Review: ‘Paradise Hotel’ at Meta Theatre

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It takes more than a few Actors’ Equity card-carrying cast members to make a professional-caliber stage production, and the fledgling Menander Theatre Company still has a ways to go in this regard.

‘Paradise Hotel,’ Georges Feydeau’s 1894 farce about an adulterous one-night stand gone horribly wrong, proves an overambitious choice for the group’s inaugural production at the Meta Theatre.

The play is a typical whirlwind of seductions, betrayals, close calls and slamming doors (though budget constraints make the latter a shaky proposition). Limited production resources aside, the more serious problem here is a lack of facility with the requisite performance style for this material. Assaulting their lines with mannered, over-the-top mugging more suited to a vaudeville routine, the cast push way too hard for the comedy to appear like effortless froth.

Particularly out of their league are the unhappily married Pinglets (Philip D’Amore, Catie LeOrisa), who are neither convincing nor amusing. When the affronted husband retorts: ‘Do I look as if anything’s funny?’ he means business.

As Pinglet pursues lecherous designs on the frustrated wife (Jeanne Simpson) of his asexual best friend (Michael Bonnabel), and a frisky maid (Eris Migliorini) puts the moves on the bookworm son (Chris Arnst), the action moves to the seedy hotel where paths collide and annoying characters multiply (Tip: If an attempted French accent comes out sounding like a Nazi storm trooper, you’re better off dispensing with it).

For all their comic exaggeration, there are grains of truth in these people that director Gina Torrecilla never illuminates, and as a result, many of the play’s subtler observations about the vagaries of the human heart are lost in translation.

-- Philip Brandes

‘Paradise Hotel,’ Meta Theatre, 7801 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 29. $25. (800) 838-3006. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Caption: Philip D’Amore and Jeanne Simps in ‘Paradise Hotel.’ Credit: Menander Theatre Company