Moonlight & Magnolias at Victoria

Like its classic subject matter, the two-act play "Moonlight & Magnolias" is a hammy melodrama.
The comedy produced by the Human Race Theatre Co. at the Victoria Theatre concerns a secret one-week closed door work session among a Hollywood trio. (The name of the play, incidentally, is based on a line said by Clark Gable when Scarlett O'Hara visits him at the jail.)
The closed door mission: save the film version of the Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel "Gone with the Wind." Time is running out. The movie script for the 1,000 page book is in total disarray. More than a half dozen screenwriters -- including F. Scott Fitzgerald -- have failed to produce anything that pleases producer David O. Selznick. The famed producer is frantic.
That's why O. Selznick asks newspaper scribe Ben Hecht and journeyman director Victor Fleming to join him in a closed door session spanning five days of intense work.
"M&M," written by Ron Hutchinson in 2003, had its Dayton premier in 2007 at the Loft Theatre, an intimate 220-seat facility compared to the Victoria's 1,100-seat facility next door.
Marsha Hanna directed the 2007 version and has returned to co-direct the Victoria production along with cohort Jake Lockwood.
Happily, the current production that continues at the Victoria through Sunday, May 23, works on the big stage as well, if not better, than the Loft production three years ago.
Much of the credit goes to Hanna and Lockwood and the entire stage crew for mounting a purposeful and effective staging of this period piece that takes place in 1939. The month is February and O. Selznick wants the film version of the Civil War "melodrama" about the mercurial Scarlett O'Hara, the cultured Ashley Wilkes, the sweet Melanie Wilkes and the rogue Rhett Butler to open by December 1939 at the Loew's Theatre in downtown Atlanta.
Let's not forget Prissy, the black slave girl that "knows nothin' about birthin' babies." Prissy plays a key role in "M&M" when Scarlett's impetuously slaps the little black girl who sash shays up the stairs, saying she cannot help with the birth of Melanie's baby.
That birthing scene is played full tilt by the actors and the Prissy slapping scene is played out at least a half dozen times in "M&M." O. Selznick demands its inclusion in the film while Hecht is more than hesitant to write it. The melodramatic scene, of course, was a high point in the movie as played by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Butterfly McQueen as Prissy.
The four-member cast of "M&M" has, for the most part, a farcical field day. Their timing and delivery is right on target.
Richard Marlatt, who played Victor Fleming in the 2007 staging at the Loft, returns to the cast, but this time he is O. Selznick, the egomaniac and dictatorial producer who is the son-in-law of Louis B. Mayer. As a troubled soul who knows Mayer as well as others figure that "Gone With the Wind" is going to be a huge flop, Marlatt pulls out all the stops in his over-the-top performance. Tim Lile returns in his role as Ben Hecht, a writer who blithely announces he never read "Gone With the Wind." Erik Gratton joins the trio as Victor Fleming, the director who is called off "The Wizard of Oz" set in order to take over as director of the Civil War "epic." Seems O. Selznick has fired his best friend George Cukor, who took days to film one scene. The fourth role in the play is secretary Miss Poppenghul, nicely played by Cailtin Larsen. She supplies the bananas and peanuts that keep the "party" going.
According to Hanna's program notes, much of "M&M" rewrite session is true. The names were not changed, so everyone is fair game.
For ticket information, call 228-3630.