Theater Reviews

May 22, 2001 - Gothic North's "Other People's Money" Doesn't Quite Cash In

By Jack Neal

Doughnuts, dogs and money. "Is that all there is?" Peggy Lee might sing.

According to Lawrence Garfield, a.k.a. Larry the Liquidator, that IS all there is. Doughnuts, dogs and money are the three things everybody loves and wants in a straight forward, uncomplicated way. Money, according to Larry, has the advantage over the other two in that it is fat free and cannot poop on the living room rug.

Jerry Sterner's off-Broadway comedy of about a dozen years back turned weary Wall Street brokers into wide-awake playgoers. Sterner manages to disapprove of Larry while at the same time giving him all the best lines. Larry is the classic ruthless raider of responsible American corporations. Larry's target of opportunity in Sterner's play is the gently paternalistic New England Wire and Cable Company largely owned by and fully operated by Andrew "Jorgy" Jorgenson.

A man with few smarts in today's climate of go-for-the-jugular business operations, Jorgy is as stiff as Larry is slimy. Luckily Bea Sullivan, Jorgy's longtime lover and assistant, has a daughter, Kate, who's a rising Wall Street lawyer. If anyone can save New England Wire and Cable, maybe Kate can - or so we are supposed to believe.

The plot requires Larry to fall in love with Kate at first sight, shrewdly seeing what neither she nor anyone else sees: that she is his soul mate in amorality.

Eventually Kate is supposed to find Larry and her newly discovered role sexy way beyond stocks and bonds.

What Kate discovers is kept too undiscovered from Gothic North audiences. In this Gothic North Theater Company presentation, what director Gary Helmers has not been able to inspire is a cast that can both sling lines and nail ideas about how sleazy the current business climate is and make an evening of its down-and-dirty shenanigans fun, entertaining and just a bit disgusting.

The cast never quite lights up. Even the set, usually beautifully rendered at Gothic North, is lacking in invention. The play off between Jorgy's drab office and Larry's posh one so often mentioned in the script is nowhere to be seen except as oddly similar. Drab is the order of the day and even Rick Patton's lighting can't make up for the set's sterile design.

Danny DeVito played Larry on the screen like a little Napoleon ready to storm whatever it was Napoleon stormed. Scott Van Tuyl does the honors at Gothic North and he's more than okay, but there's not enough modulation in the performances around him to give the kind of bounce to Larry's lines that digs into the humor and wicked satire of the piece.

John Coney looks like Jorgy, sounds like Jorgy and IS Jorgy. But Coney is too slow on the uptake of lines to make his good casting pay dividends; at least not the night (Thursday 5/17/2001) I saw the show. John Rutski II plays Jorgy's assistant, William Coles, solidly but he's not the ultimate jerk-in-waiting that would give his contributions to "Other People's Money" the bite it needs.

Sue Higley is Bea Sullivan, a loyal Wire and Cable crew member and stalwart assistant to Jorgy the guy she just happens to love. If anything, Higley is too sweet. Certainly she's too sweet to have raised Kate. Melanie Collup plays Kate with a vengeance that's too shrewish from the get go to make much sense in the play's done and gone finale. Collup's a fine actress who needs a firmer directorial hand than she's getting. Too much shouting. Too little impact.

Still, given a more balanced slate of performances - something that could happen as the play settles in - "Other People's Money" isn't without its pay offs. If only the pay offs could fly past faster and with more focus on Sterner's theme, undeveloped though it is. It's a serious defect of the play, and one that a director must try to schmooze over, that Sterner doesn't hit firmly with guns blazing on his greed-wins-out theme. WhatÝmay be the most entertaining drama in modern American life, the high-stakes wrangling of corporate America, never picks up the steam it needs in Sterner's scheme of things to sizzle its way into community theater hit status.

"Other People's Money" plays Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through June 3 (2001) at the Gothic North Theater in the Viewcrest Center, 3697A Kings Row, Reno. For information call 775-329-PLAY.