GetOut Magazine

Young actor delivers in ‘A Man of No Importance’
By CHRIS PAGE
Get Out
Oct. 19. 2005

From the cheap seats, Dominic Kidwell is perhaps an unlikely choice for a leading man.

At 22, he's a stocky anydude — almost schlubby from afar. Even as love-dumb nebbish Oscar in Scottsdale Desert Stages Theatre's “Sweet Charity” earlier this season, he offered body language ratcheted up to such uncomfortably nervous heights that one watching couldn't help but break out in sympathy flop-sweat.

But those sitting a few rows closer to the stage know better why Kidwell is pure magic: It's all in his face.

He's got a smile like tiramisu — sweet, soft, complex — the kind of warm grin that makes you want to cheer no matter what the context. And when that smile takes a dive, Kidwell can take on an expression of sadness so deep, he can make an everyday woe (like, say, losing a girlfriend, as in “Sweet Charity”) more powerful than another actor doing a climactic death scene.

It was his sad face that threatened to turn a fluffy entertainment like “Charity” into something heavyhearted.

That same sadness makes his latest starring role, in Desert Stages' open-ended run of Terrence McNally's Irish musical “A Man of No Importance,” the most aching drama so far this season.

His character, Alfie Byrne, is a workaday ticket-taker on a bus in '60s Dublin, prone to reading Oscar Wilde to his passengers and enlisting his townsfolk in staging amateur theater productions.

If that sounds quirky and idyllic, it's also a sounding call for predictability: Dear, sweet Alfie's life is too cute, too charming to stay that way.

His undoing is a repressed sexual identity. Though it's not hard to guess what direction Alfie — a grown man living at home with his sister, obsessing over Oscar Wilde and shying away from girls — will take.

As Alfie attempts to mount a controversial production of the racy “Salome” in his church hall, an encounter with a thug (played by Jonathan Bowersock with a kind of melodramatic villainy that makes him, too, awfully predictable) brings his life crashing to a palpable, painful halt — though a predictable kind of minor redemption greets Alfie by show's end.

Mostly, this is a showcase for Kidwell's performance, with a vulnerability that seems both effortless and entirely convincing.

Alongside him is a cast of mostly talented folks delivering largely superb performances: There are stellar actors like Barbara McBain, Jessica Thalacker (a young ensemble gal given a bit more of the spotlight here) and newcomer Amber Gildersleeve playing with a welcome subtlety. The only blatant blemish is Monson Davis, who amateurishly fumbles with his assorted characters.

Directed by Jim Carmody in Desert Stages' small secondary cabaret theater space, “A Man of No Importance” is a heartbreaking charm, funny in all the right places, though its musical moments — with score by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens — add some unnecessary length and, even with simple prerecorded accompaniment, can seem a bit overmuch in such a small room.

The upside of this tiny theater, though, is that it affords everyone an up-close seat for Kidwell's tender, tragic performance.