Matt Landig and Hovannes John Babakhanyan (Photo by Judi Lewin)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Theatre 40
Through June 23
As many a bankrupt Broadway investor can tell you, the alchemy of theater is an unproven science.
Why is it when the elements for success are seemingly in place that an enterprise falls disappointingly flat?
In the case of The Explorers Club, the season closer at Theatre 40, director Melanie MacQueen has the basics for a solid show yet fails to transmute the production from dross to gold.
Playwright Nell Benjamin, previously best known as the award-winning co-composer/lyricist for such works as Legally Blonde and Mean Girls, turned to flat-out farce in Explorers, her debut play, which won a 2013 Outer Critics Circle Award.
The action is set in an 1879 London explorers’ club — a milieu superbly evoked by Derrick McDaniel’s subtle lighting, Nick Foran’s splendid sound, Michael Mullen’s in-period costumes and, most notably, Jeff G. Rack’s beautifully detailed set.
This all-male bastion is a haven for its unwittingly misogynistic members who, despite embracing science with near-religious fervor, are a backwards lot unbuffeted by the winds of suffragism now gusting through British society. When Lucius Fretway (Matt Landig), the club’s president pro-tem, nominates intrepid female explorer Philida Spotte-Hume (Meghan Lewis) for membership, controversy erupts.
Regular club president Harry Percy (Christopher Franciosa), who has just breezed in after his deadly expedition to find the “East Pole,” is surprisingly open to the nomination — but that’s because he intends to seduce Philida, a prospect that fills Lucius, who is secretly in love with her, with dismay.
But the hubbub surrounding Philida’s inclusion fades into insignificance when Luigi (Hovhannes John Babakhanyan), a “savage” from a lost city Philida has discovered, slaps the queen during his presentation ceremony — just his tribe’s typical way of saying hello.
That outrage prompts government emissary Sir Bernard Humphries (David Hunt Stafford) to declare war on Luigi and his fellow tribespeople, with the aim of tracking down the lost city and annihilating all who live there. His genocidal intent is complicated when “archeo-theologist” Professor Sloane (Michael Mullen), propounds his Biblical theory that the Irish are actually Jews, bringing hordes of murderous Irishmen to join Humphries’ armed guardsmen outside the club. Oh, also gathered are homicidal Tibetan monks who have arrived with their adopted fellow monk, Beebe (John Combs), to exact vengeance on Percy, who left him to die on their expedition. Meanwhile, besties Professor Walling (Kevin Dulude) and Professor Cope (Daniel Leslie) are on the outs because Cope’s pet cobra has just devoured Walling’s beloved hamster.
And that’s just a thumbnail of Benjamin’s next-level farce, which reaches heights of sheer ridiculousness difficult to recapitulate. Yet, as with most farce, Explorers requires a deadpan, straightforward approach, no mugging allowed, but with the harumphing English characters taking their increasingly unlikely crises in stiff-upper-lip stride. Considering the meager audience on the night this reviewer attended, the actors struggled for laughs in an admittedly uphill battle. Regardless, MacQueen ‘s direction consistently over-emphasized the silliness in an overly broad and stilted staging.
Despite a few errant British dialects, the performers give it their admirable all. Lewis in particular is winning as a woman who refuses to let sexism deter her from her exploits, while Babakhanyan delights in his over-the-top, mostly pantomimic role. Most impressive is Combs’ manic, late-in-the-play turn as a brutalized, barbaric, feral survivor who is still, at his core, the very model of a brandy-swilling, cigar-smoking English gentleman.
Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Thurs.-Sat., 7:30 pm; Sun, 2 pm, dark Fri. June 7, Sat., June 22 only, 2 pm; thru June 23. http://theatre40.org running time: two hours with an intermission.
