Ah, the 1950s. The fashions alone … what a time!—and Dezart Performs has brought it all to life with Perfect Arrangement, now playing at the Pearl McManus Theater at the Palm Springs Woman’s Club.
The two-week run is sold out—yes, the whole run! You might try phoning the company and seeing if there are cancellations, or whining to see if they will add extra chairs or performances (good luck).
Artistic director Michael Shaw welcomes the audience and reveals that Dezart has now become a recognized professional theater, joining the Equity union as small professional theater. Congratulations! Congratulations also for this show: Shaw produced and directed Perfect Arrangement with smooth and admirable skill.
Young people really should see this show to learn about the paranoia, the secrecy and the fears that bestrode the 1950s. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and Communism might have to be explained, but even more important would be learning about the conformity of the times, when everyone’s houses were supposed to look the same, when people’s behavior mimicked what they saw on the TV commercials … and when everyone smoked! Women wore hats, gloves and high heels just to go to the supermarket! Men wore entire suits and ties to business! Girls were supposed to giggle! Men made jokes about women’s inferiority, and people cooked with lard. The music, which you will hear at this show, was relentlessly perky. How exhausting it all sounds … and how it explains the 1960s!
As for being gay back then? Didn’t exist, at least not openly. Well … it didn’t until the State Department decided to ferret out “the fags,” as it called them, to expunge them from government jobs as an “undesirable influence.” And that brings us to this play.
Bob, Millie, Norma and Jim have secret lives: The two girls are gay, and the two guys are gay. They have intermarried and face the world as two straight couples, living in adjoining apartments with a hidden entrance through a closet (get it?) door.
Bob Martindale, even-handedly played by Adam Jonas Segaller, toils for the Personnel Security Board as one of the top people in his division at the Department of State. He has been charged with finding and firing anyone who even appears to be gay, and we come to realize his mercilessness is his shield against his own being found out. He gives a stellar performance.
His legal wife, Millie, is gleefully portrayed by Phylicia Mason, who parades the ’50s fashions beautifully. I really hope that she meant to have her slip showing in one outfit, and I wonder if girls today even know what a slip is. A stay-at-home “wife,” she outwardly conforms to her role by sweetly reciting recipes and touting cleaning products … but inwardly, she seethes at having to hide her relationship with Norma.
Norma Baxter, played by Olivia Saccomanno, works with Bob and lives with Millie. She brings a gravitas to both her role and her wardrobe statements; she’s especially gorgeous in the gown which she wears to the opera. Yes, they used to dress to go to the theater, people, NOT WEAR JEANS AND CAPS!
Sorry … I got a little carried away there. Anyhow: Saccomanno plays a thoughtful Norma which makes her attempts to imitate a squealing bubblehead even sadder.
Jim Baxter, portrayed by Hanz Enyeart, is a high-strung teacher who loves and lives with Bob but is married to Norma. He lives in terror of being found out but is determined to bulldoze through the nightmare. Enyeart gives a multilevel performance that draws the eye and rewards with the unexpected.
Theodore Sunderson, the State Department top gun, is solidly played by Hal O’Connell. He infuses this role with an edgy power, alerting us that his hail-fellow-well-met exterior might be covering up for his inner bully. He brings a believable Authority Figure quality to his part that makes us want to see more of him.
His wife, Kitty Sunderson, is brilliantly played by Deborah Harmon. She creates a ditzy character that you have to love, despite everyone’s opinion that she is a dope in a mink stole. She layers her performance with rare flashes of truth that glint through her mascaraed eyes and practiced lipstick smile.
Barbara Grant is a character who works at the State Department and is the subject of much gossip as a globetrotting slattern. So it’s quite a surprise when Yo Younger shows up playing this role, looking fashion-model stunning in sleek European fashions (Hats—why did they ever go out of style? There is nothing more flattering!) and radiating danger through her every move. Younger has to love playing this role, slithering through the troubled lives of the other characters and igniting change where it is least expected. Watch her stillness.
Written by Topher Payne, this award-winning play premiered off-Broadway in 2015. The script is bespangled with great belly laughs, while never veering far from the guilty terrors of those leading double lives. He has captured the vocabulary of the ’50s (“Goody!” “Phooey!” “Ta!”) as well as the awful obsolescent terms of this battle (“the latents,” “the deviants”) set in Washington, D.C.
Kudos to the loyal and hardworking members of the Dezart Performs company for this production. It runs two hours with an intermission, and if you can get in to see it, you won’t forget it. It will make you think about lies, shame, suspicion, security risks, fear, irony, hate, stereotypes … and also furniture polish, girl talk and sex.
Astronomers use light to look backward in time. We have theater to do that.
Dezart Performs’ production of Perfect Arrangement is performed at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Jan. 20, at the Pearl McManus Theater at the Palm Springs Woman’s Club, 314 S. Cahuilla Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets, which were listed as sold out as of publication, are $30 to $35. For more information, call 760-322-0179, or visit www.dezartperforms.com.