Comment on this story What: Mame, directed by Reggie Law When: May 21 thru June 11 Where: Bijou Theatre Center Cost: Call 522-0832 for tickets and info

Bijou opens the charming musical

by Paige M. Travis

Chevy Anz is familiar with portraying larger-than-life characters. She has played Eva Peron in Evita for the Oak Ridge Playhouse, the Clarence Brown Theatre and on stages in Florida and Texas. And now for the Bijou Theatre she fills the fancy shoes of Mame, the zany, imaginative, industrious and wholly unique title character of the 1966 musical based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, who based their work on the novel by Patrick Dennis.

Mame Dennis is a free-spirit who, in 1928, becomes the guardian of her nephew Patrick. With little idea of how to be a “proper” mother, she introduces the 11-year-old to her panoply of friends, including best pal Vera Charles, who doesn’t like children but cares a great deal for martinis.

Over the course of the play, Mame is rich, poor, then rich again, married and widowed, and always her irrepressible self. Her message to her young charge—even as he grows up into an independent college man—is ultimately to be himself and not care what others think. Anz echoes the character’s philosophy.

“Even after she lost all her money in the stock market crash, she persevered,” says Anz. “Live, live, live. Even without money, have a great time. Celebrate constantly.” The UT theater graduate can’t recall having a Mame-like role model during her childhood, although she’s met plenty as an adult.

Although the Mame of book and theater is based on a real woman, the result on stage is a fairytale exaggeration of reality. Patrick Dennis, presumably the real Mame’s nephew, wrote his novel under a pseudonym. His observations, Anz notes, are therefore given a child’s innocence and wonder. From an 11-year-old’s point of view, his aunt, her friends and their adventures are fantastic.

“Some characters are quite villainous,” says Anz, who has performed the role of Mame once before as an understudy filling in, as well as that of Vera Charles for one night. “People he only briefly met are drawn with a broad brush. Characters he knew have a bit more dimension.” The people of Mame are cartoonish, she says, but ultimately they have human feelings.

Anz has a special connection with Mame, as it was the first musical she ever saw. In 1968, she saw an in-the-round production at the Valley Forge Musical Theater starring Patrice Munsel, the opera soprano and television star. Anz saw the same actress perform as Mame again in 1989 and 1992, when the actress was in her late 60s. “She could still be playing Mame for all I know,” Anz says.

Although actresses in the title role can range widely in age, Mame is usually cast around 40, Anz says. Angela Lansbury was that age when she debuted the role on Broadway in 1966, winning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Lucille Ball, however, was 63 when she played the role in the 1974 film version.

That the spirited Mame can be envisioned at any age is a testament to her appeal as a character and a sort of fictional role model. Drey Herron, who plays Mother Burnside and Madame Branislowski�in the Bijou production, says, like all musicals, Mame has certain fantastic elements, but its message is realistic.

“The bottom line is that relationships are the most important things, taking care of each other,” she says. “It has touches of realism because you are dealing with real people. It’s very high energy and entertaining.”

In her dual roles of the old Southern matriarch and a Russian salon owner, Herron is challenged to switch gears as quickly as she changes costumes. Mother Burnside is the mother of Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, the gentleman who courts Mame in the show’s first act. Given her gentility and Mame’s individualistic streak, she doesn’t approve of his son’s choice of a wife.

“It takes a good while to get won over,” Herron says, “But she finally does.”

After a time, the irreverent Mame charms everyone, even those who suffer her frustrating inability to hold down a job. Madame Branislowski is the Russian owner of a salon for men where Mame attempts to give manicures during the Depression.

“She is very forceful and big. She fills the room,” says Herron. “The Southern matriarch fills the space in a different way. She’s old, and she’s the boss.”

Herron, who has recently appeared as Miss Hannigan in the Bijou’s Annie and in the Clarence Brown Theatre’s version of Oklahoma, purposely avoids viewing film or stage versions of the plays she’s acting in—at least until the production is over.

“I don’t want to take from the movie and just copy it,” she says, adding that she’ll be tempted to rent Lucille Ball’s version or Rosalind Russell’s Auntie Mame—the 1958 film version of the play before it received the musical treatment by Jerry Herman in the ‘60s.

Because of its potentially large cast and extensive costumes and sets, Mame is less frequently produced than other, equally enjoyable musicals. But its sharp and witty language is extremely quotable. “Life’s a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death,” says Mame to young Patrick. Her friend Vera (played by Bea Arthur in the Broadway show as well as the 1974 film) has a wicked tongue as well: “I have an astronomical discovery for you. The man in the moon is a bitch.”

The Bijou show, directed by Reggie Law of the Oak Ridge Playhouse, will likely feature as many Mame-worthy costumes as the beleaguered theater can muster; the Bijou is currently trying to avoid foreclosure on its mortgage due to unpaid rent and utility bills. But the show will go on starting May 21, and if the Bijou is anything like Mame, a spirited revival could be just around the corner.

May 20, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 21 © 2004 Metro Pulse