Jun 20, 2008

Girl power wins in 'Inn'

By John Angell Grant / Theater Reviewer

Four men fall in love with the same woman, who proceeds to lead each one of them around by the nose. Heartache and laughter then ensue in "Liberty Inn," which is running as part of the summer stage festival at California Theatre Center in Sunnyvale.

The play is an adaptation of an 18th-century farce by Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni. The adaptation and translation of the Sunnyvale production is by polymath Bay Area actor Dakin Matthews, who has had a long and successful television and film career in Los Angeles, in addition to performing in many stage productions around the country.

Matthews' adaptation plays out as a proto-feminist version of Goldoni's original, set in Liberty, N.Y., in the decade following the American Revolution. The story focuses on a bright and outspoken young businesswoman, Mirandolina, who owns her own inn, wants to stay single, and ridicules the various lovesick or merely horny men who are trying to bed her.

All four of Mirandolina's suitors implode, each turning out to be no match for the quick-witted innkeeper. Mirandolina, who has a bit of a mean streak, brags that she's out to prove "the superiority of raw female power."

The Sunnyvale production offers a good cast. Director Will Huddleston has staged this classic farce with funny walks and cartoon European accents. Think of the French accent that Peter Sellers brought to his Inspector Clouseau character.

Among the performers, Stefan Fisher and Angelo Cernigilia are amusing as two powdered, rouged and bewigged 18th-century twits, bickering over what carries more status, money or blue blood. (In this play, money seems to win out.)

Jake Beamer has a very magnetic stage presence as a German Army captain who hates women and refuses to fall in love. This poor sap doesn't stand a change against Maegan McNerney's conniving Mirandolina.

Describing herself as plain and slightly over the hill, Mirandolina has many romantic scalps hanging from her belt, having found that men are very naive when it comes to matching romantic wits with women.

Cynthia Zitter has rich acting moments jumping back and forth between characters in a smaller role as a gold-digging stage actress pretending to be a countess.

The ending to "Liberty Inn" is a little formulaic. After creating an independent woman who manipulates love-struck men like puppets to prove how gullible they are when it comes to sex, Goldoni abruptly tacked in a more traditional moralistic direction to tie up the story's chaotic plot in a rather conventional ending, which doesn't do justice to the progressive feminist issues offered earlier.

Further, "Liberty Inn" ends up not offering anything particularly distinctive about its American resetting, other than ramping itself up in its final moments as a celebration of the upcoming Fourth of July.

Leaving those dramaturgical issues aside, it's a fun show. "Liberty Inn" offers a battle of sexual wits between women and men, and wouldn't you know it, the men lose.

Rating: Three stars

E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@yahoo.com.