“So Help Me God!” was written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, the playwright of “Chicago,” the hit Broadway play that became the hit Broadway musical and then the hit Hollywood musical; its ego maniacal leading lady, its scheming ingenue and its cowering support players seem straight out of the Bette Davis classic “All About Eve” but written 20 years earlier; it was scheduled for a Broadway opening in 1929 – dramatically scotched by the Great Depression and delayed 80 years until the Great Recession … now!
In short, there is no question that “So Help Me God!” is a theatrical find – a revelation! — and the Mint Theater Company was duty-bound by all that remains sacred and seductive in the theater to bring it… finally… to the stage.
But what is the actual experience of watching the play?
It is a divine diva-thon, a barbed backstage comedy, “A Royal Family” on crack, a “42nd Street” spiked with the cynicism of “The Producers”…if you fall asleep during the dull patches. With a cast of 15 (not including the little lap dog) there was just too much theatrical goings-on for me to absorb.
Still, the story of the fabulous and ferocious star Lily Darnley who turns a serious “social comment” play into an over-the-top vehicle for her own aggrandizement is worth seeing for the performance of Kristen Johnston alone, who is best known for her six seasons playing Sally Solomon on “3rd Rock from The Sun” and for her brief but memorable role as the over-the-hill party girl Lexi Featherston on “Sex and the City” who falls out her own window. Here in high heels, full-length ermine coat and ravishing sneer, she towers over the production like a flamboyant drag queen with an excess of growth hormone… and I mean that as a compliment. She gets the best lines and makes the most of them. She doesn’t want to play ” a stupid professor’s wife,” she wants the playwright to make her a Duchess: “I’m going to be a Lady, goddamn it, or the whole show can go straight to hell.”
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So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins
at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, through December 20
Directed by Jonathan Bank
Sets by Bill Clarke; costumes by Clint Ramos; lighting by Robert Wierzel; sound by Jane Shaw; properties by Deborah Gaouette; hair and makeup design by Jon Carter; production stage manager, Samone B. Weissman. .
Cast
Kristen Johnston (Lily Darnley), Brad Bellamy (Dave Hobart), Catherine Curtin (Belle), Amy Fitts (Eloise), Jeremy Lawrence (Blake), Ned Noyes (George Herrick), Kevin O’Donnell (Jules Meredith), John G. Preston (Bart Henley), Allen Lewis Rickman (Mose Jason), Kraig Swartz (Glenn), Peter Van Wagner (Goby), Matthew Waterson (Desmond Armstrong/Electrician), Margot White (Judith Hudson), John Windsor-Cunningham (Mr. Chester Burleigh) and Anna Chlumsky (Kerren-Heppuch Lane).
Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Ticket price: $55
Photographs by Richard Termine. Top, Anna Chlumsky and Kristen Johnston. Left: Kevin O’Donnell, Anna Chlumsky, Catherine Curtin and Kristen Johnston (in the ermine)
Jonathan Mandell
Jonathan Mandell, who tweets as New York Theater, is a native New Yorker and third-generation journalist with diverse experience on newspapers, magazines and websites.He has ...
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