Another good one
The Theater Barn
Love with a few winks and tears
By Jeffrey Borak, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Article Last Updated: 06/19/2008 07:43:00 AM EDT
Thursday, June 19
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. — British playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows his way around classic farce. He more than has his way with the form in "How the Other Half Loves," a sly, penetrating comedy that is being given a well-crafted, smoothly played season-opening production at The Theater Barn.
"How the Other Half Loves" begins where most good farce begins — a lie. This one involves two people, Bob Phillips (Brian Allard) and Fiona Foster (Kathleen Carey), whose lies to their respective spouses, the much put-upon Teresa Phillips (a remarkable Amanda McCallum) and the bumbling Frank Foster (the able John Philip Cromie), about their whereabouts on the evening of their illicit get-together involve, unbeknownst to one another, a third couple, the hapless and completely innocent Featherstones — William (Harry Vaughn) and Mary (Jenna Doolittle).
William is an eager-to-please, upwardly mobile, ambitious young man. He has a clearly defined sense of propriety and order and a fashion sense that makes him an ideal, and very colorful, candidate for "What Not to Wear."
William's proudest creation is the dutiful Mary. When William is lead to believe by the cuckolded Frank that Mary has been unfaithful, he erupts like Vesuvius as his perfect life suddenly falls into a disarray that is the emotional equivalent of the physical mess that marks the Phillips household.
In this class-ordered world, Frank calls the tune.
He is Bob's boss and William's soon-to-be-boss. At home, however, it is Fiona who is in control. She finds what Frank cannot, fixes what he breaks, keeps him on a straight path even while she is deceiving him, which is all-too-easy to accomplish. Frank has a way of coming up with five every time he tries putting two and two together. He has an unerring knack for reaching the wrong conclusions from all the right information. At the same time, for all Frank's helplessness and bumbling, there is a subtle suggestion that perhaps this is his way of maintaining control, manipulating. It's a very subtle game these two, Fiona and Frank, play.
There may be class distinctions among the play's three couples — each of whom is played vividly and insightfully under Marotta's direction — but feelings transcend class, even if behavior may not. Commonality is emphasized by Ayckbourn's conceit, which has the two households — the Phillipses and the Fosters — sharing one set with action in each house often going on simultaneously as characters from one household pass characters from the other without so much as a by-your-leave. The highpoint is a scene at the end of the first act that unfolds over dinner at each house on successive nights, with the Featherstones switching back and forth between the Phillips' marital meltdown and the cool, even-handed, barely contained civility of the Fosters.
Marotta orchestrates all of this with shrewd skill. He draws from his likable cast a series of finely tuned, insightful performances, even when Ayckbourn takes odd turns, as he does in an unsettling scene in the second act involving a cruel and particularly self-serving Bob and a compliant Mary.
Laughter comes readily here, if not easily, and always with a telling understanding of the price betrayers and the betrayed are made to pay for perfidy.
Love with a few winks and tears
By Jeffrey Borak, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Article Last Updated: 06/19/2008 07:43:00 AM EDT
Thursday, June 19
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. — British playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows his way around classic farce. He more than has his way with the form in "How the Other Half Loves," a sly, penetrating comedy that is being given a well-crafted, smoothly played season-opening production at The Theater Barn.
"How the Other Half Loves" begins where most good farce begins — a lie. This one involves two people, Bob Phillips (Brian Allard) and Fiona Foster (Kathleen Carey), whose lies to their respective spouses, the much put-upon Teresa Phillips (a remarkable Amanda McCallum) and the bumbling Frank Foster (the able John Philip Cromie), about their whereabouts on the evening of their illicit get-together involve, unbeknownst to one another, a third couple, the hapless and completely innocent Featherstones — William (Harry Vaughn) and Mary (Jenna Doolittle).
William is an eager-to-please, upwardly mobile, ambitious young man. He has a clearly defined sense of propriety and order and a fashion sense that makes him an ideal, and very colorful, candidate for "What Not to Wear."
William's proudest creation is the dutiful Mary. When William is lead to believe by the cuckolded Frank that Mary has been unfaithful, he erupts like Vesuvius as his perfect life suddenly falls into a disarray that is the emotional equivalent of the physical mess that marks the Phillips household.
In this class-ordered world, Frank calls the tune.
He is Bob's boss and William's soon-to-be-boss. At home, however, it is Fiona who is in control. She finds what Frank cannot, fixes what he breaks, keeps him on a straight path even while she is deceiving him, which is all-too-easy to accomplish. Frank has a way of coming up with five every time he tries putting two and two together. He has an unerring knack for reaching the wrong conclusions from all the right information. At the same time, for all Frank's helplessness and bumbling, there is a subtle suggestion that perhaps this is his way of maintaining control, manipulating. It's a very subtle game these two, Fiona and Frank, play.
There may be class distinctions among the play's three couples — each of whom is played vividly and insightfully under Marotta's direction — but feelings transcend class, even if behavior may not. Commonality is emphasized by Ayckbourn's conceit, which has the two households — the Phillipses and the Fosters — sharing one set with action in each house often going on simultaneously as characters from one household pass characters from the other without so much as a by-your-leave. The highpoint is a scene at the end of the first act that unfolds over dinner at each house on successive nights, with the Featherstones switching back and forth between the Phillips' marital meltdown and the cool, even-handed, barely contained civility of the Fosters.
Marotta orchestrates all of this with shrewd skill. He draws from his likable cast a series of finely tuned, insightful performances, even when Ayckbourn takes odd turns, as he does in an unsettling scene in the second act involving a cruel and particularly self-serving Bob and a compliant Mary.
Laughter comes readily here, if not easily, and always with a telling understanding of the price betrayers and the betrayed are made to pay for perfidy.
Labels: Barn
posted by Brian at 11:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home