‘Travels with My Aunt’ Filled With Skilled Performances, Worldly Energy (Patch.com, 12/4/2010)

This could not have been what British author Graham Greene envisioned when he penned Travels with My Aunt in 1969 — that a stage adaptation of his novel featuring four male actors portraying more than 25 characters would spiral toward the absurd at the risk of its charm.

And yet, that's precisely what the Glencoe-based Writers' Theatre's has delivered with its own presentation of Travels with My Aunt. At times, silly; at times, outlandish; but always, dynamic and spirited and charismatic enough to maintain interest and intrigue, this Writers' Theatre production succeeds as much in its daring execution of a complex play as its embrace of Greene's captivating narrative.

What actors LaShawn Banks, Sean Fortunato, John Hoogenakker, and Jeremy Sher pull off in Travels with My Aunt is nothing short of astounding. In the 140-minute comedic drama, the four actors shift character to character with veteran skill, alternating voices and mannerisms, posture and position to produce the engaging story of Henry Pulling.

The mild-mannered Henry, a retired banker content to snatch his only entertainment from the blossoming dahlias in the garden of his Southwood, England, bachelor home, attends his mother's wake only to be reunited with his Aunt Augusta, an eccentric character who often leaves Henry "too surprised by her vulgarity to speak."

His long-absent aunt's coaxing soon pulls Henry from the comforts of suburban life into shady international adventures that reveal plenty about the retired bachelor's character and even more about his own unsolved backstory. Though the play begins with death, it is Henry who finds life. His decision to live as a tourist in his 75-year-old aunt's world soon unpacks his life's mysteries.

The performances at this Glencoe theatre — a 50-seat, wood-beamed space tucked into the rear of the Books on Vernon retail store — are what make the Giles Havergal stage adaptation work.

In his Writers' Theatre directorial debut, Stuart Carden, the company's associate artistic director, asks much of his performance quartet. And each of them delivers, all of them playing the role of Henry at times and switching to other characters on call. In the hands of a less capable cast, the drama could dizzy into slapstick and caricatures. It never does.

Banks, a Writers' Theatre veteran, excites as the charged Wordsworth, AuntAugusta's Sierra Leone boy toy, before transforming into a cop at one stop and an elusive international revolutionary at another. Hoogenakker navigates the tricky theatrical terrain of playing a teenage girl traveling the Orient Express, a Philadelphia-bred government agent, and a Paraguayan teen. Sher, frequently tucked on the side, serves as the utility man, filling in where necessary, shifting languages at will, and crafting some of the production's sound effects, including a train's lumbering movement with an umbrella. And as the lone Aunt Augusta, Fortunato dazzles with sharp wit and thespian commitment, arguably the production's most striking performance.

Though certain dialogue falls into the trappings of British humor that makes Monty Python a comedic classic to some and dumbfounding to others, the four actors' performance generates enough goodwill and enthusiasm to bypass that modest shortcoming. Individually, the cast is focused and disciplined; collectively, they are a symphony of dramatic quality.

This Writers' Theatre production is one grounded in energy and wit, always quickbut never in a hurry. In time, despite the story's mystery and rapid pace, the characters find their own slice of peace and the puzzle's picture emerges, thereby generating the performance's final, fitting line: "God's in His heaven; all is right in the world."

Indeed, all is right, even if Greene, an adventurous traveler in his own right, could have never envisioned this journey from novel to stage.