Theater Review - "The Cottage"

THEATER REVIEW - The Cottage

Produced by: The John W. Engeman Theater - Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur

The trouble with British farce is that the jokes are usually one-liners … and they’re delivered too rapidly (frequently as asides) for slow-witted people like me to appreciate. It’s not my hearing (I’ve had that checked), nor my eyesight (I was wearing my bifocals when ‘The Cottage’s’ sight gags were delivered at the Engeman last weekend), nor my sense of smell (I could virtually detect the odor associated with the play’s funniest episode). So it has to be a lack of sophistication that prohibits my enjoying these over-the-top romantic comedies as completely as I’m told I should.

Okay … why be in denial? … let’s simply admit it: Such outrageous comedies were written for audiences more urbane than I. But if that’s the case, I certainly was not alone at Northport’s snazzy Engeman Theater on Sunday. Even a superb set by the incredible Jon Collins … wonderful period costumes by Tristan Raines … and sound that expertly (if briefly) incorporated music from the Roaring Twenties … could not trump the need for my neighbors and me occasionally to turn to a companion and whisper, “I don’t get it.”

I won’t even speculate as to why the couple in front of me saw fit to spend much of the play absorbed in a game of solitaire on their smart phones. The unfortunate truth is that at one point, I became more interested in their progress than I was in the intentionally silly business being conducted on stage. That’s not a knock … it’s farce, folks.

But two of the actors in this predictable Sandy Rustin play (nicely directed by BT McNicholl) are veterans of Shakespearian drama on Broadway and beyond … and the discipline pays off. Rachel Pickup, the willowy clothes horse who occupies center stage as ‘Sylvia’ much of the time—and with supreme confidence—has appeared in ‘Merchant of Venice,’ ‘King Lear,’ ‘Julius Caesar,’ and a number of The Bard’s comedies. She’s the real deal, this charmer with the fashion model good looks. I’d love to have seen her interpretation of ‘Portia’ at London’s Globe Theatre.

Matched-up with Rachel is the show’s leading man Henry Clarke as ‘Beau’ (‘leading cad,’ one can imagine Noel Coward saying) whose considerable talents have also been honed on Shakespeare. He’s done ‘Henry IV,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Henry V,’ and ‘Richard III’ … WOW! I tried to guess which roles he might have occupied in those plays, and concluded he could have performed well in any of them.

The other two women and two men in ‘The Cottage’ were not completely overshadowed in this ‘everyone’s-related-by-marriage’ openly ribald sex farce. Indeed, the genre demands that each player fulfill his/her role appropriately if the complexity is going to be brought to a successful, uh, climax! The audience’s appreciation of the contributions of James Laverdiere, Christiane Noll, Brian Sgambati, and Lilly Tobin was obvious in a clever curtain call that was the most creative part of the play. Even women’s understudy Maria Couch took a bow at the final curtain. Good move!

Credit artistic director Richard Dolce for presenting his theater-savvy audience in Northport with a well-cast, rollicking package of fun. The romantic comedy runs thru Labor Day weekend.

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of ten novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. Ladouceur’s newest thriller THE QUANTUM SYNDROME is patterned on the Atlanta child murders of the 80s. His eleventh book, THE SEQUEL, will explore the odd relationship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote.