Little Theatre’s ‘Bees’ feels off from the start

Douglas Carter Beane’s satire mocking the differences between style and substance is enjoyably insubstantial.

Alexa Vere de Vere (Tressa Bern) parades about like a Sally Bowles/Auntie Mame type, conning young, budding artists into thinking she has the power and money to make them famous. She meets her match in Evan Wyler (Chris Hermening), a naïve writer who winds up being just as clever as she is.

The script takes off in the second act, as we watch the confused author plot his revenge.

The trouble in director Paul Thornton’s production begins almost immediately. Bern is so over-the-top, so phony, that it’s impossible to believe she could con anyone out of a cup of coffee. Even when we flashback to her days as a teenager — before she takes on her “dahling” personality — she seems inhuman.

Bern and Thornton have made the major mistake of commenting on the character, instead of just letting her be. We tire of her obviously faked mannerisms, and never get into the ping-pong match between her and her victims. Bern is enormously talented, but she very much needs a director to tone her down, to get her to suggest more and tell less.

There’s an inappropriate heaviness at work. With more than a dozen scenes, the script is often mounted so that actors can simply walk into different areas of the stage without any interruption in action. Thornton has blackouts after nearly every section in which set pieces are rolled on and off. It slows down the play and gives it a deadly epic feel.

Equally out of place is Ron Lindblom’s set design, which consists of various shades of off-white platforms, steps and cloth, all of which fail to suggest anything about the environment. It’s also unpleasant and monotonous to look at — not good for a treatise about glamour.

Hermening projects a likable subdued charm as the writer. Will Klundt and Alex Pink portray a variety of roles, all with a skillful wink.

But the central dramatic conflict is missing.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.