Theatre in Review: Love and Money (Signature Theatre Company)

	Joe Paulik, Gabriel Brown, Maureen Anderman. Photo: Joan Marcus

Cornelia Cunningham, the heroine of A. R. Gurney's latest comedy, hasn't had that much love in her life, and now she's getting rid of all her money. "I'm expiating my crime before I die," the elderly, widowed matron announces, adding, by way of explanation, that she is guilty of "having too much money." I hasten to add that she has provided for her rather distant grandchildren -- her son and daughter are dead, their wasted lives having come to premature ends -- and her one remaining servant, the eminently grouchy, gimlet-eyed Agnes. And, to be sure, Cornelia herself won't starve, as she is vacating her Manhattan town house for a posh assisted living facility. But, before she goes, she intends to bestow every last spare dollar on a rainbow coalition of liberal causes.

As it happens, Cornelia isn't the only one shedding her assets. Gurney, her creator, has apparently divested himself of the need to supply Love and Money with anything like a plot. He introduces a couple of male intruders -- a lawyer who arrives to counsel Cornelia to go slow with her big giveaway and sticks around to fall under her spell, and a young, rather too ingratiating, black man who claims to be her illegitimate grandson -- but nothing much comes from either development. Gurney has often been accused of turning out alarmingly thin comedies -- unfairly, in my opinion -- but this time the charge sticks. Even with a running time of only 75 minutes, Love and Money finds plenty of time for such off-topic diversions as a rendition of "Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please."

That song is, of course, by Cole Porter, who, Cornelia notes, "happens to be the poet of my people." Those people would be WASPs, the term for the moneyed elite of the American Northeast that Gurney has always professed to hate but which he allows to be introduced into the conversation here. And in its most amusing moments, Love and Money allows Cornelia to hold forth impudently on the idiosyncrasies of her heritage, among other random topics. Confronting the possibility that her daughter gave birth to a mixed-race son, she notes, "The closest I've ever come to an affair with a black man was to vote for Obama." Turning to Gurney's second favorite topic, the theatre, she comments that any professional actor is merely "a con artist gone straight." Earning a substantial shock-of-recognition laugh from the mostly older audience at the performance I attended, she goes through her magazine subscriptions, noting that Time is but a shadow of its former self, admitting that she never reads The Nation, "but agrees with everything it says," and, dropping a copy of another publication in the wastebasket, announces, "Farewell, New Yorker, I simply don't get your cartoons anymore."

Indeed, Love and Money is little more than an excuse for Gurney to mount his standard stable of hobby horses, commenting once again on the perfidy of the Republican Party, the stultifying nature of WASP manners, the glories of the American songbook, and the salubrious effects of a well-planned dinner party. He also alludes to the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem "Richard Cory," itself the subject of an earlier Gurney play. With all this opinionating, there's really no room for drama; even the provenance of the surprise grandson turns out to be a non-issue -- if at first he seems to gain a hold on Cornelia, as she points out, she has seen "that play where the young man pretends to be the son of Sidney Poitier."

Under Mark Lamos' smooth-as-silk direction, Maureen Anderman makes a crustily amusing mouthpiece for Gurney's comments, playing cat-and-mouse games with her visitors and generally holding forth with the effortless authority of one born to the ruling class. She also has a lovely moment at the end when, just before leaving her drawing room, she turns around and gives the place a last glance filled with an acute pang of regret. Joe Paulik is solid as the lawyer who so earnestly seeks to preserve what is left of Cornelia's dwindling fortune. The gifted Gabriel Brown is an attractive enigma as Cornelia's putative relation, his fascination with F. Scott Fitzgerald perhaps providing a clue to his motivations. If there's anyone who can breathe some comic life into the hoary role of the grumpy Irish maid, Pamela Dunlap is the one to do it. Kahyun Kim is appealing as the young visitor from Juilliard who captures Brown's romantic interest.

Michael Yeargan's sleek Federal-style set, with the requisite bay window and such furnishings as an elaborately carved desk and an ornately painted screen, communicates a sense of the wealth that Cornelia possesses. The rest of the design package -- Stephen Strawbridge's lighting, Jess Goldstein's costumes, and John Gromada's sound -- is marked by pure professionalism.

Walter Kerr, commenting on the play The Star-Spangled Girl, wrote, "Neil Simon....hasn't had an idea for a play this season, but he's gone ahead and written one anyway." That pretty much sums up the situation for Love and Money. For once, Gurney's ability to endow a light comic situation with sharp social observations and deeper emotional undertones has gone missing. This one is only for his most devoted fans. -- David Barbour