Love without end
Sierra Madre’s take on Neil Simon’s ‘Rose’s Dilemma’ is haunted by other ghosts
By Jana Monji 09/11/2008
Love can survive death, and in the Sierra Madre Playhouse’s lively, well-acted production, a famous writer on the brink of financial disaster must end her extended mourning for a dead man to snap herself out of writer’s block.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Rose Steiner has been carrying on a love affair with a ghost for the last five years. Margaret McCarley is a buxom woman with a low voice and her Rose lusts for life and is a formidable foe, one that can stop lesser beings, including a down-on-his-luck young novelist like Gavin Clancy (Norman Dostal), with one good hard look. Rose has contacted Gavin at the behest of her dead lover, Walsh (Don Savage), who tells her he can only keep up his daily visits for two more weeks and in that time, she should get Gavin to complete the novel he was working on when he died.
Even when the ghost of Walsh isn’t there, he haunts Rose’s Hampton house — framed photos of him decorate the home. If there’s a picture of Rose’s daughter Arlene (Elizabeth Gordon), who has come to spend the summer, it’d be hard to find. Arlene didn’t know Walsh but she does get to know Gavin better.
Dostal’s Gavin is gawky yet charming and Gordon’s Arlene blooms without getting sappy under his admiration.
This 2003 Neil Simon play is also haunted by other ghosts; the characters seem based on the cantankerous Lillian Hellman and her dashing long-time lover, Dashiell Hammett. Hellman was, at the time of her 1984 death, involved in a lawsuit with Mary McCarthy who famously told Dick Cavett “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Hammett died in 1961, but in plays like this one, Hellman and Hammett live on.
Like Hellman with Hammett, Rose was still married when she met Walsh. Simon does touch on the lives left behind, the emotional casualties of Rose’s pursuit of her art and her love affair, yet he doesn’t let that get in the way of a happy ending.
Although there were some flubbed lines and the timing could be tightened up in a few places, director Roxanne Barker skillfully helms this minor fable, an urban fairytale wherein Rose’s unfaithful lover becomes her true love in death and there’s a happy ending for both Rose and the daughter she neglected.
“Rose’s Dilemma” continues through Sept.27 at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre. Call (626) 256-3809 or visit www.sierramadreplayhouse.org.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT