Barrymore

It's magic time at the Rep Stage in Columbia, MD where a first-rate production of Barrymore is now on the boards for the final week of its run (closing 11/13). The 1996 play, which was conceived as a star vehicle for Christopher Plummer - he won a Tony Award the following year for his portrayal of John Barrymore - has certainly found new life with the accomplished Nigel Reed who delivers a mesmerizing performance. Mr. Reed has the double task of getting us to suspend our disbelief over two legends that hover around the play like spritely ghosts - the studio image of the departed Barrymore and the still very active Mr. Plummer. Even if you've never seen either, and especially if you have, their personae so pervade the culture that it's a challenge for any leading actor to pull-off. Yet Mr. Reed does so with great panache.

Under Steven Carpenter's probing direction a more complex picture of John Barrymore emerges as we sit in on his final imagined rehearsal of Shakespeare's Richard III. He's funny yes, but much more sympathetic and tragic a figure than I remembered from Mr. Plummer's performance or Barrymore's bad boy rep embellished in the media. Set in 1942, the humor is vaudevillian, but the psychic disintegration, the memory loss the result of chronic alcoholism, is something we will respond to today. The roles and anecdotes from the past are about all that remain to an actor struggling for his lines and a sense of self which is slowly fading. The playwright's inclusion of a prompter as a second character (played with straight man conviction by D. Grant Cloyd), is kind of a lifeline to Barrymore's hold on reality. Mr. Reed lets us look into the soul of an individual trapped by the circumstances of fate and his own unfortunate choices.

But it's not all gloom and doom: there's plenty of entertainment to be had from Mr. Reed's skillful rendering of a dozen or so figures he amusingly portrays from the past - his family, film and stage cronies, former lovers, and, most especially, a few of his ex-wives (he had 4). To see the actor deftly inhabit these characters is another of the many pleasures that await you. Add to them the outstanding lighting of Jay Herzog (some of the best I've seen this season) and Neil McFadden's telling sound - both fluidly move the story and the split-second changes in mood along on Terry Cobb's functional backstage set. Costumes and props by Denise Umland and Natalia Chavez Leimkuhler complete the picture of the itinerant actor who was a man of many parts.

Mr. Luce's slender script, minus the excerpts from a number of poets and writers, is prosaic in the way that stand-alone lyrics are to a song. But with Mr. Reed and an excellent creative team, this show tune goes to the top of the chart. See it while you can.

Barrymore is Highly Recommended. Runtime: About 1:45 w/intermission