by Barry Willis

A corrupt businessman lands in Washington DC, intent on buying a Senator as part of an effort to get legislation passed to improve his fortune. Currying favor among the ruling class is one of humanity’s oldest tales, one that will never go away. 

The stage play of Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday debuted in 1946—the film followed four years later–and has been performed onstage intermittently ever since. It’s lost none of its bite or deeply cynical humor in the ensuing 80 years, a fact made abundantly clear in the current production at Napa’s Lucky Penny. 

In it, we meet the belligerent, bellicose junkyard king Harry Brock (Barry Martin), who’s come to the capital seeking multiple favors. In particular, he wants easy access to mountains of European scrap metal left in the wake of the Second World War.

Brock’s accompanied by his concubine Billie Dawn (Heather Buck), a brassy blonde that he “plucked out of the chorus,” and who resentfully obeys most of his demands. Brock’s boozy, hired-gun lawyer Ed Devery (Paul Cotten) is a former US attorney who’s sunk so low on the professional totem pole that he now acts as an agent for mobsters, recruiting legislators who might engage in play-for-pay. Chief among them is the mild-mannered Senator Norval Hedges (Casey Rockwood), who appears several times for meetings at Brock’s upscale hotel. 

Senator Hedges brings along his wife (LC Arisman) whose apparent sophistication exposes Billie as a bimbo and a potential liability for Harry. Ed suggests that Billie could use a bit of polish, and arranges for her to enjoy the tutelage of Paul Verrall (Benjamin Stowe), an intellectual journalist who takes Billie under his wing. With Paul’s guidance, she discovers that she’s actually smart and inquisitive, and the more she learns, the less she appreciates Harry. 

It’s a fantastically potent setup for a rollicking dark comedy in which we learn all about how Harry rose to the top of the junk business, how easy it may be to secure allies in government—all it takes is money—and how a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing if the knowledge resides with an increasingly disloyal companion.

Martin absolutely nails the lead role—his first in Born Yesterday despite having performed as both Ed and Paul in previous productions. His Brock is willfully ignorant, consistently abrasive, self-centered, obnoxious, manipulative, and aggressively demeaning to all his associates. If this sounds remarkably like someone in the highest office in the USA, the similarity is intentional.

Lucky Penny veteran Buck is his match as the ever-more-self-aware Billie, who learns from Paul not only the basics of democracy, but the language and mannerisms of elites. She also learns that there are many men in the world other than her bellowing boyfriend who might appreciate her charms.  

Paul Cotton is wonderful as Brock’s cynical boozehound attorney, who launches some dazzling one-liners after downing the hard stuff, and Stowe is charming as Paul, the smitten journalist who falls in love with a creature of his own creation.

The fact that the entire story plays out on a single set (design by Martin, Kade Morrill, and Gary Green) helps the production move along briskly. An engaging verisimilitude is enabled by April George’s evocative lighting design and period-perfect costumes by Barbara McFadden. The whole affair pulls the audience into an intimate and almost claustrophobic social niche. Discomfort among both characters and audience is a guaranteed strategy for comedic success, one that Lucky Penny takes to the stratosphere.

Lucky Penny’s Born Yesterday is as comical and pertinent today as it was when it debuted many decades ago. Brilliantly staged and performed, it’s a high point of the current theater season.

Born Yesterday runs through April 26 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center, 1758 Industrial Way, Napa.

Click HERE for more info.

Photos by Kurt Gonsalves/KMG Design

Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com