Stageloft's
'Run for Your Wife'
has laughs aplenty
By Paul Kolas Telegram and Gazette Reviewer
July 19. 2005
STURBRIDGE— “Run For Your Wife,” Ray Cooney’s uproarious farce about
bigamy run amok, was served up with marvelously orchestrated mayhem
by Stageloft Repertory Theater on Thursday night.
It’s a situational comedy that depends on spot-on timing to deliver
its escalating plotline predicaments with any great degree of success,
and thanks to director Jeremy Woloski’s gift for lathering up the
necessary frenzy for this sort of thing, and his uniformly excellent
cast, “Run For Your Wife” provokes more unbridled laughter than any
local theater production in memory.
Todd Darling plays John Smith, a London taxi driver who has, until
now, managed to use his variable work schedule to cleverly maintain
two marriages within four-and-a-half minutes’ driving distance from
each other — one in Wimbledon, the other in Streatham. What turns
John’s neatly ordered life of deception upside down is a head injury
sustained while trying to rescue an old lady from a mugging. She’s
the one who causes his injury, hitting him with her handbag, sending
him to the hosptial, bringing in two detectives to investigate the
crime (thanks to the police report including both of his addresses),
and making him a media hero for warding off the thugs.
By the time he’s out of the hospital, he’s a day behind on which
wife he should be with and is confronted with the public spectacle
of his picture in the newspaper. What follows is his panicked attempt
to keep things from falling apart with a flurry of impromptu lies
to the police, his wives, and his upstairs neighbor, Stanley Gardner,
that become exponentially more elaborate, outrageous, and funnier
as they keep piling on top of each other.
Kara Krantz, who plays wife Mary in Wimbledon, is so believable in
her mounting frustration over John’s antics and everyone else’s inability
to give her a straight answer either through lying or being lied to,
when she screams in helpless dismay, one can only nod in sympathy.
Lisa Cohane, who plays the other wife in Streatham, Barbara, reacts
to the confusing turn of events with a quality of reserved impatience
and bored petulance. Krantz and Cohane bring a well-conceived picture
of contrast to their parts. Todd Darling does a fine job of weaving
his way through John’s dilemma with the right alarmist touch. He seems
to understand just how far he can take this slapstick and maximize
its potential for humor, and he has a wonderful rapport with Doug
Ingalls, who pretty much steals the show as the lascivious Stanley
Gardner. Ingalls plays the part with an easy, gleeful mischief and
assured arsenal of gestures that elicits one laugh after another.
Another welcome highlight is Glenn Macdonald’s turn as Bobby Franklin,
a gay upstairs neighbor in John and Barbara’s Streatham flat. Macdonald
fleshes out what could have been a standard stereotypical part with
several inspired touches. Matt Carr has some very funny moments as
Dectective Sgt. Porterhouse, and even though Bruce Adams is more or
less the “straight man” in this comic delirium, he gives Detective
Sgt. Troughton a sly, understated wit.
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