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| The
marryin’ kind: cast members of CCT’s Run for Your Wife. |
The
Escape Artist
By
Kathy Ceceri
Run
for Your Wife
By Ray Cooney, directed by Philip C. Rice
Curtain
Call Theatre, Latham, through Jan. 8
We could probably all use a good escapist comedy right now,
which makes Curtain Call Theatre’s latest offering even more
welcome this stressed-out time of year. Run for Your Wife
is a British-flavored sex farce, plain and simple, the
twist being that the lucky chap enjoying extra helpings of
romantic attention is so ordinary that he’s actually named
John Smith. With a script full of the best sort of dry British
wit and a top-rate ensemble of actors, directed with impeccable
comedic skill by Philip C. Rice, Run for Your Wife
is a lesser-known gem just waiting to be discovered.
Holding the whole thing together is Aaron S. Holbritter as
Smith, the hapless taxi driver who more through inertia than
stealth has somehow ended up with one wife in Wimbledon and
another in Streatham. Smith keeps his double life ticking
along smoothly by means of a pocket planner, until a knock
on the head throws everything out of whack. When he fails
to show up in his usual clockwork-like manner at flat No.
1 at midnight or flat No. 2 at 7, his worried wives ring up
their respective police stations, and the chase begins.
Cooney doesn’t make much of either the similarities or the
differences in the characters of Barbara Smith (Heather Hewitt)
and Mary Smith (Lisa Henderson), other than to make them both
nice, ordinary people, whose screams of frustration seem perfectly
understandable, given how much they are normally willing to
put up with out of faith in their reliable, loving mate. Instead,
the playwright saves the best bits of dialogue for the “boys,”
chief among them John’s and Mary’s upstairs neighbor Stanley
Gardner. Stanley is a layabout pest who’s temporarily unemployed,
although he’s thinking of making it permanent—the hours are
good. As played by James Disalvatore, Stanley is charming
and wry and a good counterpart to the amazingly unflappable
Smith, whom he accuses of flitting between his two women “like
an oversexed bumblebee.” Stanley is let in on the secret when
Smith realizes he has some fast covering up to do, and the
pair manage to come up with enough improbable stories to make
Lucy and Ethel proud.
Adding to the chaos are Detective Sgt. Troughton (David Edward
Campbell) of the Wimbledon CID, who brings the battered Smith
home from the hospital and decides to look into some confusion
over his actual address, and Detective Sgt. Porterhouse, his
counterpart in Streatham, who becomes so wrapped up in the
mystery of the two missing Smith reports that he ends up pouring
tea and offering marital advice to the lot. Meanwhile, upstairs
from John and Barbara, frockmaker Bobby Franklyn is fixing
up his new flat and popping in and out to repair the damage
he’s caused to the Smith’s apartment below. Director Rice,
who stepped in to play Bobby opening weekend (the talented
Jeremy Buechner will be taking over for the rest of the run)
got some of the biggest laughs of the night, although the
sheer volume of pouf jokes struck me as a bit too much for
this day and age. My only other complaint is with the set
by Malachi Martin. Though functionally designed—an intersection
of the two apartments, each half reflecting the other—the
decorating scheme was drab without being deliberately so,
making it seem less a choice of the characters than of the
designer.
In all other ways, though, Run for Your Wife is better
than a flu shot for relief from too much reality this season.
|
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