On the Razzle

My memories of this production are over twenty years old now - it was pushed by PBS because it seemed a good production and the play by Johann Nestoy (19th Century Austria's greatest dramatist) was the ancestor of Thornton Wilder's THE MERCHANT OF YONKERS turned into THE MATCHMAKER turned into HELLO, DOLLY! It was a good production, particularly Felicity Kendall's "pants" role of the larking junior clerk Christopher (her scene ordering food at the restaurant as though she were to the manor born was wonderful), but one performance was totally annoying. Dimsdale Laden's Zangler (the model for Wilder's Vandergelder) was annoying. Either the performer (or in this case, the director) made the character so fatuous that one could not believe he had a head for business. Both Paul Ford and Walter Matthau in their respective performances as Vandergelder showed business competence as well as self-importance. They were believable, while Laden was improbable.

From the start of his first line he seemed to contradict every sentence he said by repeating it from the center or going around to a different point of view immediately. And doing it with the most vacant faced grinning smile I have ever seen in a performance. Only once did that smile end, and the face seem (momentarily) funny and human - when he is presented with the bill for all the characters at the restaurant, he suddenly got bugged-eyed and upset (and, best of all, at a loss for words). Too bad that approach could not be used more frequently in his case. He drags this play production down from a possible 8 or 9 to a 6.