Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
TagsRay Cooney comedy performed to perfection at Hopewell's Off-Broadstreet Theatre
BY STUART DUNCAN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
REVIEW
British playwright Ray Cooney (full name, Raymond George Alfred Cooney) has often been called Britain's Neil Simon. Certainly he has been prolific – a dozen and a half plays, some with co-authors, and often several in London's West End at the same time.
One of his early triumphs, "There Goes The Bride" is settling in at Hopewell's Off-Broadstreet Theatre, the home of dessert theater on a year-round schedule. If you go, expect giggles to erupt into full-throated roars of laughter, and since it is British boudoir farce, you know that nothing untoward will actually happen – just a lot of talk.
As usual, Cooney, who has teamed up with fellow farceur John Chapman for the fourth time, takes a simple theme and twists it in every direction available. In this case it is the tale of a dysfunctional family as it prepares for a daughter's wedding.
We not only meet the intended bride, her mom and dad, her granny and grandpa, but also a few family friends and one business client of the dad's. And, oh yes, a delightful imp of a singer/dancer who shows up as the result of a concussive smack to the head of daddy.You can count on playwright Cooney to whack the ingredients like a Mexican piñata, thereby keeping all the characters hopping like so many puppets on strings. And you can count on Off-Broadstreet director, Bob Thick to have a first-rate cast, well versed in comedy essentials at the ready, prepared to whack laugh lines to the far walls of the intimate setting (a former movie theater in the 1930s).
Doug Kline and Virginia Barrie play the granny and grandpa. He is a veteran of no less than 22 past OBT shows; she is making her Hopewell debut, but has been a fixture all over the area. And between them they would steal the show (if the others in the company would just let them.) Both have exquisite timing, just the sort of thing that playwright Cooney needs.
Barry Abramowitz plays the daddy with the energy of the Energizer Bunny, a delicious mixture of physical and vocal pyrotechnics that may well leave you exhausted by the end of the laughter. It also has the added excitement of forcing everyone else on stage to run, just to keep up.
Cooney always gives up one character who, more or less, plays on the straight and narrow and this time, the job goes to Tom Stevenson (the family friend) and he is perfect in the role – naturally a bit befuddled and sometimes just a slight bit off-center himself. Curtis Kaine arrives late in the evening as the advertising client, tries to make sense out of the action, gives up quickly, and joins in the confusion and the fun.
Tappany Hochman pops up from behind a couch when Daddy gets smacked hard by an errant door – a cute figment of the imagination with plenty of energy. Nicole Stoddard has little to do as the daughter except to look pretty – and that she does very well indeed. Marilyn Stoddard plays her mother (and yes, she is her real mother.)
It was Off-Broadstreet who years back introduced Ray Cooney to New Jersey (after seeing an early Cooney play in London) and since then, virtually every theater in the area has found box office magic in his scripts. If roaring laughter and plenty of smiles isn't enough, perhaps the delicious choice of desserts and table service for beverages will add to the pleasure. This continues to be one of the real values for theater in the area.
"There Goes The Bride" continues at Off-Broadstreet Theatre, 5 S. Greenwood Ave., Hopewell, through Aug. 29 on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m., and on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. The doors are always open one hour earlier for desserts and beverages. For information, visit Off-broadstreet.com or call (609) 466-2766.