WHS players will present Broadway hit comedy
By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
The Whitewater High School Players will be presenting Neil Simon’s classic comedy “The Good Doctor” on Feb. 28 and March 1 at 7:30 p.m. and March 2 and 3 at 2 p.m. at the Whitewater High School auditorium.
This Broadway hit comedy is a series of sketches based on the writings of the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov.
“The Good Doctor” opened on Nov. 27, 1973, for 206 performances and received four Tony Awards. The 13th play written by Simon to be staged, his reputation was already well established by then with such hits as “Come Blow Your Horn” (1961), “The Odd Couple” (1965) and “The Sunshine Boys” (1972).
“‘The Good Doctor,’ of course, is not a play at all. They are sketches, vaudeville scenes, if you will, written with my non-consenting collaborator, Anton Chekhov,” said Simon.
Simon molds Chekhov’s short stories into exquisitely timed and often hilarious theatre vignettes, which incorporate a variety of characters.
Simon’s adaptations of the stories are filled with dry humor, surprise endings, and clever common people who confrontations with superiors often end in absurdities.
American stage and film actor Jack Lemmon has described Simon’s characters as being absolutely flawed, having foibles and faults, but as real human beings.
“They are not all bad or all good; they are people we know,” Lemmon said.
“The Good Doctor” occurs inside the writer’s – obviously Chekhov himself – head with chaotic ideas popping in and out.
In one sketch, a feisty old woman storms a bank and upbraids the manager for his gout and lack of money.
In another, a crafty seducer goes to work on a wedded woman, only to realize that the woman has been in command from the first overture. Not to mention the classic tale of a man who offers to drown himself for three rubles.
Inside the writer’s head
Chekhov was born in 1860 in a small town in southern Russia and died at age 44 in 1904. His father was an artist who played violin, conducted the church choir, and painted.
When Chekhov’s family moved to Moscow following the bankruptcy of the family’s grocery business, Chekhov stayed behind at age 14 and lived alone for five years to complete his schooling in 1878.
In 1879, Chekhov enrolled in Moscow University to study medicine. To pay for medical school, Chekhov published short stories and wrote humorous articles for a prominent newspaper in St. Petersburg.
After graduating from Moscow University in 1884, Chekhov began working as a doctor outside Moscow. It is reported that he looked after nearly 1,000 patients, many of them peasants who he did not charge.
Yet even as a practicing doctor, Chekhov couldn’t turn his back on writing. He said, “Night and day I have only one obsession: I have to write. I have to write. I have to, I have to.”
Considering Chekhov’s work as a playwright, especially for “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard,” the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy said: “It is thanks to Chekhov that a whole new style of playwriting has been born.”
On the WHS stage
This is Jim McCulloch’s sixth WHS Players production as director, including three musicals in which he collaborated with WHS music teacher Lori Heidenreich.
Asked to compare “A Good Doctor” for WHS actors with recent WHS Players musicals like “Beauty and the Beast” and dramas like “Our Town, “ McCulloch said, “The biggest challenge for ‘A Good Doctor’ compared to the musicals we’ve done is that this is a more in-depth character study of each person, so it’s not just going out there and having these broad strokes of characters. [The actors] have to do a little more thinking to make these characters come to life.”
McCulloch described the characters in “Our Town” as “more generic, more representational,” whereas the “Good Doctor” characters are “actually real people.”
Another important challenge, McCulloch noted, is that the actors in “A Good Doctor” have “just 10 minutes to bring a full character to life” whereas in “Our Town” they had “three acts to develop the characters for the audience.”
The comedy in “A Good Doctor” provides yet another challenge for WHS actors.
“Comedy is much harder than tragedy,” McCulloch said. “It’s easy to make people cry. It’s harder to make people laugh. You have to be able to relate to these characters in order to empathize with what they’re going through in a particular scene.”
Several of the actors provided a brief comment about their character in “A Good Doctor.”
Tyler “Cowboy” Myszkewicz described the Narrator as someone who “ties all the scenes together with a friendly, storytelling quality.”
For Matt Lema, the Sailor in “The Downed Man” is “someone who makes a living on the waterfront, entertaining any maritime dwellers with incredible acts of drowning,” including a woman passing by named Sasha who Melissa Mursch describes as someone who is “very upper class, wealthy, and a bit snotty.”
In “The Audition,” Erin McManaway views her character of a young actress standing alone on a dimly lit stage as “very young and inexperienced in the field of acting. She is just trying to get into the field and trying to make it as a professional actress.”
According to Aubrey Gard, “The Defenseless Creature” she portrays actually “knows exactly what she wants and will do anything to get her way!”
As Emma Stutzman sees it, the Mistress she plays in “The Governess” “tries to be stern, but really has sympathy for the lower class.”
In “Too Late for Happiness,” Sally Kate Hixon portrays a woman who is “shy and desolate, but wanting someone to love.”
Hixon describes Madame Brassihov in “The Sneeze” as “very caring of her husband, but snooty to the lower class.”
Lema says that Kuryatin in “The Surgery” is “an eager medical student ready to perform ‘simple’ matters of surgery on this first patient.”
And according to Ben Hanson, the Sexton who happens to be that first portent, “is a religious man who had a terrible childhood and suffers from a terrible toothache.”
“The Seduction” involves three characters.
In his role as Peter Symeonch, Shawn Carey creates a character “whose essence is comprised of nothing more than to seduce wealthy, successful women to the point of boastful expressions.”
Ben Hanson depicts his character, the Husband Nicky, as “naïve and unaware, completely oblivious to the fact that his wife is being stolen from under his nose.”
As to the Nicky’s wife, Destine Fuchs believes that “Irena is someone who is in control, even when her composure slips.”
The cast and crew of “A Good Doctor” includes: Tyler Myszkewicz, Shawn Carey, Matt Lema, Ben Hanson, Melissa Mursch, Connor Dalzin, Erin McManaway, Yvanna Strait, Caleb Hintz, Sally-Kate Hixson, Marren McCulloch, Aubrey Gard, Emma Stutzman, Travis Winger, Destiny Fuchs, Ben Matthews, Janie Triebold, Liz Carey, Leif Sayhun, Jason Shelbourn, Jamison Zaballos, and Ali Sedmak.
Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students.
Tickets are on sale at the WHS Box Office or by calling (262) 472-8178.
If you go…
What: WHS Players production of “The Good Doctor”
When: Feb. 28 and March 1 at 7:30 p.m. and March 2 and 3 at 2 p.m.
Where: Whitewater High School auditorium, 534 S. Elizabeth St.
Cost: $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and students
