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By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune September 20. 2014 12:01AM 'Mrs. Mannerly' is a matter of manners There may have been a time when the proper folding of napkins and a grasp of the subtleties of the proper thank-you card were hallmarks of a civilized society, and were perhaps even deemed to somehow help keep the barbarians on the other side of the gates.   But it probably wasn't 1967, when National Guardsmen were killing rioters in Detroit, China was detonating a hydrogen bomb, and buses were cruising San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood to give gawking tourists from the Midwest a chance to see real, live hippies.   Nonetheless, in a memory play, the time is whatever time the playwright says it is. And in Jeffrey Hatcher's "Mrs. Mannerly," it's 1967, even if it feels more like 1957. And the real Jeffrey Hatcher turned 10 years old in 1967; that's the way these things work.   That's also about the age of the Hatcher character (the very funny, very physical Adam Cuppy), who also plays grown-up Jeffrey and a number of boy Jeffrey's childhood classmates in Next Stage Repertory's production of the 2010 play, which opened to a sparse crowd  Friday  night at the Craterian Theater at the Collier Center for the Performing Arts, perhaps the victim of a city-wide art and music event that also kicked off  Friday .   Jeffrey is undergoing etiquette lessons from the formidable, somewhat mysterious Mrs. Mannerly (a tone-perfect Presila Quinby). In this two-actor play, Cuppy can jump from young Jeffrey into another character in a split second or jump out of a scene completely and stop time to assume a narrator's role, a transformation underscored by lighting changes.   In switching between the boy in the story and the adult narrator, Jeffrey may remind you a bit of the Jean Shepherd character in the film "A Christmas Story," right down to the nostalgic — but never saccharine — evocations of the quirky characters of a bygone time, family craziness and the sharp flavor of the pangs of boyhood recollected in something like tranquility.   In the Steubenville, Ohio, of 1967, with the Daughters of the American Revolution waiting in the wings as arbiters of etiquette, this must be the part where young Jeffrey rebels, right? Wrong. On the contrary, he decides to become the best-mannered boy ever to come out of Steubenville, a paragon of politesse who carries a briefcase to school and speed-reads Emily Post.   Part of the fun is watching Jeffrey torpedo the other kids, including a boy with a perpetually runny nose and a girl who has a strange obsession with J. Edgar Hoover. The play is filled with '60s markers: Bert Parks, Bruce Wayne, the Viet Cong, "Gilligan's Island," Walter Cronkite, "Ironsides," Bat Masterson, Dean Martin.   Nobody has ever scored a 100 in the big test that is the culmination of Mrs. Mannerly's eight-week course. It's an awe-inspiring challenge that will be played out in front of the starchy ladies of the DAR, most of whom were withered and sere when the aging Mrs. Mannerly was a dewy young thing.   But the plot thickens as Jeffrey discovers through a local high school drama teacher that Mrs. Mannerly acted in a play in Chicago in 1929 but was mysteriously dropped from the cast by the time the touring production reached Milwaukee.    Ah, the whiff of scandal. Jeffrey now has a second quest: getting the goods on Mrs. Mannerly. And the smoking gun apparently falls into his lap in the form of the contents of a manila envelope.   The prolific Hatcher has written plays in various genres, ranging from 1999's "The Servant of Two Masters" (with Emilo Paolo Landi) to 1997's "Smash" ( a Shaw adaptation) to 2005's "A Picasso" (a play with Nazis). While "Mrs. Mannerly" is straight comedy, it has just enough of a relationship focus to suggest something beyond the yuks. One of the great things about a painful childhood is that it makes for great stories, and there's all that dramatic irony in which we know more than the character.   Cuppy is a terrific Jeffrey, a loose-limbed, rubber-faced comic able to take the one-liners Hatcher has salted his script with and raise the jokey character to a fuller humanity. Among the many funny bits given to Jeffrey is a make-out scene with an older woman (of 19). But Cuppy can make you laugh just walking herky-jerky across the stage. His impending move to San Diego represents a real loss to the stages of Oregon.   Quinby, like Cuppy, has been with Next Stage Rep since its founding almost four years ago. This time out, she endows Mannerly with a mix of hauteur and a hint of something perhaps a bit tragic. A Scotch-soaked scene (for her, not Jeffrey) in the bar above which she has an apartment allows her to show us a previously hidden dimension.   If comedy ends in a wedding, the wedding here is a meeting of minds and spirits between young Jeffrey and Mannerly. You're probably wondering what's in the envelope, but the fact is it probably doesn't matter.   "Mrs. Mannerly" is an ideal show for Next Stage, which squeezes its productions in between touring shows. Doug Warner directs with his usual sure hand. The only thing I don't get is why a 90-minute play needs a 15-minute intermission.   "Mrs. Mannerly" plays at  7:30  tonight and repeats next weekend. See craterian.org or call 541 779-3000.   Bill Varble writes about arts and entertainment for the Mail Tribune. He can be reached at [email protected]. http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20140920/NEWS/140929957 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->