May 4, 2012

By Karen Salkin

I’ve seen The Heiress before, first the super-depressing 1949 movie starring Olivia De Havilland, and later at the Ahmanson Theatre with Cherry Jones in the title role. I hate the story, but absolutely love, love, love Richard Chamberlain, (and the Pasadena Playhouse, too,) so I just had to see this version in which he stars. And I’m so glad I did because this production was wonderful!

Richard Chamberlain as TV’s Dr. Kildare, when I was first in love with him.

Before I review the show, I must first share some youthful musings about Mr. Chamberlain. I never saw anyone more gorgeous than that man when I was little! I’m proud of myself for having such great taste when I was that young! I’d still marry 1960s Richard Chamberlain now if I could. (But he would have to duke it out with 1940s Cary Grant. Or Gregory Peck.) And seeing him in Thornbirds made me want to turn Catholic!

So when he entered the stage on opening night, I applauded like a four-year-old. I was almost embarrassed in front of myself. (I had first applauded the perfect set, by John Iacovelli, but it was a whole different child-like clapping I did when Mr. C entered.)

Now to the play review:

I rarely describe the action of films and stage shows I review, so as to not spoil it for you, but I just saw this description of the movie on IMDB, when I was looking-up the year, and it’s so perfect and succinct that I just have to share it with you: “A young naive woman falls for a handsome young man who* her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.” Dot, dash, end of story.

But is it? No, not really. I had not counted on the amount of humor, nor the charm, that director Damaso Rodriguez brought to this incarnation. I had had a similar experience when I saw the play Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? when I was first starting out in L.A. I had seen only the torturous film, (that I tell the neighbors Mr. X and I are rehearsing all the time,) so I was startled by my own laughter that Glenda Jackson and John Lithgow invoked in me. And The Heiress was just like that. Despite the depressing-ness inherent in the plot, the audience was constantly laughing. The mirth was such a great surprise!

I can usually find fault with all show biz situations, but I really couldn’t in this case. The cast was excellent, and of course, that gorgeous, familiar voice of Richard Chamberlain, as the rotten father, was music to my ears.

Photo by Jim Cox.

I wasn’t familiar with the rest of the cast, save for Heather Tom as the heiress herself, and I must admit that she totally surprised me. I had seen her only as Victoria Newman on the soap opera The Young and The Restless, and that was many years ago. I had never been impressed. But she gave a commanding performance here. She’s considered good-looking on the soaps, so I was wondering what they were going to do with her in this show, to show her as a super-plain, perhaps even unattractive, girl. It’s amazing what some heavy-handed eyebrow pencil, and more importantly, some kielbasa sausage wrapped around the ears as a hairdo, can do. The whole plot line would have been eradicated if I had been the character’s friend; I would have just changed her hair and make-up and she would have had her pick of dudes to marry! Oh well.

The play, as written by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, way back in 1947(!), consisted of so very many clever lines, most of which evoked hearty laughter in the audience. I’m sure the delivery of the talented cast helped, especially in the last scenes, first with one simple utterance by Julia Duffy, as the aunt, and then in the scene between Catherine and Morris. I wrote down one or two of the lines at the beginning, but there were so many, and they were coming so fast, that, for the first time ever, I decided to just buy the script to have them all! Here’s an example, declared by the father: “You are good for nothing, unless you are clever.” I saw, “Amen” to that!

The after-party, in the front courtyard, featured foods from different eateries, and included sushi, salad, two kinds of pasta, and cupcakes, all delish. Even better than the food, for some folks, was the guest list. I haven’t watched soaps for years, but even so, I did recognize the faces of a few of Heather’s co-stars from the CBS shows, including Don Diamont, Christina LeBlanc, and the still handsome John McCook.

