What happens when you have to do the same show, night after night, with someone you’re starting to loathe? That’s the premise behind Silent Theatre Company’s clever — and surprisingly affecting — ode to vaudeville, “The Dueling Gentlemen.” You can find traces of everything from “The Odd Couple” to Laurel and Hardy to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin here, all delivered with insanely precise physical comedy and clever mimed sight gags straight out of the pre-talkie era.
Conceived and written by Marvin Eduardo Quijada, the gentlemen of the title are played by Quijada and Marcus D. Fittanto, with stellar live accompaniment by “The Guy at the Piano,” Elliot Taggart (playing Ian Custer’s original compositions). They’ve been doing the same comedic melodramatic bit — “The Ugly Blonde,” about a fickle woman and the two men who seek her affections — on the road for years. Now Fittanto’s character, “The Drunk,” has started hitting the bottle out of boredom and wants out of his contract with fussbudget Quijada’s controlling “perfectionist.”
Through a series of interludes moving from increasingly manic interpretations of their sketch before a red curtain to “backstage” conflicts that raise the stakes considerably each time, Quijada and Fittanto play out a pas de deux of professional jealousy and sublimated brotherly love.
It’s pretty much delightful start to finish, and Quijada and Fittanto have such strong control of their instruments and their faces that we can “hear” what they’re saying even before the supertitles pop up on Simon Lashford’s little jewel box of a set. (Rodolfo Polanco-Casasola designed the graphics on the titles.) At one point, Quijada’s trembling hands as he figures out what Fittanto’s character has been plotting — and how he himself might respond — take on poetic lives of their own. I haven’t seen Silent Theatre Company’s work in a while — and if you’ve never seen them at all, “The Dueling Gentlemen” is a fine introduction to what they do best.
REVIEW: The Dueling Gentlemen by Silent Theatre Company
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3 STARS
Through Sept. 20 at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.; $22-$27 at 773-935-6875 or athenaeumtheatre.org.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.