When the original director of Gone with the Wind is
fired after only three weeks of shooting, producer David O. Selznick
(James Sullivan) hires director Victor Fleming (Michael Teufel) and
screenwriter Ben Hecht (Michael Mendelson) to rework the script in
preparation for a fresh start.
Hecht has never read the book, so, as imagined in Ron Hutchinson’s
Moonlight and Magnolias, the three men lock themselves in
Selznick’s office and reenact the entirety of Margaret Mitchell’s
1,000-plus page novel for Hecht, while Hecht dutifully transcribes the
action.
Mercifully, the audience is spared a full-length staging of the
book—the show is interspersed with conflicts between the three
men, who grow increasingly disheveled and increasingly constipated as
the show progresses (Selznick insists that they eat nothing but bananas
and peanuts—brain food). Hecht and Fleming butt heads over their
respective importance, while the Jewish Hecht calls out the also-Jewish
Selznick for producing a film that glorifies the slavery-era South
when, at that very moment, across the ocean, Hitler is driving Jews out
of Europe.
Unfortunately, broad, slapstick comedic stylings don’t juxtapose
well with earnest concerns about racism. Public Playhouse’s ensemble
bears no responsibility for this; the real problem is Hutchinson’s
schizophrenic little script, which falls over itself shilling for
laughs, yet begs to be taken seriously as a commentary on man’s
inhumanity to man. Example: A scene in which Scarlett slaps her young
maid in the face is reenacted again and again, ostensibly to find the
least-offensive way to film it. Michael Teufel does his best little
black girl impression. Mmhmm. No points for effort.
While the actors here all do solid work—particularly an
always-excellent Mendelson, whose restraint here is appreciated among a
set littered with bananas and peanut shells—and Dustin Milberg’s
direction keeps things moving at a brisk clip, this baby just didn’t
need to get born. The highlight of the show was when Mendelson
accidentally pegged a front-row audience member with a banana. Now
that’s entertainment.