Love and Marriage

The Villagers get some laughs out of ‘Run for Your Wife.’

By: Stuart Duncan
   Run For Your Wife is a very funny show. It can be staged as a knockabout farce or a semi-realistic British comedy. It doesn’t matter — the laughs still come fast and furiously. The latest production on the Villagers’ main stage may lack some of of the memorable performances of past stagings, relying somewhat too heavily on following the script for its humor. But don’t worry, you will still laugh yourself silly.
   Playwright Ray Cooney is often called "Britain’s Neil Simon." Certainly he is prolific, an average of a new show every year and a half, many of them long-running, and as many as three at a time in London’s West End theaters. You can usually recognize them from the cardboard cutouts in front of the box office — lingerie-clad beauties, full-length and usually in flight. But being British farce, you can count on suggestion more than actual kink; Cooney has great respect for his audiences’ sensibilities.
   Run For Your Wife revolves around John Smith, a taxi driver (played here with nice understatement by Rich Sibello) who has two lives, two apartments and two wives to prove it. Mary (Tracey Fama) lives in Wimbledon and Barbara (Linda Correll) lives just four and a half minutes away, if the traffic is light. By dint of a meticulously kept schedule and obvious energy, Smith is able to dart between the two until a minor accident requiring an overnight "in hospital" fouls up the intricate balance.
   Now you add in a pair of detective sergeants (Steve Campbell and Tim McGovern) plus a pair of upstairs neighbors (Ken Webb and Cliff Parent) — one at each apartment — put them all on a Jim Parks Sr. set design with enough doors to open and slam, and all of the farcical ingredients are neatly in place.
   One of the intriguing aspects of a Ray Cooney script is that much is left to the director when it comes to how the laughs develop. Some six years ago, I saw productions of the show at two different theaters on successive evenings. The stagings could not have been more different; you howled at different characters — but you howled.
   In this production, director John Correll has allowed the upstairs neighbors (Webb and Parent) full range, and they have stolen the show. Webb is accused of being what the Brits call "a poof" and pulls huge laughs fom his indignation. His counterpart, Parent, plays "a poof" to the fullest and his laughs are just as big.
   Moreover, the wives play their roles differently: Tracey Fama leans to the physical comedy; Linda Correll plays her role with more than a hint of sex. The police sergeants play straight and very reserved, thereby smothering any thought of humor most of the time.
   No matter — the evening is still hilarious and well worth a trip to Villagers.
Run For Your Wife continues at the Villagers, 475 DeMott Lane, Somerset, through March 1. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Tickets cost $16, $12 seniors/students. For information, call (732) 873-2710. On the Web: www.villagerstheatre.com