Performing Arts

Dallas Theater Center turns antics into a splendid time

07:44 PM CST on Friday, December 16, 2005

By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News

You know a play is going to play tricks on you when the set prominently displays a calendar turned to April 1. The tricks in The Violet Hour are entirely delightful.

RANDY ELI GROTHE/DMN

Matthew Floyd Miller and Christen Simon fascinate in the Dallas / Theater Center's production of / The Violet Hour.

On Broadway, The Violet Hour seemed an interesting play compromised by a problematical production. At least there was plenty of room for improvement.

The version that the Dallas Theater Center opened Tuesday proved what hardly anybody in New York suspected. Richard Greenberg, in fact, has written a brilliant play, as this brilliant rendition amply demonstrates.

In a Manhattan office shortly after World War I, John Pace Seavering, a wealthy young veteran (Matthew Floyd Miller), is trying to establish a new publishing house. His closest friend, Denis McCleary (Chris Henry Coffey), desperately wants Seavering to publish the novel he has written so that he can marry heiress Rosamund Plinth (Jessica D. Turner).

Seavering has his secrets – notably a clandestine romance with a famous singer, Jessie Brewster (Christen Simon). Things get really strange when his blustering assistant, Gidger (Matthew Boston), discovers that one of the office machines seems to be predicting – accurately – the future.

In his debut as the Theater Center's associate director, David Kennedy has coaxed superbly detailed characterizations from all five actors. You actually believe that Mr. Coffey might just be a literary genius à la Thomas Wolfe, with a personal magnetism like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mr. Boston, playing the funniest role in a consistently funny play, doesn't stop at being a mere comic; he gives us a functionary who really might understand all those pompous jokes he spouts.

Mr. Miller flashes brightly each facet of the play's most complex character, and Ms. Turner, the only local performer, more than holds her own. The Dallas production's biggest advantage over the Broadway one, though, is Ms. Simon, both sexy and imperious as the jazz diva. If she doesn't quite mine the script's suggestions of tragedy at the end, that's her – and the production's – only fault.

The Violet Hour, a very literary play, could easily feel precious in all the wrong senses. But these performers throw themselves into the action with a reckless abandon that takes your breath away.

Finally, this isn't merely an elaborate April Fool's prank on the audience, though it is full of great jokes. The Violet Hour is a meditation on history and reality, though way too light on its feet to be ponderous.

E-mail ltaitte@dallasnews.com

The Violet Hour, presented by the Dallas Theater Center at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd., Tuesdays through Sundays through March 20. Runs 155 min. Tickets $15 to $60. Call 214-522-8499, or go to www.dtcinfo.org.