STAGE REVIEW : WEAK ‘ARMS’ REOPENS PLAYHOUSE

It really happened. At last. The Pasadena Playhouse, queen of one of fortune’s most eventful roller-coaster rides, reopened Saturday after 20 years of being dark and 40 checkered ones of prominence and survival before that.

It was, as they say, a moment. Historical. Social. Theatrical. Overbooked. And it was given its due. People dressed up. Champagne flowed. El Molino Avenue was roped off and a red carpet stretched across it to the J.H. Biggar parking lot where tents were in readiness for the gala supper to follow the play.

The theater itself looked splendid--mercifully unchanged down to the old asbestos curtain with its familiar Spanish galleon (a Playhouse trademark for the last six decades), its fine acoustics and its blue tile ceiling elegantly set off by salmon-colored walls and cream-colored Spanish scrolling. It’s the old place, all right, but with a lift. Founder Gilmor Brown would have been pleased.

Could one have asked for more? Yes. One might have wished that the opening production--”Arms and the Man,” Shaw’s earliest and one of his funniest anti-war comedies--could have been stronger. This one, with such powerful elements in the cast as Richard Thomas, Carole Shelley and John Rubinstein, hasn’t quite come together yet under the direction of Nikos Psacharopoulos, artistic head of Massachusetts’ Williamstown Playhouse.

This sort of opening-night pall is not uncommon. Expectations are at such a high pitch in the excitement of opening a new theater that it’s hard to live up to them. The playhouse’s inaugural production of “The Amethyst” in 1925 was a forgettable bauble readily forgiven in the thrill of lighting up the new theater. South Coast Repertory’s opening shot in its new Fourth Step theater in 1978 was a respectable but unexciting “The Time of Your Life.”

Both theaters went on to much greater glories as, one devoutly hopes, this one will, too. “Arms and the Man” at the new Pasadena Playhouse is not forgettable, but it is unexciting. For several reasons.

It feels under-rehearsed and undoubtedly is. Three weeks simply is not enough to perfect the intricacies of Shavian comic character and timing, especially with as disparate a company as this. The pace hasn’t had a chance to rev up yet and is not aided by the two intermissions needed to change Terry Gates’ attractive fairy-tale sets.

Acting styles (and accents) are all over the map--from Rubinstein overplaying the caricature in Sergius, to Lisa Eichhorn underplaying the spirit in Raina, Jean Hackett stridently contemporizing Louka, Carole Shelley single-handedly brightening the proceedings with a dead-on Madame Petkoff, and Rex Robbins (Major Petkoff) and Richard Thomas (Bluntschli) offering performances that are in place but still a few days away from not seeming labored.

Time should take care of pace, but it won’t make performances coalesce. That requires the application of a firm and much more inspired governing hand.

Psacharopoulos’ direction, in his Southern California debut, is the production’s largest disappointment. He has painted this “Arms” by the numbers without much attempt, it seems, either in casting or staging, to enhance the text’s natural playfulness or form a cohesive performance unit.

Rather, he has allowed the actors stylistic anarchy. Hackett is such a militant Louka that she forfeits the brightness of the Shaw-given wit in Louka’s feminist attitudes.

Rubinstein, a normally superb actor, reaches so hard for his laughs that he forgets to remember that nothing is funnier than Sergius taking himself totally seriously. (When he posed the pompous rhetorical question in Act III, “Shall I kill myself now and die like a man,” someone in Saturday’s audience couldn’t repress an audible, “Yeah.”)

This divergence of acting styles, the short rehearsal time and the absence of a fresh imagination or strong point of view conspire to flatten the experience. On the other hand, Claudia Brown’s costumes, Peter Maradudin’s lighting, Jim Perry’s sound and Peggy Ebright’s props conspire to lift it.

Beyond all that, however, the beautiful Pasadena Playhouse (and it is beautiful) is back and it’s on the right track, even if this “Arms and the Man” doesn’t have quite enough fun. The significant item here is that the theater at 39 S. El Molino Ave. in Pasadena is open for business again. Performances run through May 11 (818-356-PLAY).