Frontiers Magazine - January 29, 2008

Agenda//Performing Arts//On Stage

Love Loves a Pornographer
[Inside] the Ford, through Jan. 20

There is no denying Jeff Goode's ear for the genre in his Wildean Victorian drawing room comedy of manners, nor the adept manner in which director Jillian Armenante brings it to sparkling, snarky life. The country manor set is impeccably realized by Gary Smoot, who almost obscenely lavishes the space with hanging art. Respected writer Lord Loveworthy (note-perfect William Salyers) finds he has more in common with his daughter's rustic American fiancé (Matt Ford, being joyously crude) than he is comfortable with as the plot ensnares his diarist wife (an impeccably brittle Gillian Doyle), his insufferable literary critic of a neighbor (Jim Anzide, quietly yet assuredly gnawing scenery) and the critic's neglected wife, whose dire state is conveyed in a thousand delightful ways by Johanna McKay. Kathleen Rose Perkins is enjoyable as Loveworthy's daughter, and only the size of his role prevents Weston Nathanson from walking off with the show as that sine qua non of such pieces, the butler. -W.J.