacillus. Only Kortney Adams, as Emma, never gets to have any fun.

But Lopez's smartest move was getting real-life muralist David Fichter on board. His paintings for last season's Galileo have become the stuff of legend, and he has operated at the same delightfully high standard here (we even learned in a talkback that his own research generated some of Lopez's dialogue; now that's convergent evolution for you). I'm not sure what the Catalyst Collaborative@MIT, which sponsored From Orchids to Octopi with Underground Railway Theater, is pondering next, but my advice is: try to pick a subject that David Fichter can paint!

A postscript on "post-racial" Boston theatre

This is a brief postscript about Harriet Jacobs, which closed this weekend at the Central Square Theater, and which I'm only writing about because the cast of the production was so strong I felt I had to applaud them in print. Alas, the play, by Lydia R. Diamond, struck me as even weaker than the same author's wacky Voyeurs de Venus, which I suffered through last year. Diamond trafficks in sanctimonious psycho-biography disguised as pedagogy, and certainly the complicated life of the heroic Harriet Jacobs deserves better than the flat proclamations she has provided here. But as the playwright is sexy and connected (friends with Peter DuBois of BU, where she teaches, and actually married to a Harvard prof), I guess we're stuck with her for the time being.

And so are these actors, it seems. I don't think I've seen the sparkling Kortney Adams since she had to scream at the bare boobies in Voyeurs; and why the hell is that? She's got Shakespeare's Rosalind, or maybe Shaw's Candida, written all over her. Why is she doomed to declaim the likes of Lydia R. Diamond? Likewise when did I last see the wonderful Ramona Lisa Alexander? I guess it was in the riveting In the Continuum over a year ago - another "black play." To be fair, I recall the Actors' Shakespeare Project cast both the sweet Sheldon Best and the luminous Kami Rushell Smith (above left, as Harriet) in their recent Much Ado, so here's to them for freeing a few of these actors from the ghetto of political correctness. And the Wheelock Family Theatre, bless 'em, cast the hunky De'Lon Grant in both Saint Joan and A Tale of Two Cities. The soulful Obehi Janice, meanwhile, has only just begun to be seen locally at all.

This isn't really meant as a jab at the show's producer, Underground Railway Theater - I'm glad somebody is hiring these folks - except insofar as the choice of play is concerned. Even within the political parameters of "young, female and black" I just have to believe there are better playwrights out there than Lydia R. Diamond. Of course to be fair, American slavery was so horrific that it would take a truly great dramatist to create art from it rather than agitprop - still, 150 years on, isn't it time we began demanding that? On the plus side, designer Susan Zeeman Rogers's channeling of Kara Walker was mildly interesting, and director Megan Sandberg-Zakian at least kept things moving, although she seemed satisfied to also keep them somewhat superficial. Then again, what other choice did she have? Oh, well. Here's hoping that Diamond's Stick Fly, which opens soon at the Huntington, marks a step up from, and out of, this writer's ongoing post-graduate seminar.