Heaven Can Wait; The Audience, However,
Has No Choice
Reviewed (rather fittingly)
Friday, August 13th, 2004
by Harry Segall
Directed by Gary Helmbold
Hale Centre Theatre, Gilbert
(480) 497-1181
August 13th - September 25th, 2004
$9.00 - $16.00
Though I’ve seen every variation of the Heaven Can Wait story in film, I’d never seen the play version upon which they all were based. Written by Harry Segall in the late 1930s, the play centers on a boxer named Joe Pendleton who is plucked from his body by an overzealous angel before an accident he would have avoided, and a chief angel named Mr. Jordan must find a suitable body for him to live the remainder of his years within, dealing with Joe’s absolute insistence on being able to take it to the Heavyweight Championship. I can say without a doubt that after sitting through Hale Centre Theatre’s production, I still have not seen Segall’s much mimicked work. The opening night of Director Gary Helmbold’s mounting was one of the worst fall-apart run-throughs I’ve ever seen that a paying crowd has been asked to suffer through. That in itself is an awful thing; however, much of the acting that was actually on its feet was proof enough that even if it hadn’t been punch-drunk, it would have taken a dive soon enough.
This is one of those times where I’m not exactly sure who was actually causing the interminable pauses, the extended stage wandering, and the halting line reads. I can pin it down to two people: the worst of the hemming and hawing occurs when David Bramwell’s Joe and James McLeroy’s Mr. Jordan are onstage. The reason I can’t figure out who is truly at fault is because these two actors have different styles of dealing with acting adversity: Bramwell is a nervous pacer who starts spouting non sequiturs and grasping desperately at any line that looks like it might jumpstart the scene, while McLeroy is the stoic type who’ll break the silence with an occasional reference to something that sounds like a theme in the show, even if it might be a line from a scene that is much later in the script. Audience members who sit quietly through these scenes feel like voyeurs in an actor’s nightmare. I’m positive it was one of these two who hadn’t quite gotten the lines down before the lights went up, I just can’t definitely affix the labels of blame and shame. In one scene from the second act, they seemed to have wandered so afar from the script that the sound op was forced to use a cue just to shut the two of them up, leaving a lot of important expositional dialogue for the finale unuttered. On those occasions when they are actually speaking lines consecutively from the scene, Bramwell has a nervous energy that makes his character’s one-note idiocy somehwat likeable, while McLeroy’s stoicism is constant when he’s doing his best to remedy a bad situation, either textually or in performance.
The remainder of the cast is a fight card of varying interest. Bob DePalma’s Max Levene, Joe’s former fight manager, is the best of the performances. His entrance later in the first act is like a breath of fresh air in an airtight room. He is funny, genuine, and in the moments that most others are trying to remember. Less spectacular is Toni Fioramonti’s love interest, Bette Logan. Her offering of the defensive victim of Joe’s loaner body millionaire Farnsworth is consistently sweet, if unremarkable. Bret Anderson’s mistaking Messenger 7013 is a very bubbly, sweet guy and successfully performed. Jeanne Lavery and Geno Anton are workable in their roles as the wife and private secretary of Farnsworth, their murder victim. Lavery’s performance is a compendium of clichés, but at least they're endearingly performed. Anton’s is more of a one-note presentation, but still likeable. Michael Hummel’s police inspector is consistent, though Glenna Lesure’s uptight maid, Mrs. Ames, had a snooty look on her face that reads more as constipation than good breeding.
Once again, the technical element is excellent save in one area. John Autore’s radically different settings for Heaven’s fog-filled Weigh Station (a brilliant concept), the well-appointed Farnsworth living room, and a boxing dressing room are excellent. Cyndee Smith’s costumes are all wonderful, especially the choices for Lavery. David Dietlein’s lighting is uniform and has a few interesting moments, and the wisely unbilled sound design is still a stumbling point that needs to be rectified.
In ten years of reviewing, I’ve left shows before they were over only twice. I can’t tell you how tempting it was to finally do it a third time. The only thing that kept me glued to my seat, besides the guilt, was the chance to congratulate DePalma for being the one constant in a muddle of pathos. Perhaps this will eventually become an excellent production. Give them a few more weeks of rehearsal before you dare find out.
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