Sprightly but short on sparks

In many of George Bernard Shaw’s plays, sparks fly between capitalists and their ideological opposites. In March 1933, Shaw -- who by then called himself a communist, not simply a socialist -- dropped in on the moguls of Hollywood.

Too bad he didn’t write a play about it.

Mark Saltzman has partially filled the gap with “Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollywood,” at Laguna Playhouse. It isn’t the play Shaw would have written.

To borrow a couple of adjectives discussed in the script, “Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollywood” is a vivacious, sprightly comedy that’s closer to the style of popular ‘30s movies than it is to that of Shaw’s plays.

Expect no heady but long-winded Shavian arguments here. Saltzman’s play is replete with wisecracks and brief, fast-paced scenes, like those in the movies, and moments of slapstick and mugging. Dwight Richard Odle’s set looks as if it could be on a soundstage, as backdrops move around.

At least the play is never dull. Saltzman’s shenanigans get most of their laughs.

He took a few liberties with the facts. Michael Holroyd’s biography of Shaw says the playwright and his wife, Charlotte, spent four days with William Randolph Hearst and his movie star mistress, Marion Davies, at their palace in San Simeon before moving on to Los Angeles. In the play, the Shaws first meet Hearst and Davies and the other glitterati at MGM in Culver City.

However, the play’s most bizarre incident, in which the Shaws’ airplane is forced to land at Malibu and they hitch a ride into L.A. with a UCLA student, actually happened. So did other elements of Saltzman’s plot, including Davies’ and Hearst’s campaign to obtain the movie rights to Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and Davies’ unawareness that Shaw was a vegetarian when she planned a menu.

Saltzman’s script relates an offstage encounter between Shaw and actress Ann Harding, in which she became hysterical. While this meeting indeed took place, the script doesn’t honor all of the facts about it, as reported by Holroyd. But a greater question is why this dramatic-sounding scene is recounted instead of staged.

Generally, however, Saltzman draws on a wealth of motivations and incidents that feel plausible, in contrast to his “The Tin Pan Alley Rag” (Pasadena Playhouse, 1997), in which the play’s central conceit, a meeting between Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin, felt contrived. Here, the story is framed by a flashback told by Mrs. Shaw from six years later, shortly after Shaw won an Oscar for “Pygmalion.”

Nicolas Coster’s Shaw looks “like Santa Claus in a famine,” to quote a Saltzman line. Coster handles Shaw’s eagle-eyed retorts and allusions to self-grandeur with dry timing. Mala Powers is equally adroit as the independent-thinking Charlotte. But one brief scene between the couple, in which he sings an Irish song, feels like an unnecessary attempt to soften their relationship.

Far more flamboyant are the Hollywood impersonators: brassy Carmen Thomas as Davies, Steven Gilborn as the scheming septuagenarian Hearst, Glenn Taranto as the Yiddish-inflected Louis B. Mayer, J. Richey Nash as the dashing playboy Clark Gable, Peter Van Norden as the still eloquent but over-the-hill John Barrymore.

Martin G. James delivers the broadest performance as several underlings, most notably the Shaws’ inadvertent chauffeur and Davies’ butler. This last character, a would-be actor, performs a few Shavian lines in his native Spanish, which prompts Shaw to deliver some unexceptional opinions about the differences between stage and movie acting.

Director Daniel Henning, whose Blank Theatre Company in Hollywood helped develop the script, effectively maintains the play’s brio. Now maybe Saltzman can add just a little more bite.

*

‘Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollywood’

Where: Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.

Ends: May 4 matinee

Price: $42-$49

Contact: (949) 497-2787

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Nicolas Coster...George Bernard Shaw

Mala Powers...Charlotte Shaw

Carmen Thomas...Marion Davies

Steven Gilborn...William Randolph Hearst

Glenn Taranto...Louis B. Mayer

J. Richey Nash...Clark Gable

Peter Van Norden...John Barrymore/Billy

Martin G. James...Oscar/George O’Connor/Mr. Gibbings

By Mark Saltzman. Directed by Daniel Henning. Sets by Dwight Richard Odle. Costumes by Julie Keen. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Stage manager Nancy Staiger.