THEATER REVIEW : Sierra Madre Staging of ‘Dinner at Eight’ Is True to Original

Making a visit to the Sierra Madre Playhouse, now in its 15th season, is like returning to the 1930s.

Most of the patrons, who invariably fill the house wall-to-wall, are older folks who might well have attended theater in that era. They love the revivals of popular Broadway shows and that’s why they come.

The cozy main street where the theater is located gives an old-time, small-town flavor, and the theater itself is a faded movie house, with enlargements of Valentino and Charlie Chaplin in the narrow lobby.

In short, it’s the perfect setting for “Dinner at Eight,” the George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber 1932 Broadway hit, which became an “all star” MGM movie in 1933 with Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow, John Barrymore and Wallace Beery, and was revived on Broadway in 1966.

To its credit, the Playhouse never updates or reinvents these revivals, although in “Dinner at Eight” that’s a mixed blessing. The show runs three hours, with two intermissions, and the material cannot sustain that jumbo length. A Philco Playhouse TV production in 1948 cut the whole play to a single hour.

The episodic comedy-drama, with a Sierra Madre cast of 20, revolves around a chaotic dinner party thrown for a dozen disparate guests by a vapid society hostess, played by the wonderfully energetic Jean Evans.

The Art Deco setting is New York in the early Depression, where even the rich are pinched for money.

Characters--including a battle-worn former beauty, ripely played by Roxanne Barker, and an alcoholic, has-been movie star still living by his profile (Anthony Duke in the show’s strongest performance) materialize in an episodic format that at times becomes a bit clunky in the multiple set changes. The play’s structure, revolutionary in its day, was inspired by Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel” (1927).

*

Most of the cast, down to the domestic help (such as the flavorful household maids played by Dominique Decaudain and Donna Gayle), perform with verve. With a few exceptions the actors hold their emoting in check. One glaring exception is Sara Jackson’s gratingly squeaky-voiced, ex-hatcheck girl, whose excessive petulance is over the top.

Director Shon LeBlanc, mostly known locally as a costume designer, really shines with spectacular wardrobes he designed with Carolyn Lancet. The elegant, high-society clothes are a hoot.

Where LeBlanc doesn’t shine is in melding the alternate elements of overreaching drama (featuring a heart attack, a bruising knife fight and a suicide) into the dominant comedic tone. In retrospect, Kaufman and Ferber’s unexpected operatic scenes are more than the plot can handle.

But “Dinner at Eight” is a genuine family show, if only young theatergoers would tag along.

* “Dinner at Eight,” Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday matinee, 2:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 18. $8.50-$7.50. (818) 355-4318. Running time: 3 hours.