Stiff Upper Quip

'Privates on Parade': The Empire's Last Laugh

By Peter Marks

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 17, 2002; Page C01

The sun is setting on the British Empire, and who better to bid it a withering adieu than Floyd King? Er, make that Noel Coward. No wait, that is King up there, and he is in top form, delivering the Cowardesque ditty that sets in motion the second act of "Privates on Parade," Peter Nichols's tuneful satire of England's waning days as a colonial power.

The 1977 "play with songs," getting jaunty and thoroughly sophisticated handling here by the Studio Theatre, is an actors' paradise: Each of the nine major roles is a beaut, and director Joy Zinoman has to her credit filled them with actors who prowl this precinct as confidently as panthers. Yes, the occasional problem arises with dialect, but by and large, the cast skillfully transforms the Studio stage, conjuring postwar Malaya of 1948 and the military installations where a song-and-dance troupe is dispatched to buoy the beleaguered British cause.

This ragtag outfit, based on Nichols's own experiences in just such a unit, is second-rate English music hall on tour, the USO with Benny Hill instead of Bob Hope. But the entertainers are more than mere hacks. They are representatives of the mosaic of forces, new and old, that will come into ever-intensifying conflict as British society tries to reconcile itself to its reduced status in the new world order.

Which is where Coward comes in. King plays the juiciest role in "Privates," that of Terri Dennis, a swishy theater buff and unlikely army captain -- "You dare to speak to an officer like that," he says, "I'll scream the place down" -- who puts together the troupe's ludicrously titled frolics, like "Jungle Jamboree." With a bad dye job and plucked eyebrows, Terri also gets to indulge his passion for "frocks," dressing as Marlene Dietrich in one number, putting a grocery bag's worth of fruit on his head, Carmen Miranda style, in another.

Though he can't resist milking it a bit with those Moon Pie eyes, King is admirably restrained in these potentially over-the-top interludes. (Let's face it, a guy in a dress is much less of a novelty on a major stage these days than he was when Nichols wrote the piece.) But even with all these flamboyant opportunities, King is at his best in a simple tuxedo, a cigarette wedged in his fingers, putting across the faux Coward number "Could You Please Inform Us."

The song, written by Nichols's collaborator, Denis King, wittily sums up the humiliating position in which England finds itself after defeating Hitler. Aid is pouring into the rebuilding effort in Germany, "while back in Britain we're still lining up in rows to buy enough to keep ourselves alive." Here, Coward's effete brand of cosmopolitanism is a vehicle for the nation's ire and exhaustion, all mirrored there in the actor's weary gaze. King is a paragon of drollery, infusing the proceedings with a cocktail hour urbanity.

"Privates on Parade" is always called a play with songs rather than a musical, and I'm not sure why. (Maybe it has to do with the ratio of spoken word to music.) As in "Cabaret," the numbers are performed on a stage-within-a-stage; Debra Booth's impressive set, dominated by a proscenium arch inscribed in Chinese characters, is a clever portal to both East and West. Several of the songs, like "The Little Things We Used to Do," comment on the play's events, and have been woven into the story imaginatively by Zinoman, and her music director Jon Kalbfleisch and choreographer Robert Biedermann.

Mind you, "Privates on Parade" has its hazards. Not only does a part like Terri fray a little over time, but Nichols also employed some narrative devices that seem dated, like having characters step out of the action to read letters or impart biographical detail. (Smartly, Zinoman forgoes the surtitles usually projected at the start of each scene, though her adding a final message-laden image does Nichols no favor.) And the more darkly drawn characters, a violent sergeant-major and a nutty commanding officer, both verge on caricature.

Thanks, however, to some strong performances, the play takes hold with an authority that you don't quite anticipate. Sunita Param, for example, is a find as Sylvia Morgan, an Indian woman with a Welsh father who joins the troupe as a means of escape to the West; she embodies the array of qualities -- charm, ambition, a thick skin -- that you sense that someone would need to survive the wounding, unconscious racism of the Anglo culture in which she so desperately wants to be absorbed.

Michael Tolaydo's superb sergeant-major avoids the pitfalls of such an obvious villain, giving texture and heft to what would otherwise seem a one-dimensional part. And the actors playing the troupe's supporting soldier-singers -- Jim Ferris, Will Gartshore, Tom Gualtieri and especially David Bryan Jackson as a good-hearted lunkhead from the North -- emerge not only as solid entertainers, but also as a quartet of ordinary, feeling, fallible guys.

Jon Cohn, playing another central character, the troupe's newest recruit, has trouble with a wavering accent, but he finds an appealing ambiguity in the balance between a young man's loyalties to new friends and old ways. J. Fred Shiffman, meanwhile, has both glorious and scarily unmodulated moments as a dangerous twit of a major, a performance that is equal parts Richard Nixon and Terry-Thomas.

Shiffman's portrayal also points to broader issues raised by "Privates on Parade." It's not difficult to draw parallels between the predicaments of Nichols's characters and those faced by any modern superpower that spreads its cultural influence to distant places, and feels the consequences.

Privates on Parade, by Peter Nichols. Music by Denis King. Directed by Joy Zinoman. Musical direction, Jon Kalbfleisch. Sets, Debra Booth; costumes, Helen Q. Huang; lighting, Michael Lincoln; choreography, Robert Biedermann. With Leonard Wu and Franklin Dam. At Studio Theatre, 14th and P Streets NW, through Oct. 20. Approximately 2 hours 50 minutes. Call 202-332-3300.