I’m so grateful that the kind PR people saw fit to introduce me to Richard Chamberlain, with cameras flashing. It was a brief encounter, but one I’ll always cherish. (In my mind only; the snaps of me were so brutal that I decided to spare you all. And never wear that ensemble again!) (Okay, maybe lose a few pounds while I’m burning the dress. Or else, I may just as well be rocking that kielbasa ‘do! As one of my old pals said when she saw me with this weight gain, “At least you’re tall!!!” I hear ya, sister. And, as the play states, at least I’m clever. Occasionally.)

*[Note: The “who” in that IMDB description should have been “whom.” I'll tell you the rule sometime when I finally get around to beginning my Grammar section.]

The Heiress running through May 20, 2012

Pasadena Playhouse  39 South El Molino Ave.  Pasadena  626-356-7529  www.PasadenaPlayhouse.org

Buy Tickets Here

Read Full Review

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

May 3, 2012 | By Gil Kaan | Category: Featured Articles, Theater and Dance

Julia Duffy and Richard Chamberlain in “The Heiress” at the Pasadena Playhouse. / Photo by Jim Cox

The Pasadena Playhouse should inherit a healthy box office with their current talented-cast revival of the surprisingly delightful “The Heiress.” Having not experienced past incarnations of writers Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s classic on film or stage, I was more than pleasantly surprised that this period drama, suggested by the Henry James novel “Washington Square,” was quite often interrupted by the audience’s laughter.

Especially entertaining were the many biting, dead-on barbs of stage and screen legend Richard Chamberlain as the well-respected family physician Dr. Austin Sloper. Chamberlain successfully mines the intended, yet unexpected laughs each time a pearl of wisdom rolls ever-so-trippingly out of his mouth.  Chamberlain dominates the stage with his authoritative voice and his commanding presence. His put-downs also seemed to be 21st-century digs in this 1850s period drama. For example, when Catherine models a wine-red-colored gown (her mother’s favorite color) for her father’s approval, Chamberlain’s rapier cuts with “Yes, but your mother dominated the color.” Bull’s-eye right between her eyes!

Chamberlain’s long-time widowed Dr. Sloper heads a household at 16 Washington Square consisting of his sister Lavinia (Julia Duffy of “Newhart” fame), also widowed by her deceased pastor husband; shy, socially-inept daughter Catherine (soap opera star Heather Tom); and maid Maria (Elizabeth Tobias).

After the play’s introductory scenes between the doctor, his daughter and her aunt, the action (and the play) gets stimulated when guests arrive for a small dinner party. The doctor’s other sister Elizabeth (Gigi Bermingham) appears with her daughter Marian (Anneliese Van Der Pol), Marian’s fiancée Arthur (Chris Reinacher) and Arthur’s distant cousin, the uninvited Morris (Steve Coombs).

Obvious to all involved (both onstage and in the audience), Morris is attempting to woo Catherine. Coombs charms and seduces as the possibly conniving Morris.  This smooth and worldly Morris—Is he or isn’t he after Catherine just for her inheritance? Is Dr. Sloper just being an overprotective father, or does he really see through Morris’ charade of love for his daughter? Is Aunt Lavinia truly concerned about her niece’s lack of social wiles and companionship, or is she just scheming to prolong her gratis room and board at 16 Washington Square?

As both Chamberlain and Duffy play their respective characters, neither are villains or meddlers, as they could have been interpreted.  Both give their characters much heart and soul to be caring and sympathetic in their dealings with the poor, introverted Catherine.

Tom convincingly plays the naiveté and hurt of Catherine to almost annoying disbelief. One wants to shake her into reality and out of her tunnel vision of love. But Tom handles her changes of character from low, low self-esteem to attempts of standing up for herself quite believably.

Effective costuming by Leah Piehl and the proper posturing of the cast greatly suggest the 1850s. The stunning front parlor set of 16 Washington Square vividly created by set designer John Iacovelli, combined with Brian Gale’s dramatic side/back lighting of the large parlor windows which reveal the front courtyard at various times of day and night, make for a picture-perfect postcard of an 1850s luxury interior.

