Theater Review : Hysterical ‘Charley’s Aunt’ Dresses Its Humor in Drag

Los Angeles theater has been one big drag show lately, with such shows as “When Pigs Fly,” Charles Busch’s “Die! Mommy! Die!” and “Miss Coco Peru’s Universe” demonstrating just how fetching--and funny--a guy in a dress can be.

To this list we can now add the return of one of the great drag roles of all time: the Oxford chap in a dress who touches off all sorts of romantic mayhem in Brandon Thomas’ 1892 farce, “Charley’s Aunt.” At the outdoor Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, director Ellen Geer and her cast have pushed the play’s potential for physical comedy to the brink of believability--and hysterically beyond.

“Charley’s Aunt” is the only one of the dozen plays Thomas wrote that is remembered today. An English actor, playwright and songwriter, he was a contemporary of Oscar Wilde, and he populated this comedy with Wilde-like fashionable but dissolute upper-crust characters. Though he didn’t sprinkle his writing as liberally with bons mots as Wilde, he showed a remarkable facility for spinning ever more outrageous complications out of his premise.

Aaron Hendry and Gerritt VanderMeer portray a snooty schemer and his puppyish, trusting Oxford pal who are desperate to find a female chaperone so that they can spend time with their lady loves (Willow Geer-Alsop and Inara George). The solution comes in a blinding flash when a fellow university gadabout tries on his costume for a female role in a play.

Square-jawed, broad-shouldered and at least a head taller than everyone else on stage, Justin Doran is about as unconvincing a woman as you could possibly imagine--which makes his oddly bewitching “aunt” all the more amusing. At once potently masculine and a bit too fully in touch with his feminine side, he soon finds himself taking great, loping strides up the steep hillside beyond the stage--his skirts indecorously hiked up to his waist--with Alan Blumenfeld’s love-struck suitor scurrying along in hot pursuit.

Affecting a voice that is slightly too nasal and somewhat too French, Sheridan Crist portrays the other of the “aunt’s” love slaves; Melora Marshall plays the real aunt with a mischievous twinkle; and Megan Geer-Alsop is touchingly melancholy as the young lady whom Doran adores in a way entirely inconsistent with his frumpy exterior.

The sylvan amphitheater works to the play’s advantage, especially in the second half, when we can watch characters cavorting in the “gardens” of Oxford in the distance while romantic maneuverings are afoot at center stage.

Costumer Kim de Shazo dresses the cast in elegantly detailed period costumes, and director Geer further anchors the story in time by framing the acts with playful songs from the era.

* “Charley’s Aunt,” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Fridays, 8 p.m., through Sept. 17; Saturdays, 4 p.m., through Sept. 18; Sundays, 3 p.m., Sept. 26-Oct. 17. Also, this Monday only, 6 p.m. $12-$17. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Justin Doran: Lord Fancourt Babberly

Aaron Hendry: Jack Chesney

Gerritt VanderMeer: Charles Wykeham

Willow Geer-Alsop: Kitty Verdun

Inara George: Amy Spettigue

Sheridan Crist: Sir Francis Chesney Bart

Alan Blumenfeld: Stephen Spettigue

Melora Marshall: Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez

Megan Geer-Alsop: Ela Delahay

Robert Bresnik: Brassett

A Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum production. By Brandon Thomas. Directed by Ellen Geer. Assistant director Alan Blumenfeld. Set Victoria Profitt. Costumes Kim de Shazo. Stage manager Brian J. L’Ecuyer.