Twain and Shaw Do Lunch,getting its world premier in South Florida, makes for a pleasant time in the theater with two legendarily irascible men. Some of that irascibility comes through in this New Theater production, just enough to be endearing rather than rancorous.
Despite its L.A.-sounding title – and playwright Chambers Stevens is an Emmy-nominated L.A. guy – this isn’t a fish-out-of-water tale set on Rodeo Drive. Rather, the play is rooted in fact. In June 1907, George Bernard Shaw was introduced to Mark Twain by Shaw’s American biographer upon arrival in London for a first meeting. Twain had been on the same ship for the crossing.
In the play, Shaw invites Twain to his home for lunch with him and his wife, Charlotte. Meanwhile, Charlotte has been visited by her husband’s too-confident girlfriend, who has agreed to come back when the great man has returned.
They are both great men by this time -- Shaw at age 50, Twain into his 70s – but Twain gets the best of this play. In the banter between the two, Stevens has Shaw toss off aphorisms that originated with Twain, as Twain is quick to remind him. The two argue over the importance of Joan of Arc; Shaw is considering writing a play about her, and the audience knows that he will. There’s more of the to-be-expected reliance on familiarity with the Shaw canon; use of the word “misalliance” and mention of the Aesop fable Androcles and the Lion are laugh lines, and Shaw’s longish retelling here of an amusing incident brings on thoughts of some similarly longish prefaces to his published plays.
The production too often lacks presence: performers have trouble getting some lines out; some pauses go on too long. Still, Steven Neal pretty much nails Shaw’s sometimes ponderous self-importance, and Pilar Uribe does what she can with the dutiful but not clueless Charlotte (when Charlotte calls her philandering husband every name in the book, they’re “Genius,” “GBS” and a scolding “George Bernard Shaw”). Bill Schwartz, though, does well by sly-talking Twain, even getting in a nifty heel click as he dances around Shaw sitting room.
The stage at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, once a neighborhood movieplex, allows for a larger set than New Theater had at its former, just-shuttered, home. The set for Twain and Shaw Do Lunch is the sitting room, a dining area and a few steps that are part of a staircase -- at the foot of which is Twain’s white hat in a bright light.
