by AMY BARRATT

Playwright Andrew Biss is a fascinating conundrum: a Brit who writes frightfully English plays but who lives in Philadelphia and has been produced more in his adoptive country than “over home.” His play Cuthbert’s Last Stand is a case in point. It’s a witty drawing-room comedy à la Oscar Wilde, with a title that references American military history, of all things.

Said play is currently being presented by Unwashed Grape Productions at the Théâtre Ste-Catherine in its “uncut” version. Those of you who saw it in the Harvest festival last fall can be forgiven for thinking you saw a complete play. Biss originally wrote Cuthbert as a one-act—so the first act does, and did, stand on its own—but he later expanded it into a full-length play which, in this production at least, takes up a full two hours. I left the theatre less than wholly convinced that more is better, and this despite the continued high quality of the dialogue and the introduction of a very fetching fourth character.

The play is about an overbearing lush of a mother (played with obvious enjoyment by Laura Mitchell) who is in the habit of bringing young men home as possible mates for her son, Cuthbert. As the play opens, Tristram (Anthony Perzow), whom Mrs. Pennington-South has snatched from a bookstore where she spied him thumbing through Pre-Raphaelite male nudes, is seated next to her on a loveseat being plied with tea while Cuthbert (Oliver Koomsatira) slouches and broods in an armchair. Suffice to say that before the act is out there will be shocking admissions, tearful recriminations and several jolly good laughs.

I have heard Koomsatira’s name repeatedly since he graduated from the Dome last spring and will be sure to follow his exploits in future, whether as actor, writer, dancer, rapper or martial artist(!). Perzow is certainly good looking, and his tall blondness is a funny visual contrasted with the dark compactness of the Pennington-Souths. The play’s style is, unfortunately, beyond his limited training and experience. Mitchell, on the other hand, has all the theatrical knowledge and experience to revel in the language and create a highly entertaining character. The late-appearing character, Trixie, is played by Paul Van Dyck looking so stunning in drag that Jeremy Hechtman would be a fool not to snag him for the drag races at the upcoming Fringe. Director Paul Hawkins misses an opportunity for a Crying Game moment by allowing Van Dyck’s name to appear in the program.

The actors’ accents, if not very convincingly British, are at least uniform. I did wonder if the play couldn’t have borne a relocation to Mitchell’s native territory, the American South. (Indeed, a little research shows that it has been done before, with presumably a few changes made to place names and such).

Unwashed Grape, founded by Mitchell and Hawkins, grew out of a love the two Dawson College teachers share for that quintessential Southern playwright, Tennessee Williams. Their mission is to produce plays, whether comic or tragic, that fit within Williams’s “poetic realist tradition.”

The thought crossed my mind while watching Cuthbert, that Suddenly Last Summer could easily be played on the same white wicker set (by Sydney Harper), with Mitchell as Mrs. Venables. Food for thought, Unwashed Grape.

CUTHBERT’S LAST STAND (UNCUT), TO FEB. 26 AT THÉÂTRE STE- CATHERINE (264 STE-CATHERINE E.), $12–$15, 284-3939

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