‘Rainmaker’ Performed With Humor, Wit
“The Rainmaker” Friday, May 16, Interplayers Ensemble
To understand N. Richard Nash’s 1954 play “The Rainmaker,” it helps to think of it as a kind of nonmusical version of “The Music Man”: Con man comes to town, woos maiden lady, perpetrates fraud and gets caught. Yet in the end his good heart and good intentions are beneficial for both the town and the maiden lady.
In this case, the con man is a “rainmaker,” and the maiden lady is a spunky daughter of a rancher.
It makes for an affecting story, full of symbolism (the daughter is experiencing her own kind of drought). In this Interplayers production, it comes across with humor and warmth, despite a few problems that prevent it from reaching its full potential.
Most definitely not a problem is the performance of Kelly Lloyd, as Lizzie Curry, the daughter. With her Texas drawl and her knowing smile, Lloyd reminded me of Holly Hunter, and I mean that as a high compliment. Her humor and wit made her easy to fall in love with; yet just as important, her plain-spoken frankness and intelligence made it clear why she scared off every unsophisticated young rancher for miles around.
One of her funniest scenes was also the most stinging. After being told for years that the way to catch a man is to act flirty and ditzy, she decides to try it. Her sing-song voice and blatant flattery (“Oh, your teeth are so white!”) are funny, but she knows she is being phony, and the man (File, played well by J. Bretton Truett) knows it too. They are both disgusted by the performance.
Equally effective is Scot Charles Anderson as the younger brother, Jim. Jim is a whippet-like bundle of youthful hormones, mooning over a wild girl named Snookie. Anderson fills the stage with energy in all of his scenes.
Also strong is John Farrage as Noah Curry, who bears the burden of being the practical member of the family. He uses that as a license to be cruel.
Not everyone in the cast is as effective. Cary Allison seems stiff and uneasy as the patriarch of the ranch, H.C. Curry.
And I found the performance of Hal Perry as Bill Starbuck, the rainmaker, to be a problem. Perry delivered some of Starbuck’s lines with a flat Kevin-Costner-like delivery, as if the rainmaker were some kind of surfer dude. At the same time, he occasionally went too far the other way, delivering some speeches with a lot of arm-waving overblown fervor. Not a pleasant combination.
Set and lighting designer Jason Laws did a fine job with the visual production, creating a ranch house, a sheriff’s office and a tack room all in one small space. The era was nicely evoked by an old-fashioned telephone and a crystal radio set. I also liked the lightning-rain-thunder effects at the play’s close. Laws and director Joan Welch turned this scene into a giddy celebration of renewal and rejuvenation.
However, I was bothered by one cosmetic detail. Why was the character of Noah Curry allowed to wear a ponytail? This story is set in the ‘20s or ‘30s in the West, and, maybe I’m wrong about this, but I doubt if a white rancher in that Will Rogers era would have been caught dead with a ponytail. Starbuck’s flowing, blond, Fabio-like locks could be explained away by the fact that he’s a drifter, but Noah was a settled, down-to-earth practical man.
Maybe this is a niggling detail, but it’s the kind of detail that prevented me from believing that I really was watching a family of ranchers in the ‘30s, as opposed to a bunch of actors in the ‘90s.
Some theatergoers aren’t going to like the play’s assumptions about women - without a man, a woman is just an unhappy “spinster” - yet it only reflects the attitudes of the time. I would have preferred that other parts of the production had reflected the attitudes of the time as well.
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