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BORN YESTERDAY — a play for today

The magic of Ford Theatre’s Born Yesterday is how the cast of actors turn cartoonish caricatures in to real life characters as Ed Gero and company do in this post World War II classic tale.
Gero is Brock, the kid who has done the American dream of rising from rags to riches knocking everyone else down as he climbs his ladder to success.  Now he is the supreme junk yard king from his war time profits and  has come to Washington  for the next step up, to buy some deals with the Senate, for all the scrap junk left from the war.
Kimberly Gilbert is  Billie Dawn, his chorus girl friend, who might have been a star for her five lines in Anything Goes.  
How fitting a name of a musical to sing along as how these  deals that with the right price for political favor,  where“anything goes”
Or does it?
Billie emerges as the heroine of this tale, transformed from the stereotype dumb blond go along girl who wears Hollywood flimsy lingeries into wearing serious reading glasses and  Kate Hepburn style trousers.  And she discovers that by reading what others think,  that she is a thinking being.
The superb cast includes Eric Hissom as Brock’s brilliant boozed up lawyer.  Todd Scofield  is the confused senator.  Cody Nickell is the intellectual who is starts as a inquiring reporter and Billie’s tutor and then —no surprise—her lover!  
All are well placed in Daniel Lee Conway’s super setting of an elegant two-floor hotel suite.  
The  humor is  fast and furious as it settles into moments for serious reflection:  what  does all this really mean?   Walking out of Ford’s, just a few blocks, one can see  the US Capitol that was looming large in the window of the make believe set of the show, looms very real.

Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin. Directed by Aaron Posner. Lights, Nancy Schertler; sound design and original music, John Gromada. Cast includes Evan Casey, Naomi Jacobson, Matt Dewberry and Jamie Smithson. Through Oct. 21 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. 202-347-4833 or fords.org

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