ARTS

'The Violet Hour' a glittery comedy with bite

Mike Fischer
Special to the Journal Sentinel

If you had the chance to see your future, would you take it?

Or would you instead decide, much like one of the characters in Richard Greenberg’s “The Violet Hour,” that there’d be no point in paying attention if you know how the story will end?

Cara Johnston (right) speaks her mind to Marti Gobel in Renaissance Theaterworks' "The Violet Hour."

It’s not just a theoretical question in Greenberg’s play, a glittery comedy with bite and heft that’s vaguely reminiscent of Noël Coward.  It’s being staged at Renaissance Theaterworks under Suzan Fete’s direction.

Although it’s set in 1919 in the Manhattan office of young book publisher John Pace Seavering — think Maxwell Perkins — “The Violet Hour” takes us back to the future, thanks to a never-seen machine spitting paper into John’s office.  And not just any paper, but pages from books written decades later.

Before learning what this mysterious machine is all about, Greenberg takes his time establishing his characters.

John (Neil Brookshire) is a smart and refined patrician with enough up-front capital to publish one of two books.

The first option involves a memoir by Jessie Brewster (Marti Gobel), an older black chanteuse; think Josephine Baker, with some of Billie Holiday’s bad habits.  Like everyone in this play, she wants to be famous and remembered.  She’s also — somewhat improbably — sleeping with John.

Jessie’s contender is Denis (a charismatic Nicholas Harazin): a reckless and romantic young writer, reminiscent of Perkins mentees F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe.  Encouraged by the Zelda-like Rosamund (Cara Johnston, stuck with and delivering a caricature), Denis is sure he’s on the cusp of greatness, thanks to a humongous manuscript entitled “The Violet Hour.”

The cast is rounded out by David Flores’ fabulous turn as Gidger.  John’s office drone and comic gadfly, Gidger hungers for renown more than anyone, even though he rightly recognizes he’s least likely to be remembered.  Flores is a stitch as a man whose quixotic efforts to shape his legacy underscore how little power he actually has.

Ditto everyone else: “The Violet Hour” takes off after intermission, as John’s onetime “amazing sense of destiny” gives way to the recognition that neither he nor anyone else can ultimately control what’s read or remembered.

The sheer volume of paper raining down on Steve Barnes’ period set — drifting ash comes to mind — graphically demonstrates why such efforts are futile, while reminding us of the one sure ending we all know is coming, at the end of each of our stories.

All the more reason, Greenberg suggests, to savor each sentence as we live it.  Watching his characters wrestle with this hard but simple truth gives this play heart, sending us on our homebound journeys with the thought that even though we know where we’re headed, we ought to pay more attention to the way we drive and what we see while getting there.

“The Violet Hour” continues through April 30 at the Broadway Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway.  For tickets, visit www.r-t-w.com.  Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.

Neil Brookshire (left) and David Flores try to figure things out in Renaissance Theaterworks' "The Violet Hour."

PROGRAM NOTES

Our Violet Hours: Denis titles his book “The Violet Hour” to commemorate “that wonderful New York hour when the evening’s about to reward you for the day.”  That sort of lilt is typical of Greenberg, who is among our most poetic – often gorgeously so – contemporary playwrights.  It’s also an apt description of the human condition: Our lives are a violet hour, played out with the knowledge that night’s rounding sleep is near.  Are we going to fixate on the ending we dread, or enjoy the beautiful color in the sky before it fades?  That’s the question at the heart of this play.

Controlling Destiny: It’s not a question John initially thinks to ask; he’s likened at one point to God, and despite his genteel façade, he’s a man who likes to be in control.  Brookshire could give us more of that; as of opening night, his John was a bit too soft, which makes it harder to credit John’s overly tepid relationship with Gobel’s Jessie.  If Brookshire becomes sharper and more imposing, Gobel will be able to dial it up some, giving us a fuller sense of Jessie’s hungry ambition (Jessie is, after all, a woman who means it when she says that she’d like to forever fix herself in people’s minds).     

John wants to know how things end, or thinks he does; he also imagines for a time that he might control the plot points between here and there.  Gidger may be John’s lackey, but Gidger is also John’s comic double: A man equally obsessed with control, even if he’s more obviously (and comically) incapable of exercising it.

Living in the Present, Part I: Contrast Harazin’s Denis, who criticizes John for playing it safe instead of risking ruin; if John is overly focused on where things are going, Denis arguably doesn’t think about such things enough.  But Denis fully embraces the present, leaving him open to each moment’s possibilities – and allowing him to enjoy each moment without regard to where it’s going and whether it can last.  Reckless?  Sure.  But as presented by the scene-stealing Harazin, it’s also heroic, particularly in a late scene in which Denis movingly makes the case for love – even though he and we know that every love affair must end, whether because affections and circumstances alter or because death comes calling.   

Living in the Present, Part II: As John movingly observes when he looks back from the future, we may not be nearly as original or important as we think we are; the future tends to collapse ostensibly fine-etched distinctions of the sort presented through Barnes’ naturalistic, vividly realized set or Jason Orlenko’s eye-popping period costumes.  It may indeed be, as John also observes, that we’re not wearing clothes as we move through life, but period-specific costumes.  But that’s no excuse to cease playing on, staging the best show we can for as long as we can.   

Play It Again: John’s suggestion that all the world’s a stage is no accident.  “The Violet Hour” opens with him searching the office for misplaced theater tickets, and there’s discussion throughout Greenberg’s piece regarding why we’d bother going to see a play when we already know (or think we know) the outcome. 

But do we really, ever? And even if we think we know how a play ends, aren’t there new things to be learned every time it’s experienced?  Every time a cherished novel is reread?  Why continue seeing productions of “Hamlet” and “King Lear”?  Why do some of us continually reread “Middlemarch” and “Anna Karenina”?  Why, since we know we’re going to die, do we bother getting out of bed in the morning?  And even if we know the future, don’t the intervening and violet hours that propel us toward darkness matter for themselves, in all their splendidly purple-hued majesty?