Theatre in Review: Rollo's Wild Oat (Metropolitan Playhouse)With all the discussion about the dearth of women playwrights (on Broadway, anyway), the time is ripe to take another look at Claire Beecher Kummer. An altogether forgotten figure, she was a one-woman industry, grinding out light comedies and musical comedy librettos with remarkable regularity between 1907 and 1930. (These were only the years of her greatest activity. Her earliest credit is 1903 and she was still being produced on Broadway as late as 1945.) It would be putting it mildly to say that the critics loved her. That intemperate old wasp Alexander Woollcott hailed her "airy and capricious nonsense which was familiar enough in the best of Oscar Wilde, which A. A. Milne could recapture when he wrote for Punch, only to lose it again when he wrote for the theatre, but which was unknown on our stage until Miss Kummer started to write for it." That's the kind of praise you can take to the bank. Woollcott stated the above in his review of Rollo's Wild Oat, which racked up an impressive 228 performances in the 1920-21 season. In the same review, however, he added, "Such prattle as Claire Kummer writes is sometimes effortful and not infrequently merely empty," and I'm afraid that, seeing the play today, the charge sticks. Metropolitan Playhouse is devoted to reviving lost works in its snug, three-sided East 4th Street venue, and I'm personally grateful to them for the opportunity to see one of Kummer's works. But this labored, lumbering comedy isn't likely to spark a Kummer revival. That "airy and capricious nonsense" that so captivated Woollcott apparently evaporated during Rollo's many years of exile on the bookshelf, leaving only a series of mechanical and obvious plot contrivances. The wealthy naïf lost in the show business woods is a popular comic trope of the period: George S. Kaufman never got tired of it, and others, including George Kelly and Maurine Dallas Watkins made good use of it as well. Kummer preceded them all, but Rollo's Wild Oat lacks the wisecracking vigor and satiric slant that distinguish such backstage comedies as The Butter and Egg Man, June Moon, and So Help Me God! (Kelly's The Torch Bearers, about an out-of-control little theatre group, belongs in this category as well.) The title character of Rollo's Wild Oat is an heir to an air brake fortune, but not for him the life of a business executive. Deciding "I am going to sow one wild oat," he blows his inheritance on a Broadway production of Hamlet, starring himself. Rollo engages a crass, cigar-smoking theatrical manager named Abie Stein (we'll pass over that one, as Groucho Marx used to say) to help him find the rest of the cast. "Bring an assortment of them around," Rollo commands, eager to meet his fellow actors. Stein pulls together a brace of broken-down old hams who are desperate for a paycheck -- but it's telling that these characters are so carelessly drawn that their appearance on the scene generates little amusement. It doesn't help that when they get down to the business of staging Hamlet, they all declaim their lines in absurdly over-the-top fashion. Anyway, Rollo soon becomes more interested in his Ophelia, an ingenuous showgirl named Goldie Macduff, who, by her own admission, is utterly lacking in talent. (She isn't even a success as a chorine; she was cast in The Midnight Frolic, but it didn't work out because, she notes, "I get sleepy around twelve o'clock.") Meanwhile, Lydia, Rollo's equally talentless sister, forces her way into the cast, where she falls for the comely tragedian playing Laertes. Because none of the characters in Rollo's Wild Oat has any talent whatsoever, there is no comic contrast between them and Rollo and Lydia, and, consequently, there is very little comedy. You won't be surprised to learn that the performance is a bust and that Rollo's controlling grandfather summons everyone to his house in the country for one of those third acts where everyone's lives are sorted out, that to their satisfaction, except possibly those playgoers who were expecting an evening of laughter. In 1920, Broadway was about to enter into its wisecracking heyday, but with Rollo's Wild Oat we have to make do with limp near-jokes and observations too mild to be called caustic. Kummer's dialogue may have been filled with riotous comments in 1920, but they have lost their kick over the course of 94 years. Stein says, "Hamlet? Do you think anyone wants to see it?" "Did the old man die last night?" Stein asks of Rollo's grandfather. "I don't know. He ain't dead this morning," replies a housemaid. "You seem to be acting all the time," says Lydia to her young swain. There is also a remarkably dull passage in which Goldie, reading the role of Ophelia, refuses to say the line "like a puff'd and reckless libertine/Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads," because she thinks it doesn't sound quite proper. Clearly, the director, Michael Hardart, has tried to find some solid comic point of view for these tired and predictable proceedings, but none is to be found. Certain members of the cast sometimes ride their dialogue pretty hard, as if commanding laughs to appear, but the effort rarely pays off. In any case, there are a number of fresh faces anyone would like to see again, beginning with Kevin Sebastian, who captures Rollo's self-absorption while remaining thoroughly likeable. Similarly, Erica Knight is an attractive Goldie, even if the character has little to do but complain about the theatre. Joe Joyce is an amusing presence as Rollo's dissatisfied manservant. Alexis Hyatt brings some charm to the role of the tremulous, perpetually excited Lydia. And David Licht blusters convincingly as Horatio, the family tyrant, who has a secret connection to Goldie's grandmother. In other respects, the production is remarkably good, given what must have been a relatively tiny budget. Alex Roe's scenic design is amusingly backed by a drop depicting multiple silhouettes of Hamlet, holding Yorick's skull. Sidney Fortner's costumes include some nice period frocks and witty Hamlet costumes; the appearance of Claudius, looking like he might be suffocated by his abundant wig and beard, is possibly the funniest thing in the show. Christopher Weston's lighting is attractive throughout. We can't write off Claire Beecher Kummer based on the evidence of a single play, but let's hope that if this, or any other, company chooses to revive one of her works -- and I'd personally be interested in seeing A Successful Calamity or Her Master's Voice -- it has something more to offer than this. As it happens, this one is ill-named. Rollo's pursuit of his wild oat has thoroughly tame consequences.--David Barbour 
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