STAGE REVIEW : ‘Cup of Coffee’ Tastes of Nostalgia

Film writer and director Preston Sturges was a comic genius.

But you wouldn’t know it from “A Cup of Coffee,” the Pasadena Playhouse season opener at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts.

There are glimmers of brilliance in this 1930-something script about a coffee salesman who mistakenly thinks he’s won $25,000 in a coffee slogan contest. Thanks to an impeccable cast with terrific timing, even the most obvious of jokes gets laughs.

But most of the jokes are as obvious as the plot twists. The characters are caricatures--each of whom turns out to have a good heart in the end. And while the production is directed by Larry Carpenter with high style and loving polish, it all boils down to gooey nostalgia for a simpler time when a man with a little gumption and a lot of heart could overcome all obstacles--even during the Depression.

The Pasadena Playhouse seems to have selected this play, the first of its inaugural season at Poway, for nostalgic reasons. “A Cup of Coffee” was originally supposed to premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1940, but it was pulled before opening to be made into the movie “Christmas in July.”

Unfortunately, reheated coffee just never tastes quite the same.

Sturges’ plot revolves around an ambitious young coffee salesman James MacDonald (Michael Heintzman), who wants to make it big. MacDonald thinks he has gotten his breakthrough when he is told he won a coffee slogan contest for his company’s competition.

His bosses, two Baxter brothers and one Baxter father, never thought much of him before he won the contest. Now that he’s been validated by the contest, they hang on his every advertising suggestion and want to sign him to a big contract before the competition does. Just before he signs, he learns there was a mistake--he didn’t win after all.

He ‘fesses up and goodby contract. Unless, that is, he can persuade the Baxters that even without having won the contest, he’s still the brilliant young man whose words they hung on just a short time before.

The first act, which sets up the characters and plot before MacDonald wins the contest is sloooow--it could use a jolt of coffee. The second act is better. At that point, J. Bloodgood Baxter (Raye Birk), the Baxter brother who forms his opinions solely on what other people think, goes through contortions when MacDonald has won and he has to suddenly be nice to him.

Birk is terrific at letting the expressions on his face do the talking for him--his forced smile and fake joviality covering a seething interior. His best bit of fury, done without a word, is when he tries to drink some water with shaking hands while his father (Robert Cornthwaite) yells at him.

Cornthwaite also steals the show on several occasions. Again, it’s not that the actor gets anything so terribly fresh to do. He plays the elderly head of the firm who falls asleep a lot, mixes up names and thinks that all good ideas originate with him. It’s all cliche, but the actor does it so well.

Heintzman gives a likable performance as MacDonald--with enough of a sardonic twist to keep him from being insufferably sappy. Angie Phillips plays the sassy and very appealing young secretary who falls in love with him.

In two of Sturges’ less inspired creations, George Ede does his blustery best with an unfortunate stereotype of the cheap Scotchman, Lomax Whortleberry. And Willie C. Carpenter, the terrific Paul Robeson in the Old Globe’s “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” tries to give dignity to the caricature role of Julius. While the play is not much, the good news at Poway is that the designers, like the actors, know what they’re doing. Like Pasadena’s terrific “Closer Than Ever,” which played at Poway as a teaser in July, “A Cup of Coffee” is elegantly staged. Mark Wendland’s set design gets the grainy old warehouse look down pat, Martin Aronstein’s lighting design softens and sweetens the focus and Nancy L. Konrardy’s costumes whisk you right back to 1940.

But to see the master at his best, Sturges fans are advised to catch his work at the Ken Cinema’s Sturges film festival: the Academy Award-winning “The Great McGinty” and “Easy Living” tonight and “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” and “Unfaithfully Yours” Wednesday.

“A CUP OF COFFEE”

By Preston Sturges. Director, Larry Carpenter. Set design, Mark Wendland. Lighting, Martin Aronstein. Costumes, Nancy Konrardy. Production stage manager, Mary Michele Miner. Stage manager, Daniel Munson. With Raye Birk, Willie C. Carpenter, Robert Cornthwaite, David Cromwell, George Ede, Michael Heintzman, Charles Leon, Angie Phillips and John Towey. At 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through Sept. 20. Tickets are $31.50. At the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 15498 Espola Road, Poway. Call 1-800-883-PLAY or 278-TIXS.