Good as gold

Inland Northwest audiences have a surprising affinity for playwright A.R. Gurney.

Surprising, because Gurney is best known for chronicling what is nearly a foreign culture around these parts: the Eastern WASP establishment.

Yet his plays “Love Letters” and “Sylvia,” to name just two, have been smash hits for local theaters, mainly because they are reliably funny, literate, touching and well-written.

So it makes sense for the Actor’s Repertory Theatre (ARt) to kick off its second season with the 1984 Gurney play “The Golden Age.”

“Gurney is one of the playwrights that audience members most wanted to see,” said Michael Weaver, the director and ARt co-founder. “I loved this play because it’s about art and the importance of art. It’s a really interesting theme for us.”

Weaver called it “light and fun, but also about something important.”

This is lesser-known Gurney. It had a brief off-Broadway run with Irene Worth, Stockard Channing and Jeff Daniels. It’s based loosely on the Henry James short story “The Aspern Papers,” updated to 1980 Manhattan.

It’s the tale of Isabel Hastings Hoyt, a reclusive and mysterious woman who was once the darling of the 1920s literary set. She was a confidante of Joseph Conrad, Cole Porter and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In fact, Fitzgerald may well have used her as the model for Daisy in “The Great Gatsby.”

Into her dark New York brownstone arrives an eager young academic named Tom who is convinced that she is in possession of a steamy “lost” passage from “Gatsby.”

The result is what New York Times critic Alvin Klein called Gurney’s “homage to other voices, other times.”

“Theatergoers are bound to overhear the echoes of Tennessee Williams throughout,” wrote Klein in 1996.

Ann Russell Whiteman, a veteran of local stages, plays Isabel. Mathew Ahrens, a Seattle actor (and former Spokane resident), plays Tom. Tessa Gregory, from Seattle, plays Virginia.

And the show has one more performer: Gus the theater cat.

ARt rescued a 1-year-old female tabby for the show, named her Gus (an homage to “Cats”) and will raffle her off during the play’s run. Proceeds will benefit ARt and the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service.