Alexandra O'Daly and Nate Washburn
Photo: © Jacob J. Goldberg Photography

                                            By Marc Miller

The Metropolitan Playhouse is calling its 24^th season the Season of Hope, and it’s off to a modestly hopeful start. Arthur Richman’s The Awful Truth, which showcased the great sophisticated comedienne Ina Claire for 144 performances in 1922, is best remembered by Leo McCarey’s 1937 film version, the first of several teamings for Cary Grant and Irene Dunne (and Ralph Bellamy, in one of his first guy-who-doesn’t-get-the-girl roles). Fans of screwball comedy recall it fondly, and here’s their chance to compare one of the film genre’s proudest moments with its stage source, which was never published, and which director Michael Hardart tracked down at the New York Public Library, where the original prompt book resides. How do the two versions compare? They’re second cousins at best. The stage script is several stations removed from screwball, much closer to the drawing room. And while the movie’s a lot livelier, the play’s more thoughtful.

About all McCarey and screenwriter Vina Delmar retained were a couple of characters’ names and the most basic plot framework. You may recall that Lucy Warriner (Dunne) was engaged to Oklahoma oilman Dan Leeson (Bellamy), but still loved her ex-husband Jerry Warriner (Grant, and in the play he’s Norman Satterly, with Lucy reverting to her maiden name post-divorce, got that?). The movie folks threw in a whole new cast of supporting characters and situations to get the proceedings out of the drawing room, not to mention Nick and Nora Charles’ terrier Asta, on loan from MGM. It’s a very merry 91 minutes, but it isn’t really about anything. Richman, to his credit, wanted The Awful Truth to be about something, something almost Austen-intense: the limited choices and confining moral code facing the modern woman.

Emily Jon Mitchell, Alexandra O'Daly and Erin Leigh Schmoyer
Photo: © Jacob J. Goldberg Photography

So our stage Lucy (Alexandra O’Daly), four years divorced from Norman (Nate Washburn), is about to marry Leeson (J. Stephen Brantley), who here is a lot less of a bargain than even Ralph Bellamy. He’s rich, crude, terse, and used to having his way. So is his grim, judgmental aunt (Emily Jon Mitchell), who has heard some gossip about Lucy that in her eyes may disqualify her as a prospective niece. Norman’s grounds for divorce, it seems, was Lucy’s infidelity, and this is, after all, 1922, and there’s nothing more scandalous. Lucy insists it’s a false charge, and telephones Norman to come over and vouch for her faithfulness, which he does, and Act One curtain. But Leeson wants Norman also to swear Lucy’s allegiance to his aunt, which he does, though he privately suspects otherwise, and that’s Act Two. Suddenly Norman and Lucy are seeing rather a lot of each other, and while they annoy each other as much as they ever did, the sparks are still flying. So Act Three.

It’s all 1922-literate and civilized, with poor Norman having to exclaim “By Jove!” and “Great heavens!” and, to Lucy, “By heaven, I will force the truth out of you!” It’s not easy for such utterances to fall naturally out of a 2015 mouth, and I’m sorry to say, Washburn hasn’t mastered it. Nor has O’Daly, nor has Brantley, though he’s at least suitably gruff. In fact, in a cast of eight, hardly anyone’s playing in proper period. Their rhythms, their gaits, even their ways of laughing are 21^st century, which doesn’t lend a truthful ring to lines like “We were children, living in the morning of life.” They need only visit The New Morality at the Mint to see how it’s done, or maybe they could learn from Erin Leigh Schmoyer, who, as Josephine, Lucy’s supportive best friend, is one of the few onstage who really has the style down. Her, and Eden Epstein, as Lucy’s dutiful maid, and she’s limited mostly to “Oui, Madame.”

Too bad, because Richman has some interesting, proto-feminist things to say about Lucy’s few options in life. She’s broke, having invested badly on terrible stock advice from Josephine’s husband, Eustace (Benjamin Russell, and Josephine has a good line to him: “How often have I told you, give tips only to people we dislike?”), and Lucy does like luxury, and why shouldn’t she? For that matter, why should a wife’s faithfulness matter more than a husband’s? Richman remains evasive about whether she cheated or not, and, in the end, Norman says he doesn’t care, which isn’t a truly satisfying conclusion. They’ve been jabbering about it for so long, we want to know, did she or didn’t she.

Along the way, there are sharp observations about trust, lust, and East-vs.-West (Leeson can’t help sniping at these newfangled New Yorkers, and Brantley gives great snipe). Sidney Fortner’s 1920s fashions are lovely, as are the pre-show Gershwin piano rolls, played, if I’m correct, by Gershwin himself. The Awful Truth is worth rediscovering, but one does wish the Metropolitan had a surer hand on it, and that Hardart had studied the period harder. At the very least, in this Philadelphia Story-like plot, we want to root for Norman and Lucy to reunite. They have to have some kind of chemistry, some magnetic pull, like Cary Grant and Irene Dunne had. Washburn and O’Daly play it like they met a few weeks ago at rehearsal, mastered the blocking, and aren’t particularly fond of one another.

The Awful Truth plays through Oct. 18 at the Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 E. 4^th St. Buy tickets through http://metropolitanplayhouse.org/tickets.