You can't cheat an honest citizen, and whether to remind audiences of that fact shapes productions of Douglas Carter Beane's cautionary tale about a con artist on the loose in fashionable boho circles. Most theaters play it safe, making the prey a calf-eyed innocent, the predator a giddy young gamine on a fling and their encounter something that could only happen in the never-never-land of New York City. Cenacle Theater director David Hart Waggoner, unafraid to put an edge on the satire, has instructed his actors accordingly. As a result, both Chad Ortis' naive scribbler and Sarah Laudonia's name-dropping siren allow some steel to show through the sparkle to make clear the complicity between the Taker and the Took, both emerging as far more likable characters for their honesty and self awareness.
We have all been flimflammed at some time in our lives (and those who say they haven't are either lying or just waiting their turn) and know it to be as commonplace as it is human. And if the technical resources of this south-side storefront ensemble are insufficient to bring its concept to fulfillment, their acknowledgment of this universal phenomenon is still to be commended.
