Present Laughter

Left to right: Barbara Chisholm, Jamie Goodwin, Meredith McCall

Present Laughter

Zachary Scott Theatre Center Kleberg Stage, through March 11

Running time: 2 hr, 30 min

There's the sun around which all the planets in our system spin. We've never been there, but it comes to us, so to speak, attenuated by the distance its radiated energy must travel. I, personally, had never been to a Noël Coward play before, had never read the script for one. But it – the idea of a Noël Coward play, the faint radiation of its composition – has been coming to me for years, attenuated by the popular media that delivers it.

What I saw this past Friday at the Zachary Scott Theatre Center was precisely what I was expecting to see. Present Laughter is a drawing room comedy of manners and subverted sexual mores, screwballish, like an excellent episode of I Love Lucy with the wit at a much greater magnitude and the main concern being: Who's boinking whom?

In this show, everybody's boinking a character by the name of Garry Essendine. Well, most of the women are, anyway, regardless that he is (though more or less separated from his wife) married. Essendine is the sun around which all the others are merely satellites: He's a stage actor, the show being set back when such a thing still mattered to the world at large. He's tall, handsome, larger than life, remarkably full of himself, and more than a bit hammy – a sort of William Shatner of the late Jazz Age. And he gets, as the popular phrase puts it, more ass than a toilet seat. Which is especially fortifying to him, now that he's nearing the midpoint of his extremely successful career and of his life. Oh, the humanity of leaving youth behind!

The promotional media for Present Laughter informs us that the man playing Essendine, Jamie Goodwin, has long been an actor in televised daytime dramas (what you and I call soap operas), and while this is good for drawing a crowd, it threw me off a bit. Because who can remember a name like Jamie Goodwin – such an ordinary, thoroughly innocuous name? So I assumed, well, here's some guy who hasn't been able to make it in the movies or prime-time TV, so he's been plowing the soaps for years, and now he's slumming in Austin theatre because maybe he owes somebody a favor, right? Stupid, stupid me. I'd seen this unmemorably named man before – duh – in Zach's Urinetown! and Shear Madness. Yes, he's been stomping the local boards for a few years. And those boards are even luckier than I am stupid.

In his previous appearances at Zach, Goodwin's been a force of nature onstage – a force of nature with excellent command of the actor's craft and a sense of timing that would make a Rolex jealous – and Essendine is the perfect role for him. He's all over the stage, striking poses, checking mirrors, brandishing his words like swords or silken capes. We almost don't need a plot or other actors, due to the character and Goodwin's stellar skill and obvious pleasure in embodying him; it's amusing and annoying to know that Essendine himself would quite agree. Ah, but then we wouldn't have all the rest of it, and that would be a loss.

Elizabeth Doss turns in a wonderful performance, all polished bubble and squeak, as the ingenue who introduces us to the fact of Essendine's tomcattery; Helen Merino, the Great Man's secretary, is flawless as the epitome of disinterested efficiency; Chronicle Food writer Barbara Chisholm brings her always-welcome vigor and shine to the role of Essendine's wife, matched by Meredith McCall as his predatory, would-be mistress. Zach Freeman, as the young playwright Roland, was a delightful explosion of quirks and twitches; the rest of the cast, too, was well-chosen. Director Dave Steakley, who's done his usual fine job in drawing the best from his people, has made the action spin like a solar system of pure comic entertainment. He's further added to the evening by filling the two intermissions with Coward and Cole Porter ditties via the fierce piano stylings and singing of Austin Haller (who's also in the show and who can't quite nail the required British accent) and the lovely voices of McCall and Goodwin.

You haven't seen a Noël Coward play before, but you think you know what one's like? Well, you're probably right, but this one may be beyond your expectations. This one, I reckon, is light years ahead.