Dámaso Roderiguez directs this close-to-three-hour production with a firm hand and steady, even pacing — with never a dull moment to be had.

Quick prop changes between scenes were efficiently and cleverly performed by the maid and an unbilled butler, with Tobias’ maid providing in her scenes just the perfect amount of comic relief.

—Gil Kaan, Culture Spot LA

Performances continue through May 20 at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena 91101. Show times are Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. For tickets, visit www.PasadenaPlayhouse.org or call the box office at (626) 356-7529.

Buy Tickets Here

 

Read Full Review

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

 

 

By Les Spindle
4/19/2012
Richard Chamberlain is fondly remembered by baby boomers as James Kildare, the debonair intern with a dreamy smile and a crackerjack bedside manner, in the megahit NBC medical drama Dr. Kildare (1961-66). That series proved an auspicious beginning for Chamberlain’s acclaimed career in films, recordings, television and theater, which has spanned more than five decades, and is still going strong. The actor has earned three Golden Globes and several Emmy nominations. Chamberlain makes his Pasadena Playhouse debut in the choice role of domineering patriarch Dr. Austin Sloper in a revival of the classic drama The Heiress, opening April 29.

At what age were you drawn to performing?
At 8 years old, in the third grade in a student play, as the Pied Paper of Hamelin, I caught the bug. When I was a kid, I didn’t like real life that much, and living in a fantasy life seemed to be ideal.

How did Dr. Kildare change your life, and what was most rewarding about doing it?
It was astonishing, just amazing good fortune. All I wanted in life was to be a working actor, and suddenly I was working every day, every week, every month, every year. And I got to work with wonderful people like Ray Massey, and the show was an enormous hit right away. And it was wonderful training, because the discipline necessary to do that sort of part in a series is enormous. The series opened many doors.

You have done musicals on stage (My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music) and screen. One of the interesting sidelights in your career was co-starring opposite Mary Tyler Moore in the notorious Broadway-bound musical adaptation of the Blake Edwards film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which closed on the road, even following emergency book revisions by Edward Albee. Plus you were a singing idol for teenagers, scoring a chart-topping hit with “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight,” the theme song from Dr. Kildare.
Yes, I started taking singing lessons right after I got out of the army, after college.

You became known in the 1970s as a major star of TV miniseries, when that boom started. What was unique about working in that genre?
Miniseries were a kind of golden age. First of all, the source material was sensational, such as Shogun and The Thorn Birds. These were wonderful novels, wonderful stories, and the networks had a lot of money to spend on lavish productions. There was a lot of excitement about them because they were a big deal at the time.

You were also a founding member in the late 1950s of L.A.’s 99-seat theater group, Company of Angels, which is still operating. Did you work with other small companies here?
No. We were mostly students of Jeff Corey, who was a terrific acting coach. Because none of us were working, we decided to pool our resources and rent a little space and put on plays, and make a couple of pennies.

What is interesting about this role and this play?
The Heiress is terrifically well written and the characters are extremely complex—especially Doctor Sloper. He has many sides to him that are often contradictory. He’s like a Chinese puzzle that I’m trying to figure out. In doing this play, it helps that I have done Shakespeare and other classics.

Can you share some thoughts about coming out of the closet in 2003 in your published memoir?
That was an extraordinary experience. Being gay when I grew up in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s was simply not an option. So you had to pretend to be something else. And it wasn’t until late in life when I realized that being so afraid of it was just stupid—a lot of bull. Because being gay is actually a rather uninteresting fact about someone—just a piece of information. So it was an enormously freeing experience to realize that there was no negative side to it.

Is it much easier now for actors to come out than it used to be?
Yes and no. I would not suggest that a young romantic leading man type fellow comes out. It complicates the situation. Because American culture moves glacially.

Do you think it’s a career decision more than a political decision?
I would say it’s both. It’s a matter of finding the right balance.

