Theatre in Review: The Late Christopher Bean (The Actors Company Theatre at Theatre Row)

	Photo: Stephen Kunken

If anyone knows of Sidney Howard today, it's because his name is on the screenplay of Gone With the Wind; less remembered is the fact that, for 20 years, he kept Broadway supplied with a steady stream of comedies and dramas. However, given the sparkling Actors Company Theatre production of The Late Christopher Bean, it's high time somebody reviewed the rest of Howard's catalog to see what other lost gems may be laying in wait.

In The Late Christopher Bean, first produced in 1932, the stolid household of a Massachusetts doctor collides with a cadre of New York art-world types, resulting in sheer moral mayhem. Dr. Haggett is the thrifty, all-business type; he monitors his household's expenses with the eye of a scientist used to studying amoebas -- an attitude that puts him into direct conflict with his wife, who doesn't quite grasp that there's a depression on and is horrified that she might not be permitted to take her daughters to Florida for the winter. (The two girls, as they say, aren't getting any younger, and Mrs. Haggett thinks they might move better in the Miami marriage market.)

In other words, it's a typical day of friendly family bickering, until a stranger shows up and offers Dr. Haggett $100 in the name of Christopher Bean. That would be the rather sad and sickly young painter who occupied the Haggetts' barn a decade before, turning out a number of rural studies before quietly passing away, from a combination of consumption, the bottle, and all-around neglect. (He also left behind an unpaid bill for treatment.) Might, the friend wonders, have his dear friend Chris left any paintings lying around? Dr. Haggett, touched by this unexpected windfall, vows to search. Then another dear friend of Bean's shows up, and another -- and the cash offers go higher and higher.

What Dr. Haggett and his brood don't know is that Bean, in repose, has become a critical darling, and the publication of his letters in the Atlantic Monthly has emboldened this trio of pirates to invade in search of any unknown, and lucrative, works. Suddenly, there's a bidding war, and the good doctor, deranged by avarice, finds himself a party to attempted fraud, theft, and forgery.

Howard adapted Bean from a play by the French author Rene Fauchois, so I don't know who provided the cast-iron construction; suffice to say that, except for one or two moments when the action briefly drifts into expositional cul-de-sacs, this is an expertly plotted farce, filled with exquisitely timed bombshells that continue dropping up until the very last minute. And, under Jenn Thompson's smartly paced direction, a fine cast expertly underplays this genteel tale of cutthroat negotiations.

Leading the way is James Murtaugh, as Dr. Haggett, whose laconic Yankee propriety crumbles into bits as his greed subjects him to a barrage of comic humiliations. At first, he literally reels from the shock of the money being dangled in front of him. Yet, when told that one of Bean's letters, quoted in the Atlantic Monthly, calls him a "gargoyle," he simmers into a perfect slow burn. Later, he returns from a frantic search for one of Bean's "friends," who may have made off with all available merchandise, looking like a hurricane survivor, his few remaining tufts of hair standing perpendicular to his head. Exhausted by this whirlwind of intrigue, he confesses in anguish, "If a patient came in now with a ruptured appendix, I'd miss it so far I'd put his eye out!"

Murtaugh is perfectly matched with Cynthia Darlow, as the missus, who, with her short stature, bobbed hair, and air of offended propriety, is a dead ringer for the pug dog depicted in needlepoint in a pillow on the couch. Striding across the living room in search of the moral high ground, her hands snatching at the scarf that she wields so flamboyantly, her voice booming in disapproval, she is a figure out of a classic Hollywood screwball comedy. She's at her best when, her eyes flying in every possible direction, she shiftily admits that she might have burned a couple -- or ten -- of Bean's paintings. Possibly the evening's most treasurable moment occurs when this pair of philistines recoils in horror from a glance at one of Bean's chef d'oeuvres.

Providing the comedy with a real heart is Mary Bacon, as Abby, the maid, who possesses a surprising knowledge of painting technique, along with a Bean portrait that everyone covets. She's dryly amusing when commenting that one of Dr. Haggett's deliveries has arrived so soon after the wedding that they "had to brush the rice off" the baby. And, as it becomes clear that she was devoted to Bean in more ways than one, we have someone we can care about in the midst of all this finagling. There's also fine work from Greg McFadden as the first of Bean's "friends" -- his last name keeps changing -- to appear on the scene; Bob Ari, as a self-righteous art dealer ("It's not the artists I exploit -- it's the customers!"); and James Prendergast, as a critic whose expert eye gives one of the Haggetts' daughters the courage to elope with her a boyfriend, a painter with a nice, school-of-Bean, technique.

All of this double-dealing takes place on Charlie Corcoran's setting, which, with its dowdy furniture, homely paintings, and hooked rugs, is a fine study in respectable middle-class bad taste. Ben Stanton's lighting bathes the action in a warm, sunshiny glow that contrasts nicely with the dirty doings at hand. Martha Hally's costumes include some nicely tailored men's suits and a sufficiently august day dress for Mrs. Haggett. Stephen Kunken's sound design provides crisp reinforcement for the piano tunes, composed by Mark Berman, that bridge each scene.

Despite its many years on the bookshelf, The Late Christopher Bean -- with its cast of art-world connivers and money-mad civilians, set against a background of economic hard times -- causes laughter that contains an oddly contemporary ring. Cheers to T.A.C.T for digging it up; in a funny way, they've given Sidney Howard the Christopher Bean treatment, rescuing him from obscurity. Clearly we need to get to know him better.--David Barbour