TREVOR (CARSON ELROD) AND SUSANNAH (SARAH MANTON) IN "BEDROOM FARCE"
PHOTO BY CAROL ROSEGG
No matter how many decades it has been since you donned a pair of pajamas and attended a slumber party, an overnight where you did everything with your best friends except sleep, the Westport Country Playhouse has the ideal entertainment solution. You’re invited to enter, unannounced and deliciously quiet as an eavesdropper, to a trio of bedrooms for a voyeuristic adventure.
Be prepared to laugh, out loud, as director John Tillinger offers up the delightfully and only slightly scandalous “Bedroom Farce” by prolific British playwright Alan Ayckbourn until Sunday, September 13. Marjorie Bradley Kellogg has cobbled the sleeping quarters of three couples so tightly together the toes of one couple could almost reach out and touch another couple…so we feel intimately involved in the lives portrayed instantly.
Ernest (Paxton Whitehead) and Delia (Cecelia Hart) are the senior dorm parents, comfortable and familiar after eons of marriage. They cope with leaking roofs, eating sardines in bed, cold feet under the covers and incidents of over-and under- tipping of waiters with ease. What gives them pause is the marriage choice of their son Trevor (Carson Elrod) to Susannah (Sarah Manton) when he had many more suitable choices available.
For Nick (Matthew Greer) and Jan (Nicole Lowrance), the pressing issue is Nick’s recent onset of a severe back pain, pain that has rendered him virtually immobile. While wife Jan is somewhat solicitous, it doesn’t stop her from abandoning him to attend a housewarming party for good friends Malcolm (Scott Drummond) and Kate (Claire Karpen).
Jan explains she really must go if for no other reason than her former suitor Trevor is going through a bad patch with Susannah and Jan is afraid of what will happen at the party. She is sure her calming and patient words will be conciliatory. The complications rise like a twisting flight of stairs until chaos and comedy reign supreme. This ensemble cast is perfect, both in and out of nightclothes.
For tickets ($30 and up), call Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport at 203-227-4177 or 888-927-7529 or online at www.westportplayhouse.org. Performances are Tuesday at 7 p.m, Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., with many special events scheduled throughout the run.
Get your scorecard ready so you can keep track of these “strange bedfellows” who migrate hither and yon, somewhat like Goldilocks trying to find a bed and a partner that is just right.
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