Stage

A.R. Gurney's play is a feast for actors. With one set and minimal costume changes, the actors for this Appleseed Productions effort at Atonement Lutheran Church get to do everything else: six players with about 10 roles each. In what other play can an actor portray an imperious, reactionary banker in one scene and be a 6-year-old crawling around the floor at a birthday party in another?

The most popular playwright at Syracuse Stage during artistic director Arthur Storch's era, 1974 to 1992, Gurney is something of a paradox. His plays are immediately accessible to general audiences and filled with fun despite his highly unconventional use of time and space. Scenes come out of step chronologically and overlap one another. Characters from one scene that we've never met before start talking at the edge of the set before the previous scene is done, employing actors we've just seen in entirely different roles just a few moments previous. Yet it's all very easy to follow, even without notes.

His characters, however, initially appear to be highly conventional: the old WASP elite that appeared in all American plays written before 1940. They're Episcopalians who have servants, belong to private clubs, send their children to private schools and dancing classes, and use a lot of crystal and silver when they eat. Not without sin, they consume great quantities of booze and know a thing or two about adultery. Gurney never skewers, however, because he loves these people. He grew up in what used to be the richest neighborhood in Buffalo, as several internal references make clear.

The playwright understandably feels much sadness at the passing of his class, the people who thought formal dining, even breakfast with father, was the center of the household. The new owners who take over the house want to break it up to turn into "useful space" for a doctor's office. "It's democracy at work," the architect claims.

Each of the six players in The Dining Room gets a chance to show off, although Appleseed veteran Doug Rougeux has the most fun of all. A graduate of Ringling Brothers' Clown College, Rougeux knows how to generate laughs on cue. This time, though, he first convinces us he's the stuffiest paterfamilias imaginable and later a humorless, accusing teen-age boy who finds his mother in a compromising position with a gentleman caller. The contrast positions him for his biggest, most hilarious role as the self-important clubman who thinks that a malicious crack has sullied the family honor.

New ways to find humor also come to Lanny Freshman, Syracuse's last remaining vaudeville comic. Many of his other roles have been variations on his favorite parts in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. After exploring new roles, like the stockbroker who's become a carpenter or the architect who would destroy the dining room, he scores his biggest hit by appearing merely to read. This time he's the controlling old WASP who calmly plans to micromanage every moment of his own funeral, down to the playing of the hymn, "Onward, Christian Soldiers." (Keith David Reeves will take over these many roles on Saturday, Nov. 1, Sunday, Nov. 2, Nov. 7 and 8.)
Melissa Kuersteiner's best moments call for anguish rather than humor. Early on she's the ugly duckling who'd rather go see Saint Joan with her peculiar maiden aunt than suffer though another dancing class as a neglected wallflower. Darkly comic are revelations to her father about why she wants to return home, how her husband happened to leave her and the several alliances she has made since.

Dave Tobin as the father, listening plaintively to the daughter's tale unfold, lies at Gurney's moral center. Tobin makes him decent, understanding, non-judgmental and loving of his erring daughter, even as he finds his own values trashed, symbolized by the breaking of his favorite glass.

JoAnne Simiele scores best as the matron who loses her temper with the insinuating anthropology student writing about the eating habits of a dying civilization. And young Lisa Coombs, an East Syracuse-Minoa High School senior, breaks hearts as the 90-year-old granny who asks to be taken back to a house that no longer exists.

Director Patricia Elise Catchouny neatly balances five balls in the air at the same time but could have used stronger differentiation among the portrayal of the servants. Her set looks plausible for this social class. Noel C. Beebe's many costume changes unobtrusively redefine tone and mood.

This production runs through Nov. 8. See Times Table for information.

--James MacKillop