The Human Comedy
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Actors Co-op
Through April 23
When William Saroyan, Pulitzer winner for his 1939 play The Time of Your Life, showed up on the MGM lot with his 240-page screenplay of The Human Comedy — which, if filmed, would have run approximately four hours — he was promptly kicked off the lot and off the project.
Undaunted, Saroyan rushed home and did a quick novelization of Comedy that was published right before the movie came out in 1943.
Both were huge hits. Saroyan outwitted the MGM machine, kept the stamp of authorship on his brainchild, and went on to win the Oscar for Best Story (which, I suppose, was the name of the category back then).
Saroyan was unhappy with the movie, however, which he felt made his work too highly sentimentalized.
In his adaptation of Saroyan’s novel, now at Actors Co-op, Thom Babbes, who also directs, wanders freely through the tall corn and gets a bit lost.
The coming-of-age story revolves around 14-year-old Homer Macauley (Brendan Shannon), a telegraph messenger in fictional Ithaca, California, an idealized small town coping with the challenges of WWII. Now that Homer’s older brother Marcus (Mitchell Lam Hau) is off fighting with his best pal Tobey (Tiago Santos), an orphan who is looking forward to the promised land of Ithaca at war’s end, Homer is left to job in as the proud “man of the family.” Homer’s recently deceased father Matthew (Marc Elmer) serves as the wise narrator of the piece.
Boozy Willie Grogan (Bruce Ladd) and cheerful Tom Spangler (Kendall Lloyd) are Homer’s superiors and co-workers at the telegraph office. Call them positivity gurus, always there to offer mentorship and advice even, in Grogan’s case, when emerging from an alcoholic stupor. As the telegraph messages from the War Department grow ever more dire, Homer is forced to face the agony of the bereaved — a crash course in maturity that ends with a personal tragedy we can see coming a country mile away.
The rank sentimentality bubbling throughout may arguably be part of the package, but Babbes plunges into the treacle rather than swimming against the tide. And, at a nearly three hour running time, certain extraneous scenes — such as Homer’s “comical” schoolroom rant on historical noses — cry out to be cut.
However, Babbes’ staging is another matter, compositionally assured and often masterly. Striking, also, are certain design elements — particularly Tim Farmer’s scenic design, Nicholas Santiago’s projection design and David B. Marling’s sound. Martha Carter’s lighting design is so typically assured that a few murky moments could be charitably attributed to technical glitches.
Among the cast, there’s an odd tonal divide that could have been at least partially addressed by the director. Elmer, Hau, Santos, Ladd and Lloyd are so naturalistic and affecting, they throw the archness and artificiality of their fellow performers into unfortunate relief. As for the talented Shannon, his heartfelt Homer keeps this protracted evening richly watchable, despite its flaws.
Actors Co-op, David Schall Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2:30 pm (added matinees Sat., Mar. 18 & Apr. 1, 2:30 pm; no perfs. Apr. 7-9); through Apr. 23. (323) 462-8460 or https://www.ActorsCo-op.org. Running time: two hours and 45 minutes.
