Review: 'Wind' blows both ways

From international casting calls for the role of Scarlett O'Hara to the parade of screenwriters with a hand in its creation, the filming of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" had as many battles and heartbreaks as the book itself. One of the most wildly improbable events is detailed in "Moonlight and Magnolias," which kicks off Minnesota Jewish Theatre's 15th anniversary season.

In 1939, David O. Selznick intended the extravagant "Gone With the Wind" to be the crowning effort of his career. Three weeks into filming, he shut down production, fired the director and virtually threw out the script. While cast and crew members waited at enormous cost, he strong-armed screenwriter Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming into taking on the project. Then he locked them in his office for five days to hammer out a new script. Since Hecht hadn't read the book, Fleming and Selznick acted out each scene for him while he frantically pounded out dialogue.

This story offers a rich vein for comedy, but playwright Ron Hutchinson trips himself up in seeking to do more. On the one hand, he aims for flat-out farce, from having the chauvinistic man's man Fleming prance around in a simpering rendition of Butterfly McQueen's falsetto to a Three Stooges-style bit in which all three men slap each other. But he also shoehorns a high-minded tone into the proceedings by having Hecht relate the racist overtones of Mitchell's work to the position of Jews in society. It's a valid point, but Hutchinson's treatment just keeps the play off-balance.

Director Scott Rubsam and his cast overcome the stumbling blocks to varying degrees of success. Ryan Lindberg plays Selznick with such zest and piratical ruthlessness that he often simply rolls over the weak spots. Marlin Rothe also has fun as Victor Fleming, adopting a world-weary cynicism and machismo that barely masks a fragile ego and tendency to hysteria. As Hecht, Matthew Vire is unfortunately saddled with the playwright's profundities, along with some wooden dialogue.

It's a shame that in trying to be two plays at once, "Moonlight and Magnolias" doesn't succeed as either.

Lisa Brock writes regularly about theater.