Rollo’s Wild Oat
Opening Night: November 20, 2014
Closing: December 20, 2014
Theater: Metropolitan Playhouse
To be or not to be… Rollo Webster is a man with one sole ambition… to play Hamlet on Broadway. With an inheritance and an acting company, he has two thirds of what he needs to realize his dream. If only he had any talent. A delightful comedy from 1920 by songwriter and playwright Clare Beecher Kummer that celebrates vaunting ambition, Society folly, and thespian excess.
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December 2, 2014
There’s a distinct odor of mothballs infusing Rollo’s Wild Oat, the Metropolitan Playhouse’s revival of Clare Beecher Kummer’s 1920 comedy. Sweet and fusty, it centers on Rollo Webster (Kevin Sebastian), a moneyed chap who insists on starring in Hamlet on Broadway before resigning himself to stewardship of the family air-brake business. The Metropolitan specializes in nosing out neglected chestnuts. But the director, Michael Hardart, makes a meager case for roasting this one. The show opens as Rollo meets with a theater manager, Abie Stein (Mac Brydon), to plan his debut. “ Hamlet? ” says the skeptical Mr. Stein. “Do you think anyone wants to see it?” But Rollo perseveres, drafting a guileless ingénue, Goldie (Erica Knight), to play Ophelia and obliging his sprightly sister, Lydia (Alexis Hyatt), with a small part. Lydia is soon falling for George Lucas (Timothy C. Goodwin), a gallant if vacuous actor. Will Rollo’s Hamlet land Goldie’s Ophelia? Will Lydia’s Prologue entice George’s Laertes? Will Gertrude find a use for her ancient wig? Will an absurdly woolly beard suffocate Polonius? Kummer has some arch comments about passé performance styles and actorly fussiness, but she takes her own time getting to them. (As an almost-century-old play about amateur dramatics, it doesn’t hold a candle to George Kelly’s The Torch Bearers.)
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