Thank goodness Book-It Repertory managed to bring “A Confederacy of Dunces” to the stage before it could be made into a film. Now, the sure-to-be ugly sight of Will Farrell as the caustic Ignatius J. Reilly can be salved with memories of Brandon Whitehead’s ideal version.
Both Book-It and Hollywood pursued John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer-winning novel for years (and yes, Ferrell was once slated for an adaptation by Steven Soderbergh), but both the rights and the projects’ fortunes have proved elusive. This funny and faithful theatrical version shows how the sprawling spirit of the black-as-pitch farce can be equally slippery.
It’s hard to imagine anyone better suited than Whitehead to play the monstrous Reilly, a malingering, dyspeptic, self-appointed analyst of modernity in a flannel shirt and green hunting cap. Shuffling through 1962 New Orleans, Reilly casts vocal, defensive judgment on everything that crosses his path. As the title derived from a quote by Jonathan Swift reflects, he spars with the rest of the world’s inability to recognize his clear-eyed brilliance.
At last, a character a theater critic can truly relate to.
His nemesis goddess Fortuna, in the form of a wheel of fortune, presides over Reilly’s adventures although they are really of his own ponderous making. He needs to get a job to help the widowed mother he still lives with (Ellen McLain) pay for damages incurred in an auto accident. Despite his complete unemployability (“employers sense in me a denial of their values”), he lands a clerkship at a small manufacturing concern, a choice the easygoing office will come to regret.
“Outside the city limits,” Reilly’s neurosis contends, “it’s the heart of darkness.” Yet there are plenty of Big Easy eccentrics to grapple with his odd mix of hypochondria, agoraphobia, reactionary contempt and gastric ailments.
To begin with, there is the sad sack policeman Angelo Mancuso (David Goldstein), whose stubborn incompetence places him in absurd undercover costumes to seek “suspicious” characters like Reilly. There’s also Lana Lee (Cynthia Geary), the owner of a drooping French Quarter strip club who also peddles skin pics on the side, along with her resentful porter Burma Jones (Charles Norris).
Whitehead animates Reilly with blinking, sputtering indignation, giving his proclamations a professorial authority worthy of Reilly’s overeducated conceit. His rank antipathy to modern life drives his imperious rejection of “deodorants and other perversions” and an uncomprehending devotion to the 6th century philosophy of Boethius. And his sparring by correspondence with revolutionary beatnik Myrna Minkoff (Samara Lerman), spurs him to foment a confused episode of labor unrest.
Toole’s novel developed a devoted following after its publication in 1980, 11 years after his suicide. The scrutiny they’re sure to give must have been daunting to adapter Mary Machala, who also directed this production, and she has hewn closely to the book’s wooly events.
A publisher who once rejected the novel critiqued that it "isn't really about anything,” and onstage the complaint seems valid. That doesn’t prohibit success, as Jerry Seinfeld proved, and perhaps Toole was just ahead of his time. Yet for all of the fine performances, as a play it seems flabby and formless, lacking true climax or resolution. (I wasn’t even sure it was the end, at first.)
What would Reilly himself say? Since his daily hobby was to shout "This is even worse than I thought!” and “They should all be gassed!" at movie screens, probably nothing good. Our assessment is far kinder: that the production carries the sensibility of the book to the stage with all its flaws and its pleasures.
"A Confederacy of Dunces" runs through Oct. 11 at Book-It Repertory Theatre at the Center House Theater in Seattle Center. Tickets: $30-$35, $15/$25 students/seniors; (206) 216-0833 or www.book-it.org.
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