On Approval by F. Kathleen Foley Special To The Times

THEATER REVIEW – May 2002
Lonsdale’s
ON APPROVAL

Satisfies as a Delectable Trifle

By F. KATHLEEN FOLEY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES May 9, 2002 Los Angeles Times
Time sure flies when you’re having a wry time.

THEATER REVIEW – May 2002
Lonsdale’s ‘On Approval’ Satisfies as a Delectable Trifle

By F. KATHLEEN FOLEY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES May 9, 2002 Los Angeles Times
Time sure flies when you’re having a wry time.

“On Approval,” Frederick Lonsdale’s breezy, biting comedy about the English upper-classes, is being revived by Pacific Resident Theatre in honor of the play’s 75th anniversary. Although hardly the stuff of deathless drama, it remains a delicious if insubstantial confection whipped to a fine froth by director Joe Olivieri and his deft cast.

Like Noel Coward, with whom he is sometimes compared, Lonsdale wrote about the British aristocracy from the perspective of a low-born outsider. Wildly popular in their heyday, Lonsdale’s plays are only infrequently produced today, in contrast to the undiminished spate of Coward revivals. Perhaps that’s because Lonsdale’s dialogue is less showy than Coward’s campy exchanges. However, given the right combination of delicacy and timing, as in this production, “On Approval” endures, if only as a pleasant and purely escapist diversion.

The story, which Olivieri keeps in the 1920s, is set in a bygone world of British empire and class privilege, before peers punched time clocks and duchesses resorted to microwaves. Maria Wislack (Amy Warner), a wealthy widow beloved from afar by her longtime admirer Richard Halton (Tony Pasqualini), decides to take Richard off to her remote Scotland estate for a month to determine if he is fitting marital material.

Accompanying Maria is her heiress friend Helen (Devon Raymond), who hopes to snag George (Matt Letscher), alternating in the role with Robert Lee Jacobs, an impecunious duke, as a husband. But Maria and George prove such monsters of ego and entitlement, they richly deserve the comical comeuppance that is forthcoming.

The thin plot is sufficient excuse for these choice comic performances. Warner and Letscher are sterling in their larger-than-life portrayals, while Raymond and Pasqualini are canny underlings, holding their resources in patient reserve–until the inevitable and satisfying explosion.

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