“ANTON IN SHOW BUSINESS” HAS HUMOR WITH BITE

There are nuggets of wisdom in the fields of humor that fill “Anton in Show Business,” a new show by the occasionally active Sacred Chicken Productions. But not to worry, a thick layer of very funny jokes covers all that thoughtfulness. During last night’s opening performance in the Cabaret Theatre at the Temple of Music and Art, people were still laughing at one joke when the set-up began for the next joke.

The playwright is Jane Martin, rumored to be the pseudonym of Jon Jory – son of screen actor Victor Jory and the man most noted for leading the Actors Theatre of Louisville to national prominence. In other words, Jane Martin knows whereof she speaks.

My favorite line is the observation that buying a theater ticket is a lot like buying a lottery ticket. Most of the time you only get an ordinary experience, but every now and then the stage lights up with a delightful payoff that makes it all worthwhile.

Cynthia Jeffery as director has an exceptionally strong cast to work with – eight of the city’s most talented actresses playing 14 different characters, both men and women.

As the stage manager announces early on, the stage is bare and multiple role-playing is necessary in order to make this production economically viable. Women were cast to play the roles of men solely for “political and satirical purposes.”

Martin isn’t satirizing big time theater here. She’s thinking local theater, just like we have in Tucson, where all the actors have day jobs and the search for grant money never ends. In a way, you could think of this play as “Greater Tuna,” but set backstage instead of in a small Texas town. Underfinanced and unappreciated, these inhabitants naively push on, unaware of their hopeless situation.

But Martin is probing deeper than the usual targets of backstage satire: the arrogant, the eccentric and the over-sexed. She points to such seldom-noted incongruities as theater companies that ask conservative rich people to fund plays about poor people who have been disenfranchised by conservative rich people.

There is also the temptation to sell lots of tickets to eager feminists and the vigorously rigid politically correct by doing feminist plays that insist on rigid political correctness. All those 1990s plays about AIDS have been replaced by today’s plays about race and issues of multi-cultural dilemmas in polite society.

Those are the plays, after all, that can always get national funding. Gays and blacks are the new heroes of our contemporary stage.

Because every cast member in the Sacred Chicken production is so strong, it seems unfair to single out any one member for praise. There were larger and smaller roles, but the intensity stayed high throughout.

Carlisle Ellis as the Russian director with a bushy moustache gave her contribution extra vigor. Rhonda Hallquist created a very sympathetic character. Elizabeth Leadon’s show-closing speech was note-perfect. Carrie Hill as the superficial TV star wanting to prove she can do serious theater was also convincing.

Holli Henderson and Peg Peterson got their laughs in straight comic parts; T Loving was good as a tender-hearted cowboy. Toni Press-Coffman held her own, as well, as the company’s frustrated administrative director.

The plot is scarcely more than a general sequence of sketches about three women who audition for Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” then go into rehearsal. As other players interrupt these sisters, the laughter mounts, and our knothole appreciation grows for what the actors’ real backstage life is like.

“Anton in Show Business” continues at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26, Oct. 2, and Oct. 8-10; 2 p.m. matinee Oct. 3. All performances are in the Cabaret Theatre of the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $16 general admission, $15 seniors and students. Group discounts available. For details and reservations, 520-256-6593, or visit www.sacredchickenproductions.com