The Brian C. Smith style is on the loose again at his Off Broadway Theatre in Wilton Manors.
Those attending the opening of his latest production, Beau Jest, will be startled, if not dazed, when they put foot in the theater’s newly decorated lobby.
Smith takes an almost boyish delight in the lobby’s redecoration, in which, of course, he has had a hand. He admits to poking a little fun at his own theater with new gold beveled mirrors and a color scheme that even he is at a loss to describe. He finally agreed on the word “carmine” for the red he is using as the dominant hue.
“It’s being done on a shoestring and put together with Elmer’s glue,” he says, laughing. “I just wanted to have fun with the idea of the grand old movie palaces that used to be.” (Previously, the theater was the Manor Art Cinema.)
If opening night patrons can tear themselves away from the lobby, Beau Jest, a hit off-Broadway, awaits them. The play opens Wednesday after a week of previews that began Oct. 14.
Playwright James Sherman came from his hometown, Chicago, to help shepherd the production and to do a bit of co-directing with Smith.
Beau Jest, of course, is a takeoff on the title Beau Geste, Christopher Wren’s novel that has been made into a movie three times: as a silent with Ronald Coleman, in 1939 with Gary Cooper and again in 1966 with Telly Savalas.
Beau Jest, you can guess, has nothing to do with the shifting sands of the Sahara. It’s a love story as well as the story of a Jewish girl and her relationship with her father.
Asked if he is Jewish, Sherman replied, “Completely.” But he added, “None of my plays have Jewish themes. Some of my plays have Jewish characters in them the same way August Wilson’s plays have black characters.” (Off Broadway playgoers saw Sherman’s The God of Isaac in a production here last season.)
Sherman, 38, is playwright-in-residence at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, where most of his five plays have had their premieres, including Beau Jest.
The beau in Beau Jest is played by Tyrone Murphy; his love is played by Hillary Kacser, both of whom are New York actors. The remainder of the cast is from South Florida — Chuck Benjamin, Paul Rouffa, Janece Martell and Jim Cordes.
The gist is the jest in the title and the heart of the comedy is a masquerade conceived by the girl. She convinces Benjamin to pose as her lover, the character played by Murphy, because he does not have the Jewish persona required for her parents’ approval.
Beau Jest has found its extraordinary success, Sherman believes, because of the laughs it delivers. “And also,” he adds, “because it is about love and about family and about parents and their children.
“When I write, I really don’t think about villains. There are a lot of young playwrights today who write plays in which they are trying to get back at their parents. I feel that I am different from a lot of playwrights of my generation because I am not an angry man.”
Indeed, Sherman was eager to return to Chicago to rejoin his wife and young son, who is, incidentally, named Isaac.
Smith is ecstatic, he says, to have Beau Jest, which has been playing for a year at the Lambs Theater in New York. Audiences in Canada and Germany are currently enjoying the comedy. They will be joined soon by audiences in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Israel, South Africa and England.
Smith says he had been “waiting, waiting, waiting” to bring the popular comedy to South Florida. It took two years to achieve his goal. He had to work through New York producer Arthur Cantor, whose name might ring a bell with seasoned South Florida theatergoers. Cantor was once producer at Miami’s Coconut Grove Playhouse.
Beau Jest, Smith says, is packing them in at New York and is expected to run two more years there. “I knew that I would be the first to get it if I was patient, and I was patient,” he says.
The play’s opening will mark the beginning of the theater’s sixth season and introduce a new lobby, where Brian C. Smith will be standing opening night. “I love to shake their hands and kiss their cheeks,” he says.
—- Bill von Maurer covers theater , and is a frequent contributor to the Sun-Sentinel.
— Beau Jest is scheduled to open Wednesday at Off Broadway Theatre, 1444 NE 26th St., Wilton Manors. Performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Tickets are $20 and $22. Call 566-0554.
