by AMY BARRATT

In his book Hot Seat, former New York Times drama critic Frank Rich has some good advice. Rich suggests that if you have anything nice to say about a production, “say it first, because the artists who do valiant work in a mediocre enterprise are, in the journalistic sense, the real news—the lead.”

My Old Lady, now playing at the Segal Theatre, has a truly gorgeous set by John C. Dinning, exquisitely lit by Spike Lyne. In fact, Dinning and Lyne are not the only artists doing valiant work here. On paper, the recipe looks foolproof: a fine script by Israel Horovitz, excellent actors, an experienced director... so it’s all the more sad and baffling to see it go horribly wrong.

My Old Lady is a quintessentially Parisian story, as told by a New Yorker. Mathias Gold (Chip Chuipka), a down-and-out writer of 55, arrives in Paris to claim the one thing his recently deceased father has left him: an elegant, spacious apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. He expects to sell this stately jewel and make a bundle. What a French-speaking lawyer has not been able to make Mathias understand over the phone is that there’s a catch. His father was able to buy the place at way below market value in a curious but quite common (in France) real estate transaction known as a “viager.” The apartment comes with an elderly tenant who is allowed to live there, rent-free, until she dies. Mathias walks in and finds nonagenarian Mathilde (Béatrice Picard) dozing in a chair but very much alive.

The script has lots of good laughs and plenty of dramatic tension. Unfortunately, this production does not. Responsibility for this begins with director Daniel Roussel’s casting—miscasting is more like it. There are three talented actors on the Segal stage, each of whom has moments, but who never come together as a cast. In their scenes together, Chuipka and Marthe Turgeon (as Mathilde’s middle-aged daughter) might as well be in different plays for all the chemistry between them. Picard has many long speeches in English and sometimes it’s all she can do to just get through them.

The set is built not parallel to the audience but on the diagonal, allowing the purple twilight and rosy dawn to spill in through majestic French windows. Unfortunately, Roussel proceeds to block the piece as if he forgets that people will be sitting on the right side of the house. Actors constantly have their backs to that part of the audience, and Turgeon, in particular, is forced to act with her hair.

As annoyances go, Turgeon’s wig needs its own paragraph. Think of a brunette Veronica Lake, only less peek-a-boo than where are you? Her attempts to push it out of her face are as vain as Chuipka’s efforts to muster any feeling for her.

The saddest thing about this exercise is that it’s already scheduled to be repeated, in French, with the same cast, next season at Duceppe. Like the titular old lady, this production seems destined to overstay its welcome.

Clowns and anger

Party with Ernest and Ernestine! For its annual spring fundraiser, Playwrights Workshop Montreal presents a bilingual staged reading of Les Foudres d’/The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine. If you’ve never seen local actors Danielle Desormeaux and Marcel Jeannin in this clown-influenced play, you need to go. Tonight at 8 at Kola Note. Tickets are $30 to support PWM’s important dramaturgical work. 843-3685.

My Old Lady, to May 14 at the Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine), 739-7944

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