‘The Snob’ Has Some Topical Appeal

In “The Snob” at Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 96-year-old director Martin Magner brings an ample lifetime’s worth of experience to bear on a dated 1914 comedy of manners, elevating it to topical significance in the process.

A portrait of an amoral social climber (Rick Telles) in the period following World War I, Carl Sternheim’s play details his systematic severing of human ties that hinder his entree into the aristocracy--first his lover (Molly Maslin), then his lower-class parents (Leslie Paxton, Tony Pandolfo). In the show’s standout performance, Pandolfo’s coarse, nosy curmudgeon is unfailingly hilarious in his mistrust of upper-class ways.

He’s a deft counterpoint to Phillip Persons’ steely aristocrat, who feels his privilege threatened by the young man’s rise in social stature and impending marriage to his daughter (Colleen Caddell, less convincing as a pure blood).

Magner’s staging ensures the parallels to present-day acquisitive yuppies and their abdicated human values are clear without becoming heavy-handed. Yet even he can’t solve the muddled finale, in which the newly absorbed aristocrat flounders in the unanticipated complexities of a marriage of convenience.

* “The Snob,” Lee Strasburg Creative Center, Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 30. $15. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hours, 40 minutes.