The Heiress continues through May 20, also featuring Heather Tom, Julia Duffy and Steve Coombs, under the direction of Dámaso Rodriguez. pasadenaplayhouse.org

Buy Tickets Here

Read Full Interview

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

Buy Tickets Here

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

by Jason Rohrer on May 3, 2012

in Theater-Los Angeles

TAUGHT BY MASTERS

William Faulkner might or might not have quipped that Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies he’d ever met.  Faulkner definitely did call James both priggish and among the best of novelists, and even if the old-lady line proves spurious, it sounds enough like both of them that one wishes it were true.  Regardless, the Southern sensualist could joke affectionately about the Yankee moralist, since Faulkner’s work shows his appreciation of the old-ladyish capacity for reflection, wisdom and occasionally perverse observation.  Nobody could write characters like Miss Grierson in “A Rose for Emily” or Granny in The Unvanquished without an abiding love of the ruminating elder female.  It’s undeniable that Henry James fits a certain ideal of the web-spinning spinster; sufficiently “bachelor” to have prompted a great deal of speculation, and nosy and stubborn and old-fashioned: no argument.  But his gift for motivational study rivaled that of his psychologist brother William, such that today it’s difficult to say which genius offers the more enduring insights into mental anguish.  Unfortunately for posterity, many of James’ novels are too long, and much too preciously and densely written, to appeal to readers eager for quick satisfaction.  Washington Square, a short novel published in 1880, still falls almost deliberately into this category.

Fortunately for everyone, in 1947, husband and wife playwrights Ruth and Augustus Goetz adapted that novel’s most melodramatically Freudian elements into a lovely, agonizing little play about how young ladies get to be old maids, called The Heiress.  The new Pasadena Playhouse production offers a brilliant corrective to the stuffy revivals of classic works so frequently seen in the Southland.  This is how to treat a classic: assemble an A-1 cast and let it play.  With this fine, funny take on a venerable drama, director Dámaso Rodriguez proves that tragedy works best in counterpoint.

An arrogant doctor, his cowed daughter, and the young man who comes between them in upper-crust 19^th Century New York constitute the basic triangle of this beautifully crafted horror.  Austin Sloper (Richard Chamberlain), eminent in business and society, has raised the awkward Catherine (Heather Tom) in the deep shadow of her dead mother, the one passion of his life.  Her Aunt Lavinia (Julia Duffy), unreconciled to her widowhood, is eager to see the girl married away from her stifling homelife; she encourages the charming, penniless Morris Townsend (Steve Coombs) to court Catherine against Dr Sloper’s wishes.  This much is the stuff of a froth one might consume at an airport bar, but mix in the doctor’s unconscious erotic delight in suppressing his daughter’s emergent personality, and you have a complex bouquet; add a dash of sexual longing to Lavinia’s interest in Morris, and a garnish of fortune-hunting to that suitor’s intent, and you have a bracing aperitif to carry you through your journey.

The play works after sixty-odd years for many reasons.  It’s dramatically perfect – every plot point is important, and every character is affected by terrible mistakes of accident and purpose – yet it affords shades of interpretation; it gives actors great chewy mouthfuls of opportunity, and still it isn’t talky; it’s long enough to seem worth the price of admission, but, as it is well-handled, it feels much quicker than its running time.  And as these excellent actors and this astute director show, it’s not only a smart play but a very witty one.

Just as Shakespeare places a ridiculous speech about drunken fornication before the discovery of Duncan’s murder in Macbeth, the Goetzes write mannered, penetrating domestic banter even as the weight of tragedy gains momentum in The Heiress.  When the play doesn’t provide funny little bits of business, the director and the actors do, as when the maid Maria (Elizabeth Tobias) is at first confused by, then slowly comprehends, the devious nature of her instructions.  Humor allows an audience to relax, the better to feel the pain of the drama; the chocolate-covered pill has rarely gone down as well as it does here.

