All razzle and no dazzle in UA production

Jennifer Holmes Arizona Daily Wildcat Christopher (left), played by Jay Haddad, dips Miss Fischer, played by Rebecca George, during a performance of "On the Razzle."

The production has an interesting history. It's based on Johann Nestroy's 1842 Viennese comedy Einen Jux will er sich machen (He's Out for a Fling), which was actually based on a 1835 John Oxenford one-act farce, A Day Well Spent , about a fling in London. Thornton Wilder based on the Nestroy's version his 1938 Broadway flop,The Merchant of Yonkers, which later became - with minimal rewriting- The Matchmaker. Finally,The Matchmaker inspired the Broadway musical Hello Dolly. On the Razzle is the sixth version.

Where It's At Arizona Repertory Theatre's On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard continues April 13-25 in the Marroney Theatre. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. April 13-17 and April 23-24. The work will also show at 1:30 p.m. April 17-18 and April 24-25. Tickets are $16 general, $14 for seniors and UA employees, and $10 for students. For more information call the UA Fine Arts Box Office at 621-1162.

Stoppard's rendition has three main threads that, in imitation of classical farce, become interwoven into a dense web of action. Prepare to be disoriented. Zangler, a small town grocer, travels to Vienna to garrison his relationship with fiancee Madame Knorr, who owns a milliner's shop. Zangler also takes his niece and ward Marie to his sister-in-law, Miss Blumenblatt, to thwart an apparent romance between Marie and Sonders, a local suitor of unattested means. Meanwhile, Zangler's newly promoted shop assistants, Weinberl and Christopher, secretly close the shop and embark on a fling to Vienna.

Christopher and Weinberl suffer through fortuitous and narrow escapes in Vienna, crossing paths with Zangler's fiancee and Zangler himself, then getting detained at Miss Blumenblatt's place, where most everyone convenes under false identities.

Stoppard's On the Razzle has been criticized for being too verbally decorous to be a farcical romp. His cleverness is sometimes a detriment to the velocity of the play, so that the action slows to trudge through highly convoluted lingual arrangements. When the suitor Sounders pleads to Zangler for possession of Marie, Zangler replies, "Never! She is a star out of thy firmament, Sonders... Do you suppose I'd let my airedale be hounded up hill and - my heiress be mounted up hill and bank by a truffle-hound - be trifled with and hounded by a mountebank?! Not for all the tea in China! Well I might for all the tea in China, or the rice - no, that's ridiculous - the preserved ginger then - no, let's say half the tea, the ginger, a shipment of shark-fin soup double-discounted just to take it off your hands -"

The action similarly falls short of connecting with the audience. One of the essences of farce, as Eric Bentley wisely noted, is the fulfilment by violently active human beings of our most treasured, unmentionable wishes. On the Razzle's primary wish-fulfilment is to have an awesome day off from work, which doesn't have the same resonance as it may have had in 1842 - when work was a strict apprentice-ship detail - or in 1938 when work was hard to come by. We can appreciate Stoppard's play on the same level as we appreciate Shakespeare's plays about kingships, that is, with a historical rather than current sense of sympathy.

Arizona Repertory Theatre offers a performance of On the Razzle that at least beguiles the time even though the script does not make a space for itself within our times. The acting offers confetti to the senses, and the scenery is ambitiously grand. The direction intends a quick, staccato delivery of lines which moves the action and maintains our interest. And the play's lavatory humor appears with appropriate blocking and good timing. It is a fun production with so many stand-outs in the crew that it would be impossible to list them.

But the problems of the script aren't completely saved by the crew's graces. The danger we might feel about the two employees, Christopher and Weinberl, being discovered by their employer in Vienna is never fully exploited. And the opportunities for humor that the surprising and odd entanglements offer to the director are seldom given more than pat blocking. Arizona Repertory Theatre gives us a play that hardly ever converges with the audience's sympathies. It is a delicious tableau-vivant that appeals to little more than the eyes.