Stage Review: 'Every Good Boy' deserves applause

It seems that the pace of collaborations in the performing arts has been picking up lately.

Opera Memphis, DeltaCappella and Playhouse on the Square worked together on staging a singular production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" early this year. Around the same time, IRIS and the Tennessee Shakespeare Company did their own very different take on the same Shakespeare classic. And the Memphis Symphony Orchestra's Opus One series has been doing some good work with the classical group mashing up with local jazz, blues, rock and indie performers.

On Thursday night, the first of three performances of Tom Stoppard's "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" were presented at Playhouse on the Square in a partnership with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, with the last performance being presented Saturday.

This isn't, however, the first time Playhouse and the Memphis Symphony have done this performance. In 2004, they put it on at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts with David Loebel conducting. This time, the cozier Playhouse space hosts the production and the maestro is Mei-Ann Chen. As before, the director is Bob Hetherington and many of the same actors have returned.

Stoppard's brilliantly dark and witty work was itself a 1977 collaboration with composer Andre Previn. They devised a story about the Soviet Union's practice of declaring dissidents "insane" and confining them under conditions of punitive psychiatry.

Two "patients" share a cell and both are named Alexander Ivanov. One is certainly crazy: As played by Michael Detroit, this Ivanov plays a triangle and conducts an imaginary orchestra, cheerfully ranting at the ineptitude of the musicians. He is curious, mostly affable and content with his delusion.

The other Ivanov, played by Michael Gravois, is an ordinary man who had the temerity to complain when friends of his were being imprisoned for having opinions unapproved by the state. He could go free immediately if he would just admit to erroneous thinking -- something easy to carry out, but impossible for him to do, even with his young son pleading with him.

The orchestra, massed at the back of the stage with the Ivanovs' cell at front, is a vital character in the play. It plays Previn's Shostakovich-like music and provides as much comedy and drama as any of the speaking actors on stage.

It's a well-realized collaborative effort. The orchestra delivered a spot-on performance, even when it was intentionally "off."

The performers, Playhouse veterans all, did fine work, Gravois and Detroit in particular in their contrasting existences.

The play veers from flat-out heart-wrenching to hilariously absurd and some of the performances had trouble finding those precise points. But if not every nuance was there, the collective effort was a distinct success.

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Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

8 p.m. tonight and Saturday at Playhouse on the Square, 6 South Cooper St. Tickets: $15-$38. Call 726-4656 or go to playhouseonthesquare.org.

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