September 21, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

See farcical ‘Herring’ on Hill for the halibut
by HUGH HUNTER

Stagecrafters opened its 2006-2007 season with Red Herring, by area playwright, Michael Hollinger. We take delight in its take-no-prisoners humor but also come away feeling a bit out-of-sorts, like that overstuffed sensation you can get at a family dinner.

In a farcical send-up of film noir, the story premise centers around the FBI’s attempt to crack a Soviet spy ring. But ludicrous romantic pairings quickly overwhelm the main plot.

Frank Keller (Robert Toczek) is the FBI man dedicated to stopping the Russians from acquiring the secret H-bomb plans. He is in love with fellow gumshoe, Maggie Pelletier (Catherine A. Pappas), and proposes, not knowing she is already married. As this ill-matched pair pursue their enemies, they stumble across a bunch of equally misaligned lovers.

Lynn McCarthy (Christena Doggrell) is the daughter of the notorious Senator Joe McCarthy. She is wooed by James Appel (Jim Hopper), only to discover that he is a Soviet spy (and Jewish to boot). Andrei Borchevsky (M. Tamin Yurcaba), another Soviet spy, works in cahoots with his landlady and lover, Mrs. Kravitz (Carol Anne Mueller). While Andrei pines for his wife, Olga, held hostage in a Gulag, Mrs. Kravitz murders her own husband to make room for him.

Travesty, mistaken identity, violent horseplay, improbabilities and absurdities — all staples of farce — are in operation here. Along the way, playwright Hollinger also manages to poke fun at Cold War zealotry, patriotism and religion. This is quite a full plate, and it is hard to know what Red Herring really aims at. The play is lots of fun for the actors as they get to perform multiple roles. Toczek is fine as Keller, whose hard-boiled cop persona is comically at odds with his actual naiveté. Yurcaba shines as the overwrought Andrei, easily the most engaging of these characters.

As befits the farce genre, director Patrick Martin moves the play along at a brisk pace. The set design (Kirk Paul) successfully places us in Boston, Wisconsin and the South Pacific circa 1952, but lighting and sound effects are unimaginative and do not reinforce the spoofing of film noir cloak and dagger. Which brings us back to the problem: Red Herring lacks a unifying dramatic tension as it loses sight of its core premise, the FBI’s effort to stop the espionage.

The play feels more like a series of skits. Taken individually, they are often funny, sometimes urbane. There is much witty word play and reoccurring gag lines, notwithstanding an occasional heist from Vaudeville. (“Is that a fish in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”) But these skits just accumulate, and do not funnel into a rising dramatic tension.

Farce does not preclude the need for dramatic tension. Successful farce demands it. A further challenge of the genre lies in retaining a hold on the sense of human worth even as it broadly ridicules. Failing to do so, farce collapses into slapstick. Red Herring is right on the edge. Stagecrafters is located at 8130 Germantown Ave. Red Herring will run through September 30. Reservations at 215-247-8881.