Is there such a thing as trickle-down morality? Perhaps that's how messages were thought best sent when Lillian Hellman wrote "Watch on the Rhine." If audiences saw how the regal class could rise to an occasion, perhaps they could emulate that behavior. That the circumstances were of high-theatrical artifice probably helped the medicine go down like a slice of Black Forest gateau.
In pulling the 1941 play from the mothballs, Berkeley Rep has maintained its who-lives-like-this patina while suggesting a renewed relevance for this curiosity piece in our curious times. Set in 1940, before the U.S. had entered the war, "Watch on the Rhine" was a cry against homeland complacency to the spread of fascism in Europe. When the moral stakes are high, Hellman was saying, the fence is no place to loll.
The setting is a simply grand house along the Potomac that is ruled by a matriarch given to sweeping entrances, grand gestures, and pithy bon mots. Fanny Farrelly's second biggest concern is the pesky houseguests who, in the world of this play, are Balkan royalty. Her primary concern is the impending arrival of her estranged daughter, who has been living an unprivileged life with a husband of modest means and their three children. It's almost a setup that Kaufman and Hart could have provided.
But you soon know that the frivolous atmosphere will cloud over once the exiled count-in-residence recognizes the German-born husband of the homecoming daughter. Facts are ferreted out by this nobleman of swayable conscience, setting up an inevitable showdown with the anti-fascist German activist who is on a Nazi hit-list. Inevitable but not swift, as we must await it through tangents of wan skullduggery, romantic jealousy, lighthearted riffs on shopping, and snappy banter between Fanny and her youngest grandson.
It's what this play is made of, and a production can do little more than massage it in ways that makes it as dramatically potent as possible. In its co-production with the Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis, Berkeley Rep is offering a strongly realized staging. There is Neil Patel's set of stately elegance (though the neon-like lights outlining the proscenium are an unnecessary effort at a contemporary effect). There is also a robust cast under Lisa Peterson's careful direction, in which the players land on different levels of theatricality and show no hurry to pull the play far from its origins.
While the movie version headlined Bette Davis, outside her usual waspish character as the wife and daughter with ever-so-earnest convictions, it is Caitlin O'Connell as the imperious but flighty Fanny who dominates the Berkeley Rep production. O'Connell vivaciously suggests something of the grandeur of a mature Miriam Hopkins as she tries to keep under control her oddly matched houseguests. As the daughter who has returned after 20 years away, Sarah Agnew favors a lower-key modesty in contrast to Davis' hyper-enunciated take on the character. Elijah Alexander carries himself with an enormous physical and spiritual weight as her husband fatalistically committed to his cause.
As the Romanian count, Jonathan Walker employs a heavy-duty accent full of portent, while Kate Guentzel takes a much lighter approach to his flirtatious wife. She is in love with Fanny's son, a lawyer like his late father who lives with his mother and has had multiple short-term flings with insubstantial women who, in a modern analysis, would probably be beards. It is a dully written character, given hints of animation by Hugh Kennedy. There are three substantial roles for children, a challenging casting assignment well filled by Silas Sellnow, Emma Curtin, and especially, Jonah Horowitz as the precocious youngest of the trio.
Although the play is dusty and can be tedious, Hellman's dialogue still finds a target amid current political affairs. "By this time, all of us must know where we are and what we must do," says the daughter who gave up genteel luxury for a cause. "It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip."
"Watch on the Rhine" will run through Jan. 14 at Berkeley Rep. Tickets are $45-$97. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org