Woolly Mammoth gives its audience a frisson of what it would feel like to be titillated by a contemporary Restoration comedy with David Grimm’s riff on the genre, Measure for Pleasure. The piece is a post-modern romp through 21st-century sexual tastes, framed by 17th-century theatrical conventions. There are flirtatious poses, elaborate asides, wanton butt shots, nearly unintelligible dialects, and a series of wigs, each one taller than the one before. (Cheers for costume and wig designer Helen Q. Huang!) Long passages are in rhymed verse.
The setting is mid-18th century, and it finds Will Blunt (the fine Joel Reuben Ganz), valet to Sir Peter Lustforth (company stalwart Doug Brown) in dissatisfied love with openly cross-dressing Molly Tawdry (Andrew Honeycutt). When Sir Peter and his randy, dissembling friend Capt. Dick Dashwood (Michael Gabriel Goodfriend, showing completely different colors than he did in this season’s earlier Stunning) both make a play for young Hermione Goode (Kimberly Gilbert), Will sets his cap for her as well (and dons the most fop-rageous hot pink outfit and platform shoes to woo her). Trouble is, Hermione is protected by her Puritanical guardian Tiberia Stickle, a role executed by Kimberly Schraf with a brogue so flinty it could cut peat.
The second act culminates in a set piece that involves a pagan marriage rite, presided over by Sir Peter in ridiculous crested headgear made from a bicycle helmet and the legs from half a dozen Barbie dolls. There is much chasing around the house, followed by much exchange of bodily fluids—and a resolution that reminds us that true love is what’s important.
More bits of fun to celebrate in this production: the set design, which features plaster pilasters that crumble to reveal the steel framework underneath; the tension between the traditional design elements (a wall of clocks for Lady Lustforth’s boudoir) and their 21st-century counterparts (high-top sneakers on the servants, a single electric light fixture); Goodfriend’s cartoon Italian dialect when he is in disguise as the music teacher Fidelio; and the script’s tag names. I really regret that we never get to meet Miss Stickle’s comrade, the Reverend Puke.
- Measure for Pleasure, by David Grimm, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington