Word: dentist
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This obscure Shaw gem depicts "life in an English seaside resort" in the year 1896 and what happens when an impoverished dentist falls in love with the daughter of a feminist. When you learn that the feminist also has a pair of impertinent, over-cheerful, hyperactive twins, as well as a husband who is missing (though not for long), you realize that the stage has been set for comedy in the very best style of Shaw...
Jeremiah Kissel, with his awe-inspiring sideburns and jutting jaw, makes and impressive Crampton, the dentist's landlord and the feminist's long-lost husband. The image of a man unable to handle change, he is belligerently ill-at-ease in an era where the whip can no longer be used to sort out family disputes. Unfortunately, Kissel is a little less convincing when he drops his chronic grumbling in favor of a sentimental attitude...
...amorous dentist and his sweetheart, Gloria, are entrancing in their vivid representation of the absurdities of love, liking and all the intermediate emotions. Chloe Leamon, however, was perhaps not an ideal choice for the part of Gloria. Leamon is entirely credible as a woman contemptuous of passion, but she fails to portray adequately Gloria's descent from feminism to femininity...
...seducer, appropriately named Valentine, is played by James L. Walker. An ineffective "ivory-snatcher" (Phil Clandon's doubtful euphemism for a dentist) but a practiced man of the world, Walker radiates dashing vigor. It is a pity that he allows his cultivated accent to slip for a moment, in the third act, into an abominable twang...
...many of the faults. The first half of Neal Bell's script seems wayward, slow and sometimes cute, in part because director Sharon Ott opts for a too stylized manner of acting. The second half is riveting. This is a story of downward mobility, about a miner turned dentist (sans diploma) who winds up defrocked and doomed in an abandoned mine. In a stunning coup de theatre, the multipurpose set ends by dropping chutes, heaving dust and becoming the industrial hellhole that he struggled, and failed, to escape. W.A.H...