LIKING THIS LIKENESS
Writer/producer/director Daniel Rover Singer’s A Perfect Likeness imagines a meeting between Charles Dickens and Charles Dodgson–better known by the alias, Lewis Carroll. Had Dickens taken up amateur photographer Mr. Dodgson’s request to meet him and have his portrait taken, this would be the scenario. The ninety-minute two-person drawing-room play is set somewhere between the publication of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Likeness‘s strengths lie in its wistful dialogue between the rooted-in-the-dirt Dickens and the head-in-the-sky Dodgson regarding relationships, aesthetics, taboos, and personal fulfillment. Bruce Ladd turns in a fiesty, boisterous performance as Dickens, while Daniel J. Roberts stands toe-to-toe with Ladd matching him beat-for-beat with his contrastingly measured, nebbish, and innocently odd Dodgson. I was fortunate enough to see the two-weekend Actors Co-op production of A Perfect Likeness, and am glad that it has found a home at Fremont Centre Theatre for a longer run.
What will keep it from hitting the bigger stages, however, is Singer’s somewhat overindulgent direction. This is a case where a strong work is muted from great to good by the hammy overlong marination of comic relief moments and peripheral twenty-first century multi-media. The psychological journey of these famous men is compelling enough that even the aforementioned and an implausible conclusion are the equivalent of a dime-sized blemish on a pretty girl’s face.
The power of the play is in the fireworks that fly between the two world-renown writers, and Ladd and Roberts offer captivating, luxuriant portrayals of two literary giants who find themselves in a place of great expectations–reflecting in a metaphorical looking glass, arriving at bleak houses, and exploring the wonderland that is their respective lives.
photos by Will Hastings
A Perfect Likeness
Fremont Centre Theatre
1000 Fremont Ave. in Pasadena
scheduled to end on December 22, 2013
for tickets, call (866) 811-4111
or visit http://www.fremontcentretheatre.com/