At the Old Globe in 1988, a sylphlike young-looking actor named Lynne Griffin created Frankie, a blind teenaged girl in love with a boy who later became a famous radio personality. Her performance graced a run of John Olive’s “Voice of the Prairie,” an unforgettable play about the early days of radio, performed in the Cassius Carter Center Stage.
Griffin, who has a successful television and film career in Canada, played numerous roles at the Globe during the following decade and beyond. Most recently, she created a bawdy and memorable Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” at North Coast Repertory Theatre (NCRT). It was gratifying to see the former ingénue create a character role.
All the more reason for NCRT to cast her in another play, Evan Smith’s “The Uneasy Chair,” premiered by New York City’s Playwrights Horizons in 1998-99. A spoof on Victorian dramas set in 1880s London, “The Uneasy Chair” continues through March 25. Griffin’s performance as Chelsea landlady Amelia Pickles is ample reason to see the play. She is full of mischief and surprises.
A second reason to attend is to enjoy the period costumes created by Paloma H. Young and the lively staging of former Old Globe staff director Brendon Fox, who does what he can with the material.
Griffin’s foil is Pickles’ cantankerous lodger Capt. Josiah Wickett, a role played by Robert Grossman, seen in impressive prior outings at NCRT in “The Chosen” and “Halpern and Johnson.” On opening night, the actor experienced two unfortunate maladies: He “went up” on numerous lines, and he suffered a disastrous and distracting wardrobe malfunction. Hopefully, as the production goes on, both situations will be remedied. Otherwise, he will remain anything but easy in his “easy chair,” as the good Captain says.
Those vicissitudes aside, the play itself is problematic and, at nearly two-and-a-half hours, too long. The actors step out of each and every scene to address the audience directly, as if the playwright does not trust his own situations, which would be funny without our knowing each feeling and motivation.
There are three additional actors, all of whom do very well with their characters. Craig Huisenga appears in numerous other roles, male and female. Rhianna Basore, recently a lovely Juliet at NCRT, portrays Miss Pickles’ upwardly mobile and marriageable niece, Alexandrina Crosbie. Her unsuitable suitor is John Darlington (Christopher M. Williams), Capt. Wickett’s attractive nephew. Both pairings suffer insufferable complications. And in Act II, 25 years and more later, the play turns dark indeed, unless one considers the extreme infirmities of old age comic.
One keeps waiting for NCRT artistic director David Ellenstein to turn up material and actors that are equally matched in excellence. Let us hope it won’t be too much longer.
“The Uneasy Chair” continues at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday, with 2 p.m. matinees on selected Saturdays, at NCRT, Lomas Santa Fe Plaza, 987 D Lomas Santa Fe Drive in Solana Beach.
For tickets and information, visit www.northcoastrep.org or call (858) 481-1055.