If productions of plays were people, then John Patrick’s The Curious Savage at North Portland’s Twilight Theater Company is an utterly charming friend who is the perfect blend of snappy wit and soft heart … a welcome addition to a society that the columnist and author David Brooks says has become increasingly sad, isolated, and mean.

Perhaps Brooks, sociologists or historians could explain why the show was a flop when it opened on Broadway in 1950 with Lillian Gish as its star. Whatever the reason, I wish those original audiences could time-travel to 2025 (despite our alleged meanness) and see the phenomenal performances of Kathleen Worley and the rest of the Twilight cast, warmly directed by Shannon Cluphf.

The play takes place in the living room of The Cloisters, a homey sanitarium where three evil stepchildren (amusingly portrayed by David Mitchum Brown, Carol Rose McCreary, and Tyler Hulegaard) have placed their wealthy widowed stepmother, Ethel Savage (Worley). Aside from clutching a giant teddy bear, Mrs. Savage is clearly sane and aware that the kids – who are actually adults, but act like greedy toddlers – just want to get their hands on her fortune, which she has generously decided to give away to fund other people’s “foolish dreams.”

In the meantime, she needs to find a way out of the sanitarium, where the residents, who are treated kindly, still have to march to bed at the sound of a buzzer and are told where and when to drink their coffee. Since Mrs. Savage is loaded, she figures she can buy her way to freedom by bribing a nurse, Miss Willie (Kiley Staufenbeil), to leave a door open.

“Don’t you like us, Mrs. Savage?” the even-tempered nurse asks after Mrs. Savage’s escape attempt. “That’s a very irritating response,” Worley, with perfect timing, retorts.

In a play with numerous agreeable attributes, I’d put Worley’s wonderful performance at the top of the list. After years of enjoying the late great Maggie Smith’s dry quips on Downton Abbey, we’re all used to seeing feisty older women throwing pointed one-liners with the efficient aim of dart board champion, but Worley’s delivery is refreshingly her own.

With a voice that’s subtler than Smith’s tart tones were, Worley creates a nuanced portrait of a compassionate person who’s also clever enough to run circles around her money-grubbing stepkids. At every turn, she thwarts their attempts to get the best of her, refusing to reveal where she’s stashed her $10 million. When her son Titus (Brown), a slick-talking U.S. senator, blusters that he doesn’t know what to say to her, she replies that polite people usually start with “Good evening,” a remark that’s cathartic for a contemporary audience hungering to see a sensible person calmly speaking truth to power.

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Patrick noted in his foreword to the play that the residents at The Cloisters should be played with “warmth and dignity,” adding that exaggerating their eccentricities would “rob them of charm and humor.” Cluphf and her cast take these instructions to heart, presenting characters who are funny without making fun of them. From Bethany Kemper’s portrayal of Fairy, a fanciful young woman who makes up delightful stories, such as saying her parents were “emotional albinos,” to Patrick Roth’s Hannibal, a former statistician who believes he’s a virtuoso on the violin, each of the actors creates a deeply quirky but caring soul, all of whom are more appealing than Mrs. Savage’s so-called “sane” stepchildren.

With an excellent ear for sound, Patrick’s writing especially sings in his lines for Ms. Paddy (Amy Wright). Rarely speaking after her husband told her to shut up, every once in a while she cuts loose, fiercely delivering a list of things she hates, which includes “cold cream, hot dogs, codfish, catfish, catnip, [and] sheep dip,” among many other items. Alone, each word is amusing, but together they form a symphony of wit.

Everyone at The Cloisters takes Ms. Paddy’s diatribes in stride, which fits with Patrick’s vision of The Cloisters as a home, rather than a cold, sterile institution, and Jake France’s set design contributes to this sense of nostalgic warmth. The walls may be a bit grubby, but this lived-in space also has a friendly feeling, with its walnut-stained upright piano, vintage couch, and table bearing a Parcheesi board. Here, the nasty stepchildren are out of place, not because they’re more mentally stable than anyone else, but because The Cloisters is a place where a true familial feeling blossoms.  

Twilight’s theme for its 2025 season is “Redemption/Transformation.” While The Curious Savage may or may not transform its audiences, there’s a good chance it will leave them feeling a little happier and maybe a tad more hopeful — two sensations that are worth their weight in gold for world-weary audiences in 2025.

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The Curious Savage continues at Twilight Theatre Company, 7515 N Brandon Ave. in Portland, through June 8. Find tickets and schedule information here.