ARTSMONDAY: A Warm Welcome For Loeb Ex Play

When a jabbering, flourescently-dressed Marielle E. Woods ’08 first strutted onto the stage of “Reception” with a shell-shocked Jonah C. Priour ’09 in tow, I followed Priour’s example and settled back into my seat in chagrined resignation. Woods’ schizophrenic movements within the confines of the bedroom set was quickly making me claustrophobic, and I thought that the rest of the play would be similarly overdone.

But I quickly got used to the non-stop flapping of both Woods’ hands and jaws, and it became easy to appreciate just how brilliantly annoying Woods is as an obsessive-compulsive mother-of-the-bride. Not to mention the perpetual chaos and energy that she—and the entire cast—generated in the Loeb Experimental Theatre.

Directed by Simon Nicholas ’07 and co-produced by Zachary B. S. Sniderman ’09 and Haining Gouinlock ’07, the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s (HRDC) production of “Reception,” played at the Loeb Experimental Theater April 5-7.

In “Reception,” a play by L.M. Vincent, a young psychologist, Blair (Priour), comes to Meg’s (Woods) Boston apartment. He plans to sabotage the engagement of Meg’s daughter Melissa (Anna I. Polonyi ’10), for whom Meg is throwing an engagement party and with whom Blair has been in love since high school. A delightfully quirky mix of guests arrives throughout the day, including a broke businessman turned porn writer (Steve Sweeney), a giggly southern belle whose past is not as chaste as it seems (Rebecca M. Harrington ’08, who is also a Crimson columnist), and a pair of man-hungry rivals, Diedre (Windsor G. Hanger ’10) and Rebecca (Caitlin C. Vincent ’07).

The play’s two acts tell the same story in two different rooms of Meg’s apartment. The first act is set in the bedroom, which the guests use as a coat closet and a hideout from the rest of the party. The second act is set in the living room. Both sets, designed by Alexander E. Furer ’07, were perfectly balanced: sparse enough to allow for the production’s enormous mobility and detailed enough to create the atmosphere of a snooty, upper-crust apartment.

“Reception” was reminiscent of an Oscar Wilde play, or perhaps George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House,” which played earlier this year in the Adams Pool House Theater. It was a similar European-style house party, albeit with far more action and humor and none of the civility of “Heartbreak House.” And whereas Shaw’s play was characterized by languor, this production could be described in three words: energy, energy, energy.

The energy in HRDC’s production of “Reception” was definitely its crowning glory. There was some sort of activity happening on every millimeter of the stage. Under Nicholas’ direction, the story’s tension, excitement, and chaos were almost palpable.

But in the second act, the action occasionally swerved into overdrive. Look left and you see Dickie (Alexander D. Rafael ’07-’08) spiking the punch. Right: Candy (Harrington) twirling a flower. Center: Diedre and Rebecca competing for male attention. The acting was superb, but there was no central point of action. I found myself sitting at the edge of my seat, twirling my head like a dreidel in attempt to catch every little bit of action—and, in the process, missing the overall scene.

If there was a central point of interest, it would be Priour. The experienced student actor was captivating as soon as he stepped onstage, adorably polite and awkward as he endured Meg’s incessant chattering. When Priour was on stage, the stage belonged to him—even if he was only sitting in a chair twiddling his thumbs at stage right, while two of his clients were in the throes of passion upon the bed at stage center.

There were many great scenes in this production, but two in particular stood out. In the first act, Priour delivered a fantastic soliloquy about his character’s love for Melissa, addressed to himself in the bedroom mirror and punctuated by occasional breaths from an inhaler.

But nowhere did Priour impress as much as in his last scene, when he was beset by a gripping, realistic asthma attack after he confessed his feelings to Melissa. It was the one scene completely devoid of the comic element, and was shocking after the almost 90 minutes of straight chaos and humor that ran beforehand. It jerked me out of my laughter and into tears within a second.

“Reception” was a madhouse, a party even more hectic than and almost as nonsensical as the Mad Hatter’s tea party in “Alice in Wonderland.” It was pure fun, and a pleasure to be a guest.

—Reviewer April B. Wang can be reached at abwang@fas.harvard.edu.