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A Monopoly on madness
 Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page H4 of Arts
By KAREN SHADE World Scene Writer
10/23/2005

Roll the dice, take your chances, in 'Marvin Gardens'
When director Frank Gallagher describes the characters of Heller Theatre's next play, "A Hotel on Marvin Gardens," you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

"If you simply describe what happens to the characters, it's like, 'Oh, that's so sad,' " the play's director said. "But (because of) the way it's written, the language is absolutely hysterical."

Nagel Jackson's comedy debuted in 1999 with the Denver Center Theatre Company, a Tony-Award-winning regional company known for its output of new material.

In the play, K.C. comes from inherited wealth. She owns a self-help magazine called "Me." Every April Fool's Day, she invites several of her employees to a weekend on her private island in Long Island Sound. The central activity for the weekend is a cut-throat game of Monopoly in which egos explode and hierarchy wins out.

K.C.'s game is interrupted, however, when her editor, Henry, meets a young teacher, Rose. Rose

Noel Fairbrothers, left, and Harriet Chenault in a scene
from “A Hotel on Marvin Gardens,” Heller Theatre’s
newest. “It’s about how foolish we all are, really,” director Frank Gallagher said, “which are my favorite comedies.”
STEPHEN HOLMAN / Tulsa World
seemingly represents the ideals he's picked up in his mid-life-crisis.

A raging storm strands them on the island.

But "as they continue to go with the game, the game gets less and less fun for them and more and more fun for us, the audience," Gallagher said.

Although the play has a central character, K.C. isn't exactly a lead.

"All the characters give the actors an opportunity to shine. I love ensemble plays. I'm much less interested in plays that have one star and everything moves around one person," he said.

Bo is K.C.'s merely agreeable lover. Erna is the magazine's restaurant critic who works hard at presenting herself as fun and freewheeling as she approaches her 40th birthday.

Henry doesn't know it, but he's about to be fired because he isn't as aggressive as he used to be, to his boss' dismay. He also is in therapy and somewhat proud of it.

Gallagher said the fact Rose is a teacher is laughable.

"Her language is terrible. She uses four-letter words . . . the person you'd least want to be teaching your elementary school kids," he said.

And K.C. puts on a harmless front until the mask drops.

"It's about how foolish we all are, really, which are my favorite comedies. It's the fact that we do get false priorities, and how funny it is (when) these priorities come into conflict. It's essentially nonpolitical. It's not 'Wall Street,' " he said.

Instead, Gallagher said "Marvin Gardens," which takes its title from the coveted real estate square on the Monopoly board, is more a comedy of manners.

"Henry is like Algernon. I really see a lot of parallels to Oscar Wilde and 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' " Gallagher said. "I don't think the playwright . . . had the deliberate intention of doing this, but we clearly have an Algernon, and we clearly have a Lady Bracknell. There's tons of parallels between K.C. and Lady Bracknell."

But Lady Bracknell might be considered more bossy than Machiavellian.

The cast includes Harriet Chenault, George Nelson, Noel Fairbrothers, Devin Meadows and Leslie Goshko.

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