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A simply funny, sleek rendering of a simple plot
Greed: A Romantic Comedy in Mime. Reviewed by Prasad Pereira
As we shuffled into the British Council auditorium on Monday night amid the insufferable humidity of Colombo, what greeted us was a sparsely furnished stage in full black. A large screen mounted on a monolith was at the back with two chairs right in front. The screen would serve to project subtitles that would add to our understanding of the action that was to unfold, much like the silent films "Greed" draws its inspiration from. A piano and a series of spotlights around the stage, some at ground level completed the picture.

And so the platform was set for the Clod Ensemble from the UK's Sri Lanka debut of "Greed: A Romantic Comedy in Mime". And, as in the silent film era when live music would accompany the movie, with a tinkle of piano keys, the show began. The production's debt to the comic genius of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin was all too evident from the very opening and contained much homage to the Little Tramp and the Great Stone Face and the unequalled oft-imitated screen comedy they pioneered. This debt, the producers of this two-person show have gratefully acknowledged in all their publicity.

The story is simple enough. A dentist (Marcello Magni) meets and marries a beautiful young woman (Sarah Cameron) off the streets. They are happy at first managing with his dental practice, but are put out of business by a huge conglomerate. They become poorer and poorer, and then the dentist, who has a drinking habit, accidentally stumbles upon the recipe for a miracle mouthwash while attempting desperately to fashion a cocktail from ingredients under the kitchen sink.

This is Dent-O-Shine - which guarantees perfect white teeth for life - the substance that makes the couple their fortune, and also leads to their downfall. The play is really, underneath it all, nothing but a gimmick that puts a so-so silent movie on the stage. The producers must thus be duly credited, for ingeniously crafting it and recreating the atmosphere of a 1920's silent movie.

The story is actually rather unremarkable, a quite standard, hackneyed plotline culminating in a simplistic Hollywood moral on wealth, greed, its consequence and tragedy. The action, however, moves at a breakneck pace.

It is highly melodramatic in some moments - as when the dentist, after serving in the war effort comes home and ominously tells his wife that "I have learned to kill!" - moving effortlessly through silent-screen style comedy for the bulk of its narrative.

Most of the scenes are played out through this high comic tradition, most notably a scene where the newly wed husband and wife are happy with the simple pleasures of life and are working together at the dentists' practice. The scene shows the dentist removing a patient's tooth and handing it to the wife, in whose hand it turns to money, which she places in a cash register.

This is played out several times, with a slight increase in tempo every time and a change in emotion and mood - in a technique lifted from a Chaplin film. Also, a scene where the husband is found doing a drunken striptease at Clytemnestra's Bar by his wife, who was addressing a businesswomen's meeting from which he has slunk away is particularly funny and well-timed.

Another strength is its focus as simply a 'romantic comedy in mime'. There are no avant-garde musings about the end of the world or the tragedy of the human condition. Though admittedly not of the highest concept, this is well-executed and trouble-free entertainment.

The standout performance of the night was by Marcello Magni who replaced Jason Thorpe from the original production that premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August last year. Although not a naturally gifted or necessarily skilled mime artiste, he is a good actor indeed, and conveyed with subtlety, grace and humour the rise and fall of the simple dentist.

At one moment perfectly at home with slapstick and broad physical comedy and the next moment gliding into melodrama and even poignancy, Magni's performance kept the audience in titters. The scene where he manufactures the dental mouthwash that changes their lives - a moment of comic desperation borne of poverty and the need for a drink - with him hilariously trying to cover up his stupidity, and then coming to terms with a set of brilliant white teeth after being told by his wife that this was their ticket to the big time was outstanding.

Sarah Cameron, on the other hand, although an experienced actress, did not have much to do in terms of stretching or challenging her prowess. Her character seemed a stock female role in a standard Hollywood chick flick and so she did not come through as forcefully as Magni. Though she did have her moments and her precision in mime was a superb display of skill and concentration, she unfortunately had the less demanding role to play and a lot less to do than did her male counterpart.

Truly outstanding - elevating the performance on all levels - was Paul Clark's deceptively simple score. Brilliantly played live by John Paul Gandy, just like in the silent movie days, the music did it all in creating mood, tone and texture. Magnificently navigating all the play's changes with precision and skill, Gandy's work on the piano was truly a bravura performance - tender, funny, dramatic, tense and playful, he brought Clark's music to vibrant life, giving the play its emotional weight.

The show, though not an outstandingly brilliant piece of theatre by any means, was very well presented, with all its minimal production values put to good use. All in all, "Greed" was indeed quite a good night's entertainment. Two final performances of ‘Greed’ go on the boards at the Lionel Wendt on April 28 at 3 p.m. and 7.30 p.m.

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