Well-Made Play Worth Reviving

The best kind of revival is the rescuing of a play from an undeserved dusty corner of the bookshelf. That certainly fits “The Great Sebastians,” Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay’s Cold War-era comedy-drama pitting pompous-yet-innocent stage artistes against the deadly machinery of the Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia of 1948.

Nominally a Broadway vehicle in the ‘50s for the great stage team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the play generally falls far down the long list of Crouse-Lindsay credits, which includes the books for “The Sound of Music” and “Anything Goes,” as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning “State of the Union,” “Life With Father” and “Call Me Madam.”

But “The Great Sebastians” is often as amusing and witty as the duo’s better-known work and contains a political and cultural charge many of the others lack. And, like their best work, it is that old horse that won’t die--the Well-Made Play.

So, reviving these “Sebastians” is one of the best things ever accomplished at Actors Forum Theatre, where director Richard Kline’s staging holds to the play’s spirit of fluid fun and intelligent conflict.

A kind of Cold War companion to the moral drama depicted in “Cabaret’s” Nazi setting, the play serves up an appealing couple of stage vets, Rudi and Essie Sebastian (Jack Donner and Audrey Singer), whose mind-reading act has taken them around the U.S. and Europe for years. Like “Cabaret,” there’s the stage act at first, then the backstage reality: Rudi and Essie are done with their last night at Prague’s Theatre Variete but must be careful not to be caught smuggling any money out of Czechoslovakia, recently Communist-controlled but still ruled by the decent Jan Masaryk.

All the Sebastians know is their act, which is one big elaborate trick foisted on their audience, and they’re naturally ignorant of the real threat to freedom posed by the new regime. (Crouse and Lindsay notably never underline the ironic connection between stage trickery and political games, but it’s there just the same.) In a plot line that is notably intricate yet never muddled--take note, young playwrights--the show-biz pair find themselves up against sinister circumstances, care of the conflicted Gen. Zandek (Dan Forrest), that combine Broadway-style comedy with the paranoia of a John LeCarre novel.

Certainly, the situation--which seems to be sending the Sebastians directly to prison--is resolved with an easy, clever Broadway ending that’s probably too easy, too clever and doesn’t quite adhere to Lindsay’s No. 1 rule about comedy: “Wherever your biggest laugh is, it ought to be the second act curtain.”

But the ride is fun even as the Cold War politics intrude on the comedy like a nasty dream. Donner and Singer, stage vets themselves, enjoy the ride, especially the disjunction between the couple’s charmingly self-inflated view of themselves as performing stars and the trap they’ve innocently stumbled into.

Donner is pure Old World grace, and Singer is striking when Essie stands up in a dramatic moment of conscientious disobedience that boggles both Rudi and the bad guys.

True to the play, though, Essie’s moment stems not from political conviction but out of the couple’s friendship with Masaryk. The personal impulse applies as well to Forrest’s convincing Zandek, a man who isn’t what he appears.

This sense of shifting identities also works for maximum dramatic effect with Daniel Brennan, an effectively surprising Sgt. Javorsky.

In a production that marks a quantum leap in quality for Actors Forum, Harold Schwartz’s set change from Act I’s backstage room to Act II’s moody drawing room is like traveling to another world, much aided by John Grant’s lights and Florence Brooks’ costumes.

BE THERE

“The Great Sebastians,” Actors Forum Theatre, 10530 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends Dec. 20. $12.50-$15. (800) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.