THEATER REVIEW : Improvisation, Shenanigans Leave This ‘Hostage’ Weak

“The Hostage” being held at Irvine Valley College is only peripherally Brendan Behan’s play. Instead, it is a “version” by Joan Littlewood, a Brit who has seen fit to add music, to have the characters address the audience directly and to lay on what the program calls an “enlivening sense of improvisation.”

Maybe with a cast from the Dublin Gate Theatre, it would work. But in this production, which looks a great deal improvised, the direct address is gratuitous and most of the songs sound out of place.

Behan’s story is about a teen-age British soldier being held in a Dublin rooming house to secure the release of an equally young IRA soldier sentenced to be shot. Granted, Behan wrote this as a comedy--but as an Irish comedy, an entirely different animal from what appears at IVC’s Forum Theatre. This is about as Irish as gulyas.

Director John-Frederick Jones seems to have little control over these shenanigans. Between him and his cast, almost all of the native Irish humor is lost--no one on stage appears to notice the jokes flying by. The timing is erratic-to-slow, Jones has approved Americanized pronunciation of some particularly U.K. words, and in some cases he has allowed excess that is inexcusable. Furthermore, his Irish military pensioner plays Scottish bagpipes, not Irish bagpipes.

Three members of the company succeed in rising above the melee . As the master of the rooming house, Joseph Bass has the gentle, twinkling Gaelic sense of humor that Behan himself had, and a Devil-take-the-rest attitude from which much of the surviving humor springs. Carole L. Cooney also is capably close to the ballpark as his sharp-tongued but loving wife. There’s a charm underneath both these performances that stands out.

Closest to Behan’s intent is Matthew Snyder’s Leslie, the title role. Snyder’s young working-class Brit is innocent but wary, naive but with the wisdom that comes with lucid thinking. He also has the best singing voice in the company, a clarion baritone that couldn’t be more perfect, especially during the standard “Bells of Hell” that brings the play to its tragic conclusion. Snyder almost makes one forget the major lapses of the rest of the production. Almost.

But otherwise, staged on a set that looks like a cartoon, this “Hostage” is acted like a cartoon. No one is more disastrous than Christa McDonnell as a randy St. Vincent de Paulist, who ludicrously waves her arms, trills her lines in a squeak and rolls her eyes in misguided and painful comic ecstasy. The rest of the unfortunate supporting cast is only minimally uphill from her performance.

* “The Hostage,” the Forum Theatre, Irvine Valley College, 5500 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 7 . $7-$8. (714) 559-3333. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Matthew Snyder: Leslie Williams

Joseph Bass: Pat

Carole L. Cooney: Meg

An Irvine Valley College production of Joan Littlewood’s adaptation of the Brendan Behan play, directed by John-Frederick Jones. Scenic and lighting design: Jim Rynning. Costume design: Charles Castagno. Musical direction: Randy Woltz. Choreography: Marianne Dotson.