Richard Chamberlain’s many prior characterizations of earnest young men will no doubt inform most playgoers’ appreciation of his elegantly monstrous Dr Sloper.  This cultivated man, so clear in his assessment of other people and so unaware of his own sinister nature, stands tall and crumbling at the same time, a figure of terror and of pity.  Pitching his voice low and keeping his spine erect, Mr Chamberlain nevertheless conveys the misery of his condition.  He is not young, and will not outlive his disappointments.  He is not an evil man, but he does great harm.  He is not sorry.  And he will never change.  It’s a whole person up there, as complete a character as one is likely to see in a potboiler, the work of an actor who has been getting better for sixty years.

Ms Tom is very nearly as good; her period manner goes in and out, but not enough to distract more than momentarily from her essential rightness for this part.  When unnerved as the artless ingenue, she is spectacularly affecting, and her steely resolve once the worm turns is frightening in its implications.  Ms Duffy plays the dramatic spectrum with tact and ease, a lightly comic character who reveals a lonely fear at her core.  Among the flawless supporting cast, Jill Van Velzer stands out in her single scene as the suitor Morris’ loving yet ambivalent sister, as does Ms Tobias in her tiny but extraordinarily well-played role.

Mr Rodriguez’s direction, so confident as to be invisible, highlights what’s interesting and graceful in the play’s every nuance.  He steers actors of disparate backgrounds to act as if they’re all in the same play, which one might take for granted; but to see ten plays in Los Angeles in which film and television actors play with classical stage actors and improvisation-based performers is to appreciate what Mr Rodriguez has done here.  He quietly creates moments without slowing or discombobulating the action, designs stage pictures that are natural yet balanced, and even directs the scene changes to flow with the story.  One might argue that he allowed Mr Coombs to rush his playing a bit in his final scene, thereby robbing the subsequent climax of its most unambiguously tragic facet; this would be no small criticism, but it also might be a single-performance aberration not to be repeated.  It surely would not be cause not to see such a magnificent production.  John Iacovelli’s mansion set looks like it weighs ten thousand pounds, especially under Brian Gale’s light; Leah Piehl’s costumes add to this sense of refined gravity, transporting a modern eye to a past vision of our reality.  Even as sniffy an old lady as Henry James could not have said much against such solid work.

photos by Jim Cox

The Heiress
The Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena (Los Angeles Theater)
scheduled to end on May 20, 2012
for tickets, visit http://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

Read Full Review

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

By Steven Leigh MorrisThursday, May 3 2012

THE HEIRESS

The Heiress may have reached the ripe old age of sixty-five, but you’d hardly know it from the latest revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s 1947 Broadway hit, adapted from Henry James’ classic novel Washington Square and currently engrossing and delighting audiences in equal measure at the Pasadena Playhouse.

 The Heiress in question is Miss Catherine Sloper (Heather Tom), the only child of the wealthy Dr. August Sloper (Richard Chamberlain) and hardly the apple of her father’s eye. Rapidly approaching thirty, Catherine has yet to walk down the aisle, or even receive a proposal of marriage, something not uncommon in 2012 but the kiss of lifelong spinsterhood in 1850 New York City.

We gather that something is amiss in the Sloper home from the play’s opening moments, when Dr. Sloper advises parlor maid Maria (Elizabeth Tobias) to have a lot of children. “Give yourself more than a single chance,” he tells her.

Catherine, we soon learn, suffers from a painful, even crippling shyness. “The last time I had guests she disappeared into the pantry four successive times,” the doctor tells his sister Lavinia (Julia Duffy), one of the few people around whom Catherine forgets her timidity. To her aunt, Catherine can recount how she was able to tell some foolish women who didn’t know the difference between veal and beef that veal comes “from a nursing calf, and just when it is the most adorable, most touching … we eat it!” Later, however, when Aunt Lavinia asks her to repeat the story to good doctor, she can scarcely get a word out.

