Deserted

Marvin Cheiten visits ‘Whizzer’s Island.’

By: Stuart Duncan
   Local playwright Marvin Harold Cheiten has shown great promise in the past, often choosing esoteric subjects and examining complex characters. His latest effort, however, Whizzer’s Island, is a disappointment. Described as "a new comic mystery," it is neither new nor comic and, in truth, not much of a mystery either. It is more recycled Agatha Christie stereotypes set in an all-too-familiar plot with inane dialogue to stir.
   Moreover, playwright Cheiten has outrageously peppered the play with local Princeton references — everything from street names to local restaurants, showering the speeches like confetti. We begin at the island home of "Whizzer" Willis on Barnegat Bay in late August. Whizzer, it seems, was a football hero at Princeton and thus the house is a symphony of orange and black, from the bunting over each window to an Ivy League Championship banner as a wall hanging. We first meet Tom Brown and his daughter, Thalia. Tom was a classmate of Whizzer and they have been invited to the island for the weekend. Tom calls Thalia "pumpkin" because pumpkins are orange and black, but not fierce like tigers. (Oh yes, the dialogue drops to that level.)
   We then meet Roxanne who is a sort of nurse, but with a "past." It turns out she had an affair with Tom while she was taking care of his wife (now dead). The butler (and gourmet chef) Foxton acts as if he has seen too many episodes of The Addams Family and is a Lurch wannabe.
   And to finish off: Claudette, Whizzer’s stepdaughter and self-proclaimed ingenue, enjoys pouring herself into too-tight dresses and posing on sofas. Dr. Soberin is a wacky doctor who may be mad and certainly has a terribly affected foreign accent to suggest it.
   There were supposed to be others in attendance but — you guessed it — a major storm has cut the island off from communication with the mainland and they are all trapped for the night. There is a purpose to the visits: Whizzer has a new "business project" — something about a chain of restaurants catering to lovers of deer who can bring their children to pet the creatures just before they are killed and served as entrees. It takes Princeton’s "deer problem" to its natural end game but, you will note, does nothing about the parking problem.
   Luckily the bodies start to drop and then pile up. In fact most of them end up just behind the large sofa where the remaining characters can step over them and around them for the second act. Incidentally, Carrie Ballenger’s set design is a major help in keeping one’s sanity for the two hours needed. And Christopher Gorzelnik contributes some wonderful lighting and sound for the storms.
   The cast tries valiantly to overcome the script and some of them make headway. Joe Whelski works particularly hard as Tom Brown, and Joanne Nosuchinsky as Thalia is a genuine delight, pointing out the inconsistencies as they dribble across the stage. Cate Adams, who plays Roxanne, is a fine actress, reduced in this show to whining a lot and wringing her hands. Lauren O’Hara as the stepdaughter gets killed, but not soon enough. Fernando Gambaroni, as Dr. Soberin, could easily find work in any Marx Brothers early movie, and Curtis Kaine as Foxton actually gets the few laughs in the script with an excitingly droll way of dealing with anything that comes his way. He even manages to make sense out of a long speech about his restaurant career on Witherspoon Street in Princeton.
   Michael Giorgio, as Whizzer, gets himself slain early in the evening, thereby avoiding any script problems. Dan Berkowitz has come in from the West Coast to direct, but to little avail. Going out of the theater I heard a woman ask, "Will this get to New York?" Her husband answered, "I’m not sure it will get to Lawrenceville." Funniest line of the night.
Whizzer’s Island continues at the Hamilton Murray Theater, Princeton University, Princeton, through Aug. 26. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $15; (609) 258-7062.