‘Mister Roberts’ is a solid drama that needs more waves

September 17, 2009|Don Aucoin, Globe Staff

WATERTOWN - The shortcomings of “Mister Roberts’’ were easy to overlook in the 1955 film version because of the performances by Henry Fonda, William Powell, a snarling, hissing James Cagney, and especially a brilliant young actor named Jack Lemmon.

Though the cast at the New Repertory Theater is capable enough, “Mister Roberts’’ comes across as a workmanlike comedy-drama that is sometimes trenchant but at other times simply poky, especially in the first act.

What resonates most strongly in the New Rep production of “Mister Roberts,’’ the debut by new artistic director Kate Warner, are the dramatic elements. To contemporary audiences schooled on “M*A*S*H’’ and “Catch-22,’’ there is something compellingly counterintuitive in the notion of raising hell so you can get into a war zone.

But that is the goal of Lieutenant Doug Roberts (Thomas Piper), stuck aboard the deliciously named USS Reluctant, a Navy cargo ship. Roberts and the crew of the Reluctant spend their days, in Roberts’s words, moving “from tedium to apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to monotony.’’

Languishing far from the action in the South Pacific during World War II, Roberts is desperately trying to get himself reassigned to a naval destroyer before the war ends. To do so, however, he’ll have to win his own private war with the Captain (Paul D. Farwell), the Reluctant’s commanding officer. A petty tyrant in the tradition of Bligh and Queeg, the Captain is concerned with two things and two things only: his image and the potted plant outside his cabin. The morale of his men matters not a whit to him.

Keeping Roberts company are Doc (Owen Doyle), the medical officer, and the feckless and womanizing Ensign Pulver (Jonathan Popp). A classic case of a legend in his own mind, Pulver spends his days plotting grandiose pranks against the Captain that he can never summon the courage to carry out. The crew reveres Roberts, at least up to the point when he begins truckling to the Captain. Unbeknownst to them, Roberts has struck a bargain on their behalf, promising to toe the line (and stop sending letters to Navy brass requesting reassignment) if the Captain grants the crew shore leave.