Theatre in Review: Ten Chimneys (Peccadillo Theatre Company/Theatre at St. Clement's)In Ten Chimneys, playwright Jeffrey Hatcher takes Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and ensnares them, sometimes awkwardly, in the plot of The Seagull. It is 1937, and the celebrated pair are ensconced in their summer home at Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, getting ready to rehearse Chekhov's classic, starring Alfred as Trigorin and Lynn as Arkadina. With them are Hattie, Alfred's possessive mother, and Carl and Louise, Hattie's children by another marriage, who act as caretakers and all-purpose servants. Arriving early before rehearsals begin is Sydney Greenstreet, their Sorin, bulging and full of bonhomie; there's a surprise guest, too, in the form of the adolescent Uta Hagen, cast as Nina. This is not the imperious, regal Hagen of later years; like Nina, she is coltish, idealistic, and extremely impressed by older men. For example, she wouldn't at all mind helping herself to Alfred Lunt. As in Chekov, time passes, squabbles break out, hopes are aired and discarded, romances are considered, and private sorrows are disclosed. The city folk are preoccupied with sophisticated disappointments while their country counterparts complain about more mundane matters. Hatcher has worked hard, and sometimes successfully, at giving Ten Chimneys the patina of one of the Lunts' high comedy vehicles. ("Hattie is a dream, isn't she?" "The kind you tell to an analyst!") There are some amusing and insightful passages detailing Lynn and Alfred's obsessive devotion to their art. We see them rehearsing one passage of The Seagull -- each repetition pitched at a higher velocity -- as they strive furiously to be word-perfect. A scene in which Lynn and Uta, despite their rivalry, discuss what sort of makeup Nina would wear in her Act IV appearance, is delightful; it's fun to watch these two pros drop their rivalry to bat ideas around, and, when they arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, their joy is infectious. As in Chekhov's plays, nothing much happens in Ten Chimneys, but it suffers from a similar sense of stasis without providing compensatory character insights. Hatcher serves up various points of conflict but declines to bring any of them to a satisfactory boil. Alfred labors under the burden of his often childish dependents. Hattie clutches desperately at Alfred -- watching the mother all but devour her son, Lynne exits, wondering loudly where she left her copy of Oedipus Rex -- but this situation is stated, then largely dropped. We hear about Carl's ways as a pool shark, which prove a drain on Alfred's finances, but Hatcher never arranges a confrontation between them. Louise, worrying about her absent husband and keeping two households, is supposed to be the most put-upon member of the clan, but when she suddenly erupts, shattering a couple of plates, the storm comes seemingly out of nowhere. Furthermore, Lynn, at the height of her beauty and fame, is hardly an Arkadina; Chekhov imagined a foolish, aging romantic who spends money heedlessly, deferring everything to the pursuit of love. Hatcher correctly portrays Lynn as a beautiful, fanatically disciplined actress who embodies glamour and artistic prowess. (Interestingly, given Arkadina's anxieties about her age, he makes almost nothing of the fact that she is seven years older than Alfred.) And, in a striking example of trying to have it both ways, the author has Alfred teetering on the edge of an affair with Uta, while also conjuring up an offstage male visitor, an old school friend who may or may not have been Alfred's lover. (It is generally assumed that both of the Lunts were gay, even though neither of their biographers ever found any evidence of it; Noel Coward, who probably knew them better than anyone, never mentioned it in his diaries and letters.) It's fair game for a dramatist to make Alfred bisexual, but Hatcher seemingly lacks the time for such a complex issue, and the two romance plots essentially cancel each other out. It's an amusing idea to have Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick -- a real-life married couple -- play the Lunts, and, within the constraints of the script, they realize these glamorous monsters with considerable brio. McCormick, an underrated high comedy technician, is especially beguiling when swanning around displaying her great lady airs. (Exasperated by her brother-in-law's rough manners, she coos, "Oh, Carl, you're so...what you are.") She also has a treasurable moment when, teaching Uta how to cry, she indulges in an orgy of keening suitable for a tragedy by Aeschylus. Jennings' Alfred is a similarly exquisite creature ("I have to pick carefully chosen clothes that look casually thrown together"), but despite his considerable skill, the script never suggests his innate ruthlessness. It's hard to believe Jennings' Alfred is the man who, infuriated by an actress' late entrance, bit her on the lip while kissing her. (Like everyone else, he also has to deal with some substandard lines. After a tempestuous scene with Uta, someone comments that she is proving to be quite a Nina; he replies in frustration, "She's a Nina, a Pinta, and a Santa Maria!") Michael McCarty is a remarkably convincing Sydney Greenstreet, capturing his unctuous delivery and sardonic manner, especially when describing how the first day of rehearsal with the Lunts begins with "the burning of the Equity rules" and the substitution of their own despotic rule. Julia Bray's Uta is a conventional ingénue with a faint overlay of neurosis; watching her, it's hard not to think that Hagen became a much more interesting person later in life. Lucy Martin makes the most of her acid-tipped observations as Hattie. (Watching Lynn rush off stage, she says, "Look at her run; you'd think someone had just delivered a mirror.") This is surely the most elaborate Peccadillo production ever; Harry Feiner's set design gives us both the exterior and interior of the studio the Lunts built for Noel Coward to work in; the building is nestled in a wide array of greenery. Feiner's lighting adds an extra touch of glamour to the proceedings. Sam Fleming's costumes wittily contrast Lynn's haute couture (including a not terribly flattering turban) and Hattie's eccentric outfits with the everyday wear of the others. John Emmett O'Brien's sound design is perfectly okay. Ten Chimneys ends with a flash forward to several years later, the kind of scene that tells you what happened to everyone in the ensuing years; it also provides Uta with a distinctly Nina-ish entrance that echoes the final scene of The Seagull. All these parallels prove unflattering to Hatcher's occasionally amusing but often aimless affair, however. In evoking so many legendary talents, Ten Chimneys never escapes from their shadows.--David Barbour 
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