ART IMITATES SHAKESPEARE IN"PREMIERE!"

Any actor will tell you light comedy is as difficult to pull off as heavy drama. To draw out those gentle laughs while maintaining a buoyant congeniality is to walk a tightrope high above the crowd, that little internal gyroscope spinning faster and faster -- all the while charming everyone with a warm and winning smile.

"Premiere!" ups the ante by also asking the actors to keep everyone's attention by talking about how there's no such thing as art.

For example, if enough people agree something is art, than it is art. Regardless of what it looks like or sounds like. Plain and simple. 

Thus, the value of a creative work is measured by the audience response, not by the work itself. Just like that unheard tree in the forest, if there is no one to hear it (or see it), then it really doesn't exist.

Invisible Theatre gleefully attacks all these considerations in its whimsical Dale Wasserman comedy, "Premiere!," to cap off  the company's prodigious 40th anniversary season.  James Blair keeps this delicate production aloft as director, letting his actors roam freely about a precisely detailed drawing room stage setting (which he co-designed with Susan Claassen).

Dallas Thomas generates a magnetic presence as Rebecca, the wife of grumpy albeit very successful playwright Gil Fryman (Robert Anthony Peters). She gets in some convincing mood changes as the ambitious woman who encourages her husband to pass off his work as Shakespeare's own. Then gets antsy when the high-falutin' scam looks like it might actually work.

A quick sweep through the internet reveals there are some vaguely defined notions of a Shakespeare play that has been lost to us. In "Premiere!,"  however, the notion is well established. They say the play is about Alcibiades, a famous Athenian orator and military leader.

Another online word search confirms that Alcibiades was a real person, but the only connection between Al and the Bard is the one in "Premiere!"

Wasserman the playwright isn't interested in historical accuracy. He only wants to invent a mechanism what will demonstrate how if enough people believe a piece of writing is genuine art, then it really is genuine art (whether it is or not).

If such questions of art and ethics sound interesting, "Premiere!" is a wonderfully sugar-coated presentation of some very deep philosophical concepts.

Or forget all that, and treat yourself to a sweetly nonsensical evening of theater full of inside jokes about theater.

So here's the set-up. Gil wants to write serious drama, not the frivolous Broadway comedy hits of guys like Neil Simon. When he and Rebecca learn about the "lost" Shakespeare play, she encourages him to write a play in the style of Shakespeare and pass it off as this missing work.

It doesn't even have to be an imitation of great Shakespeare, Gil realizes, for everyone agrees this lord of Stratford on Avon also wrote some lousy plays. Even if Gil wrote a very bad imitation, it could still be good enough to pass the test of legitimacy.

Enter the grizzled Nick Cianciotti as shady Lefty Guggenheim, a world class forger of official documents whose office is a public pay phone on the street. Cianciotti gets the lion's share of laughs, talking like a guy who spent his life touring in a road show of "Guys and Dolls."

Also making a big impression is Victoria McGee as Professor Justinia Hawkins, the Shakespeare expert who wears bright red-framed glasses and flaunts her superior literary knowledge.

Completing the cast in less showy but no less important roles are Roberto Guajardo as Dr. Eli Brand, Rebecca's father, and Joe Hubbard as Peter Brand, Rebecca's brother. Peter is also the big-time Broadway producer getting rich presenting hit productions of Gil's comedies.

Not to give away any plot points here, but once Gil and Rebecca discover he has the talent to write a play the experts believe was written by Shakespeare, then Gil and Rebecca realize they would like to get a little recognition for it.

Edit this page (if you have permission) | Google Docs -- Web word processing, presentations and spreadsheets.