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Joan Marcus John McMartin and Norbert Leo Butz in the recently unearthed Mark Twain comedy, “Is He Dead?,” adapted by David Ives. Never the Twain shall meet IS HE DEAD? By Scott Harrah “A new comedy by Mark Twain,” the ads for this show have proclaimed, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Of course, Twain has been dead for nearly a century, but this 1898 comedy has never been produced until now. Discovered in a Twain archive in California in 2002 by Stanford University professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Is He Dead?” is the type of play with mistaken identities, bawdy humor, and cross dressing that was the comedic realm of 17th century French playwright Claude Boyer and countless British farces of the 1890s such as “Charley’s Aunt.” What really makes the show worthwhile is the exuberant, madcap performance of Tony-winner Norbert Leo Butz, who breathes lots of comic oxygen into this funny yet dated work. Butz plays Jean-Francois Millet (who, of course, was a real French artist in the 1840s), a painter who’s fallen on hard times. He’s deeply in debt and owes thousands of francs to the villainous Bastien Andre (Byron Jennings, looking a bit like a 19th century version of the cartoon character Snidely Whiplash). The mustached menace is threatening to foreclose on Millet, so the artist’s pal Chicago (Michael McGrath) masterminds a far-fetched plan that fools everyone in Europe. With the help of fellow painters Dutchy (Tom Alan Robbins) and the kooky Irishman O’Shaughnessy (Jeremy Bobb), Chicago cooks up a ridiculous scheme. Millet dresses up in drag as his alleged twin sister, “the widow Daisy Tillou,” sporting frilly dresses and a number of hideous, sausage-curl wigs, looking like a cross between Pippi Longstocking and some wonderfully demented old Carol Burnett character, with a few campy nods to Milton Berle and his infamous drag shenanigans from TV’s early days. A stuffy British art collector Basil Thorpe (David Pittu, adding to the merriment in one of many scene-stealing roles he portrays) sees Millet’s paintings and asks if the artist is dead, insisting that only artwork by the deceased is truly a good investment. The painter’s friends decide to fake Millet’s death, hoping to increase the value of his work and earn enough to pay off the evil creditor Andre, who also has romantic designs on Millet’s fiancée, Marie (Jenn Gambtese). The caddish Andre is also threatening the financial future of Millet’s sister Cecile (Bridget Regan) and father Papa LeRoux (Broadway veteran John McMartin). When news of Millet’s “death” leaks to the world, the press and public bestow accolades upon him and the prices of his paintings soar. Everyone believes the ruse is true, from Millet’s fiancée and family and the French media to two lovable spinsters, Madame Caron (Marylouise Burke) and Madame Bathilde (Patricia Conolly). Most of “Is He Dead?” is a screwball but sometimes predictable story that contains all the clichés of bedroom farces of yesteryear: characters hiding in closets, corny dialogue loaded with ribald puns, and actors hamming it up for laughs. However, the show does have a few particularly hysterical moments, most notably a laugh-out-loud absurd scene in which Butz pretends to put on a prosthetic leg and insert a glass eye in order to disgust Andre and put an end to his many marriage proposals. Here, Butz’s wacky characterization and seamless comic timing are both reminiscent of Lucille Ball’s gleefully giddy physical comedy and slapstick on “I Love Lucy.” As adapted by David Ives, “Is He Dead?” probably contains a few contemporary touches to make it palatable for 21st century audiences. There isn’t anything overly original here, and “Is He Dead?” probably wouldn’t be considered one of Twain’s greatest works even if it had been produced earlier because of this antiquated genre’s literary “mothballs” — one-dimensional characters, occasionally wooden dialogue, half-baked plot twists. However, Twain’s satirical statements on fame, greed, and the pretensions of the art scene are as topical and relevant today as they were 110 years ago. Director Michael Blakemore gets memorable performances from this winning ensemble cast, but it is the incomparable Norbert Leo Butz who really dusts off the theatrical anachronisms, gets all the laughs, and takes an otherwise pedestrian show and gives it verve and panache.
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