At Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory, The Rehearsal is a double delight. It is a play within a play (much of Pierre Marivaux’s 18th Century The Double Inconstancy inside Jean Anouilh’s drama set in 1950s France), uniting the past and the modern. It is also one of the best acted plays I’ve seen by the Conservatory for Actor Training’s second year students. It’s no accident that in French “repetition” has the same meaning of repetition or repeating, as in English, but relating to theater, it means rehearsal. Author Anouilh plays on the meaning of the title by showing a modern group of self-centered aristocrats about to rehearse putting on a play by Marivaux to quell their boredom. They insist that The Count and Countess’s new young and innocent nanny perform the heroine, and she will be the object of guilty action. Lucile, the nanny, plays Diane, a simple country girl unwillingly abducted from her loved one by a Prince to be his lover. Jenny Vallancourt is the modern image of Lucile, rather plain but with a hidden spirit that she will out as she is away from her suitor Damiens (Eric Meizelsperger, good and convincing in his care for her but not as old as the text asks for). Like the Prince in the play, The Count, who’s been unfaithful but in a loveless marriage, also falls in love with Lucille, the simple, true-of-heart girl. Andrew Hardaway is such a dreamboat host Count that there’s no doubt of his attractiveness to the women in the play. As for Marivaux’s character Arlechino, who had Diane’s love, he’s willing to just be a friend of the Prince. In the modern play, Scott Shomker’s Villebosse settles for affairs with The Countess (and, it would seem, anyone handy). His costume of multicolored diamonds ties him to Arlechino and the comedia dell’arte that grounds Marivaux’s plays and Anouilh’s improvisational style of happenings riffing on happenings. The Count’s mistress Hortensia has pretty, sexy Katie Sah trying a great re-vamping of him as well as doing the same to the Prince in the rehearsed play. Olivia Osol’s haughty, commanding Countess will do anything to keep her status, even consorting with Hortensia and particularly egging on Hero, The Count’s best friend since school days. Bryan Crow,who last worked in ensemble at the Conservatory, is nothing less than a revelation here as the drunkard Hero, who likes “to cause pain” and “to break things.” But unlike the antagonists to The Prince and Diane in Marivaux’s play, Hero’s modern villainy actually affects The Count and his true love’s union. Hero is a male equivalent of The Countess. Director Ashley Teague maintains a difficult balance in the play as it moves from a comedy of manners to a farce to a (doubly) tragicomic drama, the opposite of the traditional comedy within the main play. Switches between plays are effected mainly by Chris McVicker’s lighting. Costumes denote changes in time and the social status of each character in and out of the rehearsed play. Wigs provide an excellent touch. By the way, two woes beset this production before opening. Olivia Osol had an accident, so that she has to actually scoot around the stage. Luckily, she does so beautifully, even right on the edge of audience members at both sides of the stage. Director and movement coach also deserve credit for this. Osol’s Countess’s costumes by Sofia Gonzalez are a miracle of last minute coping. A second woe caused by Osoi’s accident hangs over all the proceedings in the form of a huge portrait of a woman and mysterious figure off to the side. It says 18th century but seems otherwise not integral to the play. I learned that the portrait originally featured Osoi’s Countess and a dark character. When it was thought that an understudy would have to replace Osoi, the portrait people were replaced. When she returned in time, the picture changed. It is too bad this substitution detracts from Jeffrey Weber’s suitable set. Overall, the production and play are a double treat.