 To paraphrase an old axiom, with a father like Dr. Sloper, who needs enemies? What kind of parent would see his daughter dressed in her late mother’s favorite color and tell her with a bluntness bordering on cruelty, “But Catherine, you mother was dark. She dominated the color.”

When Catherine’s cousin Marian (Anneliese van der Pol) and her fiancé Arthur (Chris Reinacher) arrive with an unexpected guest, Arthur’s handsome cousin Morris (Steve Coombs), Catherine is worse than shy; she becomes positively graceless. “Are you as great a tease as your cousin, Miss Sloper?” Morris asks her, and instead of flirting back, all Catherine can utter is a blunt, “No.” End of conversation.

Morris, it turns out, is a distant cousin who has “used up” his very small inheritance and now lives with his older sister (Jill Van Velzer), unlike the very wealthy Catherine, who already receives $10,000 a year from her mother’s estate and is set to inherit another $20,000 a year upon her father’s death. (That adds up to well over three quarters of a million dollars per year in today’s money!)

When Morris begins to pursue a courtship with Catherine, the young woman is in seventh heaven, her father not so. Clearly, Morris Townsend is after Catherine’s money. For what other reason would the man be interested in such a dull girl?

So as not to spoil the element of surprise for anyone unfamiliar with either the James novel or its adaptation as a play or movie (Olivia de Havilland won the Oscar for playing Catherine on the screen in 1949), nothing more will be revealed here, but whether you are seeing The Heiress with no idea what will happen next, or watching it and waiting eagerly for what you know is coming, the play (particularly in a production as fine as this one) has nary a dull moment, despite its two and half hour running time.

Much of this comes from the crackerjack script the Goetzes wrote back in the late 1940s, though it certainly helps to have Dámaso Rodriguez in the director’s chair, once again proving himself as gifted at bringing the classics to fresh, modern life as he is at the edgy contemporary dramas his Furious Theatre Company is famous for. It helps too that Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps and casting director Michael Donovan, CSA, have come up with a cast of L.A.-based actors that can give any Broadway ensemble a run for their money.

 It’s hard to imagine another contemporary actress more right for Catherine than Tom, best known to audiences of daytime TV drama but one terrific stage actress as well. Camouflaging her own attractiveness under an unflattering hairdo and dour pout, Tom lets us see the broken child grown to unfulfilled adulthood, the pain at being so unloved by a heartless father, and the joy of discovering, or at least being made to believe, that she is indeed something special in the eyes of the man she adores.

Coombs, one of L.A. theater’s busiest and best young leading men since 2006’s A Picture Of Dorian Gray brought him to local attention, gives us a Morris who could turn any girl’s head, radiating charm, charisma, and sex appeal in equal measure.

Chamberlain, who has come a long, long way since his evenings as TV’s Dr. Kildare, resists the temptation to make Dr. Sloper anything but an insensitive beast of a father, a man capable of describing his daughter as “an entirely mediocre and defenseless creature with not a shred of poise” who “killed her mother in getting born.” Ouch!

 
As she did in the Playhouse’s 2009 revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the divine Duffy takes a role that countless other actresses have played before her (Miriam Hopkins and Frances Sternhagen among them) and made it indelibly, unforgettably her own. Those who recall Duffy as Newhart’s spoiled rich girl Stephanie Vanderkellen or Designing Women’s prissy Allison Sugarbaker are in for a particular treat at Duffy’s rich, multi-layered work.

A pair of local treasures, Gigi Bermingham as Catherine’s Aunt Elizabeth and Van Velzer as Morris’s sister, shine as brightly in featured roles as they do in their customary starring turns, and van der Pol, so marvelous in musical mode in Vanities a few years back, makes for a radiant Marian. Reinacher is fine too as van der Pol’s intended, and Tobias makes the very most of her moments as maid Maria (pronounced Mariah).

