‘Alfie’ deftly pits pleasure, pain
Self-centered cad? He certainly is that. Yet in his self-assured, unapologetic way, he is also irresistible -- a duality that puts some bite in the title character of the play turned popular mid-’60s movie “Alfie.”
Nostalgia buffs may enjoy a revival of the late Bill Naughton’s play at the Met Theatre, which showcases an appealing performance by Adrian Neil as the womanizing Alfie. But beware the exasperation factor. Alfie’s behavior is, at times, callous enough to make your blood pressure spike.
At once of its time and timeless, “Alfie” is suffused with a sense of male entitlement. The plot is little more than a string of conquests as Alfie, an ordinary English working-class bloke, beds woman after woman. Turning frequently to the audience, he tries to justify his behavior in a torrent of laughable yet painfully familiar excuses.
Lean, dark-haired and unconventionally handsome, Neil’s Alfie is never more amusing than when a thought catches him unawares, disrupting his cool-cat routine just long enough to reveal the bug-eyed blunderer underneath. Katherine Hawkes, Kasey Wilson and Carole Ruggier tug at viewers’ hearts as ladies whose encounters with Alfie land them in unhappy circumstances.
Director Leszek Burzynski keeps the tone breezy yet doesn’t shy from the very real pain that Alfie causes. As the show ticks toward the three-hour mark, though, you wish he’d taken a red pen to the script and speeded up the numerous scene changes.
-- Daryl H. Miller
“Alfie,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends May 24. $18. (323) 957-1152. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.
