On Theater: Top-notch look at how ‘Gone With the Wind’ came to be

Once in a very great while, audiences at a local community theater production must fight the urge to check their programs to make sure that they’re really not watching a show at South Coast Repertory — the performances are just too strong and polished for a community playhouse.

Patrons at the Newport Theatre Arts Center currently are enjoying this dilemma, the case in point being “Moonlight & Magnolias,” a wildly hilarious comedy purporting to tell what really happened when the producer, the director and the screenwriter were striving to re-assemble the movie “Gone With the Wind’ over a period of five days.

Playwright Ron Hutchinson used the existing facts — that David O. Selznick, Ben Hecht and Victor Fleming were locked in Selznick’s office 24/7 while Hecht typed the shooting script, as Selznick and Fleming acted out events from the Margaret Mitchell book, which Hecht had never read. And all three subsisted on a diet of bananas and peanuts.

At Newport, director Brian Page has amassed a superlative trio of actors to depict these Hollywood giants at work. He has kept the show’s pace frenetic, bordering on maddening, unmasking some outsize egos in the process.

Headlining the trio as the driven Selznick (think Emperor Nero on a bad day) is Robert Fetes, brilliantly depicting a studio head chafing in the shadow of his father-in-law, the legendry MGM boss Louis B. Mayer. Fetes delivers a magnificent performance, barking orders while interpreting Scarlett O’Hara for Hecht’s edification and shunning Mayer’s repeated telephone calls.

The urbane, sarcastic writer Hecht, whose social conscience interrupts some of Selznick’s bombast, is solidly enacted by Thom Gilbert. Hecht periodically reminds Selznick of their shared Jewish heritage and their second-class social status, this being 1939, and his primary objective, aside from writing the script, appears to be puncturing Selznick’s balloon at every opportunity.

The rough-hewn director Fleming — who’s been pulled off “The Wizard of Oz” to helm “Gone With the Wind” — gets a robust performance from David Rousseve, who farcically portrays some of the other characters for Hecht’s inspiration. One moment he’s Melanie giving birth, and the next he’s Prissy getting slapped — which draws sharp opposition from Gilbert’s Hecht.

And then there’s Miss Poppenghul, the producer’s secretary, whose dialogue seems to consist of repeated thrusts of “Yes, Mr. Selznick.” Michelle Bendetti brings a Carol Burnett style of frowsy comedy to elevate this minor character into a major laugh inducer.

Andrew Otero’s office setting is functional, and the costumes by Tom Phillips and Larry Watts fit the period nicely. But there’s one credit not listed in the program — music by Max Steiner, whose memorable score for the Oscar-winning movie is heard throughout the stage production.

Even if you haven’t seen “Gone With the Wind” (and what playgoer hasn’t?), you’ll get an immense kick out of “Moonlight & Magnolias,” the most fully realized local theater production of this fast-waning year, now convulsing audiences at the Newport Theatre Arts Center.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater.

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IF YOU GO

What: “Moonlight & Magnolias”

Where: Newport Theatre Arts Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. matinees Saturdays and Sundays until Dec. 13

Cost: $17

Information: (949) 631-0288