This clever light farce so effortlessly and seamlessly obscures the lines between fiction and fact into a wholly coherent and delicious concoction. And watching these winsome performances of brilliant minds arrive at the genesis of the infamous moments in “Gone With the Wind” is more festive than a plantation barbeque at Twelve Oaks.
BY SANDY STAGGS
DRAMA CRITIC
In today’s dollars, “Gone With the Wind” is still the most successful film in box-office history.
And one of the most folkloric, controversial movies too, as Tinseltown producer David O. Selznick waged a herculean and very public battle to bring Margaret Mitchell’s blockbuster Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Gone With The Wind” to the silver screen.
After a nationwide search for the perfect Scarlett O’Hara, Selznick, embodied here by Mr. Hyde, in the end chose British actress Vivien Leigh, much to the dismay of Georgians, who now covet GWTW today as much as its peach industry.
Stuart Adamo, Paul Hyde, Michael Walsh and Shannon Faulkner bring to life this epic Civil War saga – at least the best parts – in the Electric City Playhouse’s latest hit comedy “Don’t Cry For Me, Margaret Mitchell.”
This play picks up the legend in early 1939 as Selznick has already begun shooting GWTW, at least the notorious burning of Atlanta sequence filmed with stunt doubles in faraway silhouettes and half the MGM backlot including old sets from “King Kong.”
He has just scrapped the entire script; fired director George Cukor (widely-considered a woman’s director and adored by Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland, but not popular with Clark Gable); is battling the Hays Office over words like “fanny,” “pregnancy” and of course, the notorious “damn”; and trying to placate the NAACP in the film’s portrayal of Africa-Americans in this Civil War epic.
In a marathon writing session in his Selznick International Pictures office, he and Victor Fleming (Adamo), the replacement director on loan from MGM and pulled off of “The Wizard of Oz” have kidnapped screenwriter Ben Hecht (Walsh as the highly-respected author of “The Front Page,” “Nothing Sacred” and “Scarface,” ) to re-write GWTW based on Sidney Howard’s original six-hour script.
This play may sound familiar to Greenville Little Theatre fans who have been treated to the entire canon of the mother-son duo V. Cate and Duke Ernsberger, the scribes behind “Elvis Has Left the Building,” “Dracula Bites,” “A Visit from Scarface” and “Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Goose,” scheduled for December.
As a lifetime GWTW-phile, (and there were many in the small but boisterous Easter Eve audience), I didn’t really glean any new nuggets of truth about in this clever light farce that so effortlessly and seamlessly obscures the lines between fiction and fact into a wholly coherent and delicious concoction. And watching these winsome performances of brilliant minds arrive at the genesis of the infamous moments in “Gone With the Wind” is more festive than a plantation barbeque at Twelve Oaks.
The play covers most all of the cherished iconic scenes from the “Tighter, Mammy!” homage with Mammy (Adamo) in a tug of war with Miss Scarlett’s (Hyde’s) corset to the infamous last lines of the movie.
The sight of Mr. Hyde as Scarlett speaking three octaves above his normal everyday voice and slapping Mr. Adamo’s Prissy with his hand fan after she confesses “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies!” is alone worth the ticket price. In addition, a semiconscious Selznick being trotted around the office lends some playful Marx Brothers skullduggery.
As the more obscure figure in the group, Adamo adroitly plays Fleming as the straight man to Hyde’s more showy part, but he readily erupts into a blissful emotional arc in the second act and gets all riled up. The real Fleming reportedly had to take a break from filming GWTW due to exhaustion.
And Walsh makes an endearing and formidable Hecht (who features prominently in “A Visit From Scarface”), simultaneously erupting in intelligence and wit in this production.
Their only contact with the outside world is Miss Peabody. This is a male-centric comedy, but the constant intervention of Shannon Faulkner as Selznick’s Girl Friday, brings an attuned and welcome touch of normality, efficiency and femininity to the play. Peabody is a fictional composite character based on Kay Brown Barrett, Selznick’s story editor and Marcella Rabwin, Selznick’s executive assistant during this time.
And kudos to some effective lighting for the burning of Atlanta sequence by Technical Director Bill Scott and his poignantly-timed infusion of Max Steiner’s grandiose love theme.
As a lifetime GWTW-phile, (and there were many in the small but boisterous Easter Eve audience), I didn’t really glean any new nuggets of truth about in this clever light farce that so effortlessly and seamlessly obscures the lines between fiction and fact into a wholly coherent and delicious concoction. And watching these winsome performances of brilliant minds arrive at the genesis of the infamous moments in “Gone With the Wind” is more festive than a plantation barbeque at Twelve Oaks.
Hyde and Adamo co-direct this play with set design by Jonathan Houston and Anne Spake.“Don’t Cry For Me, Margaret Mitchell” continues Friday and Saturday, April 21-22 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 23 at 3 p.m. at Electric City Playhouse, 514 North Murray Avenue in Anderson. For tickets, call (864) 224-4248 or visit http://www.ecplayhouse.com.
