Sarasota, Fla.

If you're a theater buff with a serious interest in American comedy, "Once in a Lifetime" probably ranks high on the list of little-known shows you'd love to see onstage. Otherwise, I doubt you've heard of it. A farce about the coming of talking pictures to Hollywood, "Once in a Lifetime" was the first collaboration between George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, who went on to write "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "You Can't Take It With You." It opened on Broadway in 1930 and ran for 406 performances, which was big business back then. Two years later, it was turned into a middling movie, then vanished from sight (the 1979 Broadway revival was a flop). Today the play is known solely because Mr. Hart wrote about it in "Act One," his 1959 autobiography.

The ensemble cast of Asolo Rep's 'Once in a Lifetime.' Daniel Perales

Once in a Lifetime

Asolo Repertory Theatre, Mertz Theatre,
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Fla.
($27-$71), 941-351-8000/
800-361-8388, closes Feb. 29

Why doesn't anybody do "Once in a Lifetime" nowadays? It costs too much—way too much. The published script calls for five sets and 38 actors. You could get away with that in the 1930s, but no commercial producer would think of bringing so horrendously expensive a play to Broadway anymore. Enter San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and Sarasota's Asolo Repertory Theatre, two regional companies that double as drama schools, making it possible to put on large-cast shows by using students to cover smaller parts. ACT mounted "Once in a Lifetime" last fall and Asolo Rep is doing it now. Both versions, not coincidentally, were directed by Mark Rucker.

Since the two productions are identical in concept—most of the members of the cast play double, triple and quadruple roles—I tossed a coin and elected to see "Once in a Lifetime" at Asolo Rep, whose version makes use of 19 actors, four more than at ACT It was worth the trip. "Once in a Lifetime" proves to be as fresh as any of the later screwball comedies on whose screenplays it surely left a mark (not to mention "Singin' in the Rain," whose authors, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, must have had it in mind).

"Once in a Lifetime" is the story of George, Jerry and May (Jason Bradley, Andrew Carter and Hillary Clemens), a trio of small-time vaudeville hoofers who see "The Jazz Singer" in New York and decide to go to Hollywood, pass themselves off as authorities on elocution and make their fortune by teaching silent-movie actors how to talk. Three acts later, the sweet-natured but chowder-headed George is a Hollywood executive and Jerry has popped the question to May. In between, we observe a galloping parade of bellboys and coat-check girls who fling themselves at the feet of Herman Glogauer (David Breitbarth), the don't-say-yes-until-I-finish-talking head of Glogauer Studios, in the (mostly) vain hope of becoming movie stars.

This premise is so familiar that you have to remind yourself that Kaufman and Hart were the first writers ever to turn it into a plot. Part of what makes "Once in a Lifetime" more than just a historical curiosity is the jaundiced wit with which the characters comment on the headbanging craziness that surrounds them. (Jerry, working a crossword puzzle: "What's a four-letter word for actor?" May: "Dope.") But mere wisecracks won't make a play fly. That's where craftsmanship comes in, and the authors of "Once in a Lifetime" knew their stuff. Every piece of the puzzle fits together with a crisp, satisfying click, and every part, no matter how small, has its full share of satirical spin. The result is a comedy that flies through the air with a deceptive effortlessness that conceals the brutally hard work of revision described by Mr. Hart in "Act One."

"Once in a Lifetime" is so good that if it were less costly to stage, everybody would want to stage it. All praise, then, to Mr. Rucker for finding an ingenious way to produce it on the semicheap by shrinking the cast, then putting together a team of designers whose work makes his production look like a couple of million bucks. Erik Flatmo's Art Deco sets are glitteringly tawdry, Alex Jaeger's costumes are as authentic as a Stutz Bearcat, and Austin Forbord has covered the scene changes with a smart series of film sequences (including well-chosen clips from "The Jazz Singer" and Raoul Walsh's "Going Hollywood") that greatly enhance the show's festive air.

Ms. Clemens, who gave a poignant performance as the tomboy in Writers' Theatre's 2008 Chicago revival of "Picnic," plays May as a spunky, cloche-hatted girl-next-door who knows how to snap off a punch line, which is just right. Some of the student actors in the cast are not up to her mark, but most of Ms. Clemens's 18 colleagues give winningly characterized performances, especially Mr. Breitbarth and Katie Cunningham and Summer Dawn Wallace, who play to the hilt a pair of brass-voiced bimbos.

My only real complaint is that too many of the parts are acted with all-but-cartoonish broadness. I very much wish that Mr. Rucker had encouraged some of the members of his cast, Mr. Bradley in particular, to play it down the center instead of flashing the I'm-funny sign with wearying regularity. As Mr. Hart explained in "Act One," the first version of "Once in a Lifetime" was so "noisy" that it wore the audience out, and it wasn't until he and Mr. Kaufman inserted a quiet scene that the play snapped into focus and started to work.

Mr. Rucker's production suffers from a similar lack of clarifying calm, but it's still a hoot-and-a-half, and Asolo Rep, like ACT before it, has done yeoman service to American theater by demonstrating that "Once in a Lifetime" is one of the most effective comedies of Broadway's golden age.

Memo to Lincoln Center Theater: This is your kind of show.
