Ring Round the Moon, Christopher Fry’s English adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s 1947 romantic comedy, doesn’t get produced much, mainly because the expense of a large cast and lavish costumes chokes theater budgets. It’s also difficult to capture the play’s tone, because the comic aspects mix with darker views of class and morality.

Thus we can be grateful that Moonlight Stage Productions, enjoying a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, has given Ring a staging with mirth and substance. Director Jason Heil has assembled a varsity cast and guided it smoothly through the intricacies of Anouilh’s tale about a man hoping to save his twin brother from a loveless marriage to a spoiled and selfish woman. Heil has emphasized the play’s lighter side, but there’s no missing the disparities between rich and poor and the former’s manipulation of the latter. Anouilh definitely takes a few bites out of the upper crust.

At a French chateau in 1912, a ball is planned at which Frederic is to announce his engagement to Diana. Meanwhile brother Hugo, a masterly and amoral manipulator, learns that his friend has become patron to a beautiful young dancer, Isabelle. So Hugo blackmails the man into bringing Isabelle, as his “niece,” to the dance, where Hugo hopes that she will charm Frederic enough that he’ll dump Diana. She, not surprisingly considering Frederic’s awkwardness and weak personality, actually loves Hugo, although he seems indifferent to her.

Other guests include Diana’s father, an enormously wealthy businessman who eventually learns that his money is worthless in affairs of the heart; his mistress, who’s betraying him with his amanuensis; a waspish dowager who doesn’t let being wheelchair-bound stop her from dictating to everyone; her long-suffering attendant; and the dancer’s blabbermouth mother.

The introduction of all these characters and their entanglements caused the first act to slow at times. But the pace quickened, and those plot intricacies give almost everyone an opportunity for solo emoting. Most came through, underscoring Heil’s wise casting and direction.

One of the fun elements of Ring is having one man play both brothers and trying to fool the audience as long as possible. Heil uses some stage trickery, which had the

Howard Bickle, Mary Bogh

^{Ken Jacques photo}

audience muttering when, for instance, Frederick went off stage right and Hugo quickly appeared stage left. And the program lists Howard Bickle as Hugo and Horace Bickle as Frederick. Howard certainly outshines Horace, partly because Hugo is a more interesting and challenging persona.

Jill Drexler generally crackles as Madame Desmortes (a French pun?), the hampered harridan, barking orders and observations from her movable throne. She has some of the play’s best lines, especially some aphorisms about the afterlife. But she sometimes hurried her delivery, not giving the audience time to catch up, as when she was wickedly describing the changes in nearby Hugo’s expression.

Francis Gercke and Jessica John sparkle as the illicit lovers, particularly in their long and humorous conversation while doing the stylized struts and twists of the tango (a highlight of Colleen Kollar Smith’s choreography, reprised later with Bickle and Frances Anita Rivera, as Diana). Gercke is consistently hilarious, whether stroking his moustache when complimented or quaking with fear that his employer will discover their involvement.

Rivera is properly devious and nasty as Diana, while Mary Bogh, as the Eliza Doolittle-like Isabelle, spent most of the time appearing sad and perplexed — until both women erupt and they get into a verbal battle that escalates into physicality. Annie Hinton, as Isabelle’s mother, and Veronica Murphy, as Desmortes’ attendant, elicited laughs and sympathy.

Jim Chovick satisfies as the rich cuckold who winds up symbolically ripping up money and recalling his happiest days as a tailor in Krakow. (No one in this production bothers with accents.)

Ralph Johnson, who is probably our town’s best stage butler, again bolsters that reputation, living up to his character’s description as “intensely polite but secretly scornful.”

Mike Buckley’s colorful winter garden setting, with Bonnie Durben’s floral props, shows off Buckley’s lighting, including the full moon, which moves across the starlit evening sky, and even some fireworks.

The costumes, by Roslyn Lehman and Renetta Lloyd, garb the women in gorgeous gowns and flamboyant wigs, with the men in classic tuxes and tails. Bickle’s (the Bickles’) dinner jacket(s), however, could do with shorter sleeves. Chris Luessmann’s sound design is appropriately subtle, with accompanying music and party noises.

The title, incidentally, was explained years ago by Fry. Pointing out that Anouilh’s original, entitled L'Invitation au Chateau, has a Cinderella component, he recalled an amateur pantomime he had written about Cinderella. That pantomine included a song with the lines "We shall be wed/With a ring round the moon."

Cast and credits