By Tom Scanlon
This presents quite a challenge for the actor playing Moore, David Pichette, who has proven, many times over, to be a gifted physical comic. Here, he struggles; yes, he is proficient in the articulation of the philosophical lines, but he doesn’t do much with them. His physical movements seem both forced and lacking insight, and don’t bring much comedy to a long, rambling first act.
Fortunately, R. Hamilton Wright takes the baton from Pichette in the second act, as Wright’s hustling medical doctor-lawyer-academic slowly begins to dominate the action. With much of the weight removed from his shoulders, Pichette is much better – and Wright is marvelous, again showing deft comic timing.
One wonders what the result would have been, had Pichette and Wright flip-flopped roles . . .
The title partially alludes to the philosophers who engage in tangled verbal acrobatics, partially to actual acrobats who occasionally appear. Bit of a disappointment, as director Jeff Steitzer doesn’t do much with the yellow-clad acrobats.
Stoppard mixes in a murder and some farcical situations (philandering wife, re-occurring corpse, a kinky blackmail, etc.), then gets back to his punishing didacticisms.
As George's wife, Dotty, Erika Rolfsrud is, yes, dottie -- wonderfully so, for the most part. Stoppard gives Dotty, who has grown unhinged by man's walking on the moon, quite a bit to do. Rolfsrud is far more entertaining in playing it light and goofy, quite less successful when she dips into melodrama.
That, really, is the main problem with Steitzer's direction: too-reverent of Stoppard's writing, he loses his grip on the comedy/asburdity. Rather than jumping and leaping with carefree agility, it walks, carefully..
