<b>LIGHT UP THE SKY</b> Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Shaw Festival
Through October 11
LIGHT UP THE SKY Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival

By Augustine Warner

So often in theater, a play about the stage is a mesh and mélange of every cliché ever written about the theater.
The difference with Moss Hart’s really entertaining “Light Up The Sky” is that he was there, as one of the great playwrights, directors and producers of the 20th Century.
He built the show on every possible cliché, the conniving slimy producer, the bombastic director, the dim-witted star and the naïve young writer, all people he was familiar with.
We never see “The Time is Now,” the play at the heart of the production written by a first-time playwright and put together by a team of veterans, on-stage and off.
But, it’s the story of the production around which the play twirls.
This is from the days when a play would be taken out of town to work the bugs out, before the New York critics can see the production.
There are legends out there of plays which were turned into hits in Boston or in New Haven or crashed and burned there.
It was a thrill to see one of these new shows, with Broadway stars and dreams on stage.
I saw some of those shows in my college days and one with Barbra Streisand worked and one with Mary Tyler Moore didn’t.
For the producers there was money and reputation at stake, as well as nervous investors.
We’re there for Opening Night in Boston’s old Ritz-Carlton Hotel, with the Colonial Theater just across the Common, with all of its dreams and hopes and money at stake.
The director (Steven Sutcliffe) is in a panic.
The playwright (Charlie Gallant) is lost in this veteran crew.
The producer’s (Thom Marriott) background is in ice shows featuring his wife (Kelli Fox).
The visiting veteran playwright has seen it all (Graeme Somerville).
The star is, well, the star (Claire Jullien).
We’re there for the team deciding it’s a turkey.
We’re there when the critics save the show.
It’s never clear what the central show is about because Moss Hart didn’t care, since the process is the story not the facts.
Director Blair Williams has a strong cast on stage, as well as a wonderful set and costumes from William Schmuck.
Williams keeps the show moving at a break-neck pace so there’s no time to realize how ridiculous it all is, these theater people.
Because he has a strong cast, some performers may walk the line between over-the-top and ridiculous but never quite step over into rug chewing, Marriott’s Sidney Black, Sutcliffe’s Carleton Fitzgerald; Gallant’s Peter Sloan; Shawn Wright’s William H. Gallagher.
I suspect the cast had some fun in the dreary weeks of rehearsal because this is a well-crafted comedy from a master and it’s like a well-oiled watch, moving quickly from scene to scene.
There were problems when the show was in rehearsals and on Broadway because Hart had based so many of the characters on real people although there probably is no one alive who knows who they were.
It was a hit way back when because “Light Up The Sky” fed everyone’s belief about those crazy theater people and that’s unfair because only some of them are.
It deserves to be a hit again because this is a great script with a well-drilled cast on an amazing set with amazing costumes (just look for Jullien’s post-show dress).
See it and enjoy it.