Tom Titus -- Theater Review

“Charming” is a term you don’t often find employed much anymore in the

theater, but it certainly would be a fitting description of “Anne of

Green Gables” at Costa Mesa’s Trilogy Playhouse.

“Anne” charms the socks off its audience. Or, more accurately, Kellie

Nitkin in the title role does the lion’s share of the charming as she

inhabits the skin and the psyche of an awkward orphan girl struggling to

fit into a Canadian teenage lifestyle of a century ago.

There are, to be sure, plenty of other characters involved in this

ambitious production of Joseph Robinette’s dramatization of the classic

novel by L.M. Montgomery. Director Alicia Butler populates the stage with

a number of teenagers, several of them double cast (including the title

role).

But Nitkin’s Anne is the blossoming centerpiece, and if her alternate,

Chelsey Clark, is as effective, audiences are in for a treat at all

performances, at least in the interpretation of the title role. Nitkin’s

engaging portrayal successfully overshadows the understandable absence of

depth in the Trilogy production.

As young Anne Shirley -- who’d prefer to be called Cordelia, but never

is -- Nitkin beautifully shifts back and forth from melodramatic dreamer

to headstrong and defiant outsider, enacting a young lady plucked by

mistake from an orphanage to live with an aging brother and sister who

wanted a boy to help them with the chores on the farm.

It doesn’t take long for Anne to win her way into the household,

though she almost blows it when she returns an adult’s tactless cruelty

with some well-chosen barbs of her own. This establishes the newcomer as

a force to be reckoned with, despite her awkwardness in the company of

her peers.

Her guardians are played with admirable conviction by Sharon Simonian

and Jim Thoms. Simonian clearly wears the pants, as it were, in the

household she rules as a kindly dictator while Thoms speaks volumes in

his quiet reticence, a gentle soul more comfortable around cows than

people. Charity Smith impresses as Diana Barry, Anne’s “bosom friend for

life” in another instance of quiet conviction. Justin Van Dusen is a bit

flat as a schoolboy who vies to win Anne’s friendship after an

unpardonable (in her eyes) insult.

Two scene-stealing performances are rendered by Eileen Conan as the

blunt, interfering neighbor, and Kelly Campbell as a snippy Sunday school

teacher who’ll fan playgoers’ memories of Margaret Hamilton’s wicked

witch in “‘The Wizard of Oz.” James Mulligan doubles as an unpopular

schoolteacher and the older educator, who provides the reward at the end

of Anne’s journey. Jenny Lynn, who alternates in the Diana Barry role,

stands out among the schoolmates as a rich and self-centered brat, while

others (Kristen Burzynski, Hailey Villaire, Emily Ellis, Amada Adams,

Crystal Aaronson and Jenny Stumpf) fill in effectively. James Miller has

a nice cameo as a doddering old minister who recycles his sermons, and

Wendy Glodery is a breath of fresh air as the new schoolmarm.

As with the more impressive “The Secret Garden” earlier this year, the

show involves a plethora of scenes (22 in all), which are changed

smoothly by the backstage crew of Simonian, who also functions as stage

manager.

Like many a dramatization of a novel, “Anne” is episodic in nature,

with its numerous scenes representing highlights in its heroine’s

late-teen life. The story is necessarily presented piecemeal, and

probably is about a half-hour too long, but its capable core of actors

keeps interest from flagging.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Thursdays and Saturdays.

FYI

What: “Anne of Green Gables”

Where: Trilogy Playhouse, 2390 Bristol St., Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays, at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, and 5 p.m.

Sundays until Sept. 2

Cost: $13 & $15

Tickets: (714) 957-3347, Ext. 1