'Moonlight and Magnolias' blooms at Centre Stage By Ann Hicks ARTS WRITER ahicks@greenvillenews.com Published: Friday, April 6, 2007 - 11:18 am in The Greenville News Eureka! Guest director Ben Robinson has a giant hit on his hands at Centre Stage -- South Carolina. While you won't see him doing the Archimedes run through the streets of Greenville, he has plenty of reasons to after Thursday night's opening performance of "Moonlight and Magnolias." With playwright Ron Hutchinson's smart, sharp dialogue, Robinson proves what a fine director can do with a quartet of heavyweight talents who unerringly bridge slapstick hilarity to brittle pathos. This M&M is filled with melt-in-your mouth tidbits about the making of the 1939 blockbuster movie "Gone With the Wind." As the fractious farce opens, we are in the office of short-fused Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick (Allen Evans), who has decided to build his cinematic career on Margaret Mitchell's 1936 million-seller tome. The trouble is history's greatest motion picture is about to become a spectacular wreck on Selznick's way to fame and fortune, as he just fired George Cukor, the movie's director, and deep-sixed the screenplay of "Gone With the Wind." What is he to do? His father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer, the legendary boss of MGM Studios, is breathing down his neck, and there's only a couple of weeks left to finish his movie. The manipulative Selznick yanks the bully film director Victor Fleming (J. Michael Craig) off the set of "The Wizard of Oz" and cajoles his friend Ben Hecht (Tim Brosnan), Hollywood's undisputed screenwriting genius, into creating a new screenplay. In a desperate move, Selznick locks himself, Hecht and Fleming in his office for five days of marathon rewrites. The men exist on peanuts and bananas -- Selznick's idea of brain food -- supplied by Selznick's deadly efficient secretary, Miss Poppenghul (Glenda ManWaring). She pops in and out of Selznick's office, getting more and more unglued in the process. All the while, Hecht bangs away on the typewriter to the tune of Selznick and Fleming acting out the various scenes from Mitchell's 1,000-page Civil War tome, which neither Hecht nor Fleming has ever read. The team of Evans, Brosnan and Craig are terrific comedians whose pace and timing is unerring throughout the two-act play. Evans fits the part of the hellbent, possessed Selznick like a designer glove, hectoring Brosnan's Hecht, who is always on the verge of revolting against the onslaught of Southern-fried trivia, while Craig's Fleming bullies and cajoles him, depending on his mood. There are so many highlights in this production, it's not possible to list half of what goes down. But to whet your appetite, here's one scene that has Evans, standing in for Scarlett, and Craig doing the part of Melanie about to give birth, while Hecht argues with them over Scarlett slapping Prissy. In the heat of the argument, they end up slapping each other around amidst a blizzard of peanuts and crumpled paper littering the floor. Guy Perticone's sets and lighting and Barbara Hackett's costumes add outstanding flavor to this work. Frankly, my dears, this play is a must-see for anyone who not only enjoys laughing until it hurts, but also appreciates a sharp-toothed farce that tells of the 1930s Hollywood egos that created its legendary movies. "Moonlight and Magnolias" runs through April 28. For tickets, call 233-6733.