You will not find a more gorgeous scenic design in town than John Iacovelli’s elegant, detailed 1850 Washington Square residence nor more gorgeous period fashions than those designed by Leah Piehl for this production. Brian Gale’s lighting is a stunner too, with Doug Newell’s sound design combining mood-setting music and realistic effects. (There’s nothing more heartbreaking that a horse-drawn carriage that drives on past your door when you’re expecting it to stop.)  Heathyr Verhoef is production stage manager and Mary Michele Miner stage manager.

The Heiress is that rarity, a play that can be enjoyed equally by those experiencing it for the first time as by those seeing it for the umpteenth. For the former, there is the joy of discovery and surprise; for the latter, the pleasure in anticipating those oh-so satisfying moments we know are coming. The Heiress may have reached retirement age this year, but at the Pasadena Playhouse, she hardly looks her age at all.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Through May 20. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8:00, Saturdays at 4:00 and 8:00, Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00. Reservations: 626 355-7529
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
April 29, 2012
Photos: Jim Cox

Buy Tickets Here

Read Full Review

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter

Photo by Jim Cox

Anyone over 40 remembers that Richard Chamberlain was among America’s most popular midcentury TV leading men, first in the dramatic series “Dr. Kildare,” then in miniseries such as “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds.” Now 78, Chamberlain demonstrates his enduring powers of magnetism and gravitas in a production of “The Heiress” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Chamberlain plays Dr. Austin Sloper, a successful Manhattan physician who resides in the city’s most enviable neighborhood, Washington Square, in 1850. Sloper and his daughter, Catherine, have a strained relationship. A stern and inflexible man, he also harbors keen disappointments and unrealistic expectations about his plain, shy daughter, who is the opposite of her late, vivacious mother. Sloper reveals early in the play that his feelings for Catherine are complicated by the tragic circumstances of her birth: His beloved wife died in labor, and Catherine is his only child. When a young man named Morris Townsend takes a shine to Catherine, the doctor immediately suspects his purpose. Catherine has inherited a sizable trust from her mother, and that amount will be tripled when Sloper dies and leaves his estate to her. The doctor has good reason to believe that Townsend is a dishonest fortune hunter, and he refuses to bless the romance.

Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s finely calibrated 1947 script, based on Henry James’ 1881 novel “Washington Square,” keeps us in doubt about everyone’s motives. Is Townsend sincere in his professed love for Catherine? Is the doctor really looking after his daughter’s best interests? Or do his complicated feelings include a wish to keep her unhappy? Will he really disinherit her if she marries Townsend, as she threatens to do?

“The Heiress” can easily devolve into a potboiler costume drama in the wrong hands, but director Dámaso Rodriguez shows admirable restraint with pacing and blocking, and the actors keep their emotional dynamics largely within the confines of 19th-century New York society. Chamberlain wrestled with a few bobbled lines on opening night, but that didn’t undermine the actor’s intensity or studied subtlety. His Austin is a troubled soul who covers his sorrow and disappointment in a martinet’s starchy persona. It’s a finely detailed and mesmerizing performance, with a convincing mix of cerebral and visceral elements imbuing line delivery and body language.

Daytime TV star Heather Tom counterbalances Chamberlain effectively as Catherine. Watching this sweet-natured, fragile character gradually assume the calculating cold-heartedness of her father is central to the success of the script, and Tom spins out that crucial arc incrementally and brilliantly. As Townsend, Steve Coombs needs more ambiguity, overplaying his hand in the first act by making his character’s confidence and smooth manners seem too unctuous and shallow.

John Iacovelli’s set, the Draper drawing room, is spectacular in its realism, right down to the flickering gas lamps.

Presented by and at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. April 29–May 20. Tue.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 4 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m. (626) 356-7529 or www.pasadenaplayhouse.org. Casting by Michael Donovan.

Buy Tickets Here

Read Full Review

FOLLOW US ON Facebook and Twitter