Gone with the Rewrite Less Moonlight, More Sunshine

Ross Valley Players’ new season opens with Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias, a view of 1939 Hollywood suffering for its art. Here’s a 6:00 a.m. meeting with no breakfast offered because the powerhouse who called the meeting, Producer David O. Selznick, believes that breakfast interferes with the creative process, and he wants all creative processes in high gear right now. Three weeks into his present film, Gone with the Wind, the producer insists on a complete rewrite of the script and a new film director. Scrap it all, and start over, he says, even though this delay is costing fifty thousand a day and hard feelings in the cast.

Ex-newspaperman Ben Hecht has been brought in to redo the script, and Victor Fleming will replace ex-director, George Cukor. Two complications: Fleming is needed back on the set of The Wizard of Oz, where he has left a crowd of drunken Munchkins singing, “Ding Dong, the bitch is dead,” and Hecht hasn’t read the book. Worse, word is already getting around town that there’s trouble on the set, and newshounds and gossip columnists are clamoring for a quote.

Time is critical, so Selznick and Fleming will tell the story, and Hecht will type it as they go. When they say that Margaret Mitchell’s book is a story of heartbreak and pursuit of a useless cause, Hecht asks, “Is it the deep South or the Writers’ Building?”

Two days later, still sequestered in the office and living on a diet of bananas and peanuts, the team is unraveling. Is this a racist story, Hecht asks. He refuses to glorify racism; Fleming’s burst a blood vessel in his eye; Selznick’s father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer, is holding on line two. Each man declares his importance to the filmmaking process, and then all three break into a wonderfully antic demonstration of how, exactly, Scarlett should slap Prissy. (Director Bob Wilson gives credit here to fight director, Ron Severdia.) Tension is broken, but where do they go from here?

By the second act, it’s evident that the playwright has really painted himself into a corner. Now in the fifth day of the lockdown, the characters are both underfed and fed up, but everyone in the audience knows that the film will be made. And so Hutchinson diverges into serious world issues of the time: Hecht takes potshots at Selznick’s refusal to attack anti-semitism; Selznick says Hecht is “looking at the world through a six-pointed star.” The dialogue turns improbable and talky. Could any of this really have happened?

Records of the production suggest that much of it did. Screen credits for Gone with the Wind do list David Selznick as Producer and Victor Fleming as Director, but the screenplay names Sidney Howard as the writer. (Howard was the one Ben Hecht replaced, after he had already written several drafts.) Hecht worked on the script for five intense days, and then Howard was brought back during the filming. When Gone with the Wind won eight Oscars; Sidney Howard’s screenplay got one of them.

In the Ross Valley Players’ production, David Kester plays the obsessive and powerful Selznick, Russell E. Lessig portrays the driven director, Victor Fleming, and Stephen Dietz (also the sound designer) is the frumpy, sympathetic Ben Hecht. Molly McGrath plays the Producer’s dutiful secretary, Miss Poppenguhl, who has to say, “Yes, Mr. Selznick,” over and over, in endless variations.

Moonlight and Magnolias will be at The Barn Theatre in the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross through October 12. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00, and Sundays 2:00. Tickets may now be ordered online through the website, www.rossvalleyplayers.com, or from the box office, 456-9555.

Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune has a misleading title. The play is not a metaphor for the old ballad in which “He was her man, but he done her wrong,” and she plugs him with a 44. The theatrical version, which just opened at the Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley, features no wrongdoing and no firearms. There is a couple of the same names, however, and nudity with simulated sex right at the outset. The audience may wonder, “Where do we go from here?” but McNally has a plan; the couple in bed will now get acquainted.

Both characters are employees in a restaurant. Frankie is a waitress, and Johnny is a short-order cook who quotes Shakespeare and just about anything else. He admits, “I love the sound of my own voice.” This was their first date.

But now it’s 3a.m. She wants him to leave and he won’t, even after she makes him one of her special cold meatloaf sandwiches, even after she’s becoming anxious and insists: “You said you’d go!”

“I lied,” he answers. Johnny wants more – commitment, marriage, children. She says she can’t have children; he’s ready with, “We’ll adopt!” And in between negotiations, they share bits of their own histories, even their ages, with amendments. No last names, though.

They both share a passion for good music. Johnny calls in an unusual request to the classical radio station to play the most beautiful selection, and the request is answered with “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. As if in response to the music, a moon appears between two of the adjoining buildings; they must look at the moonlight now; it won’t be there later.

The groundwork is in place, and the finish, with early sunlight, establishes the hope of real intimacy, even the domesticity they both crave. But between the end of the first act and the end of the play, Johnny’s love of his own voice – along with some contributions from Frankie – add at least a half-hour of extraneous dialogue. To borrow from the song, O lordy, how they can talk! The audience must also marvel that all this shouting and door-slamming in the small hours of the morning does not generate some protests from the neighbors. (The setting is Frankie’s studio apartment; which is still bigger than Johnny’s.)

In program notes, Director Jasson Minadakis draws parallels between McNally’s 1987 work and the social dilemmas of 2008: “Frankie and Johnny both ache for someone who can see them amid the rapid, nerve-shattering commotion of modern life.” Each is vulnerable; each is needy. An audience might recognize themselves here. In this production, though, the two actors who bring this story to the stage—Terri McMahon and Rod Gnapp -- are handsome people, fit and articulate. Empathy with them is harder to achieve. (The show premiered in 2002 with Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci.)

Still, McMahon and Gnapp took on an enormous script with enormous demands and did a superb job with it. Kat Conley’s rumpled set (with a working kitchen) and Michael Palumbo’s lighting (moonlight included) amplify the story and light up the play.

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune will be at the Marin Theatre Company through Oct. 5, mature audiences only. It will be followed on Oct. 6 by a “Words and Music” presentation, “I’ll Take Manhattan,” a musical tribute to New York in the 70’s, with two Woody Allen films and a performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

For complete information on either of these shows or for reservations, call the box office, 388-5208, or see the website, www.marintheatre.org.