Posted on: Friday, July 16, 2004
STAGE REVIEW
Restaging of 1911 farce falls flat
By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic
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| Jared Jeffries and Kyra Poppler rehearse a scene from "The Underpants," a 1911 comedy being staged through Aug. 1 at the Manoa Valley Theatre.
Advertiser Library Photo |
It is often said that comedy is more difficult to stage than tragedy. And perhaps the most difficult comic form is the traditional farce.
So when it's hard to find a spontaneous guffaw in Manoa Valley Theatre's "The Underpants," we start examining the show's pedigree.
The original play is a 1911 work by German playwright Carl Sternheim, aimed at satirizing middle-class values. The current script is a 2002 adaptation by comedian Steve Martin. And the Manoa Valley Theatre production is directed by Betty Burdick, who seems to maneuver around the edges of the play without getting a good grip on any part of it.
A clear sense of style seems to slip away from set designer Jim Davenport, who underlays the action with a huge set of woman's bloomers, but adds a distracting collection of furniture that is neither realistic nor stylized. Athena Espania's costumes give the women a Gibson Girl look, but put the men in contemporary suits.
Given the technical fumbling and indecision, the actors opt for an approach that is overly formal and cautious. There is none of the expected Steve Martin slapstick and no real character humor. What might have pushed the edges of the envelope in 1911 plays today like stock stereotypes. None of it culminates in a satisfying belly laugh.
The premise is the naive young wife of a low-level government bureaucrat tried so hard to catch a glimpse of the king during a parade that she lost her underpants. Her husband is mortified and expects the episode to result in their financial and social ruin. Instead, it attracts two panty admirers who apply to rent the couple's spare bedroom.
• Manoa Valley Theatre • 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, thru Aug. 1 • $25-$15 • 988-6131 Jared Jeffries plays the husband as a sturdy dolt, proud of his own rib cage, but oblivious to his wife's tentative loneliness.
As the wife, Kyra Poppler goes from virginal inexperience to sexual appetite during the play's two acts, responding like a sleepwalker to external commands rather than inner desires.
David Starr is a stuffed-shirt poet, who wants to make the wife his muse, but ultimately is more in love with his own words. Steven Neumeier is a tubercular barber who is as much stimulated by the wife as by extra sugar in his coffee.
Terri Seeborg is not quite bawdy as the upstairs neighbor and F.L. Cabacungan is a wayward old chap who arrives too late on the scene.
The lack of a clear and effective style is further exacerbated by the play's lack of balance. Act 1 is overly long and excessively talky. Act 2 is comparatively short and too tentatively burlesque.
If there's a message in all this, it probably has something to do with fleeting notoriety, gender roles and fixation on sex.
But one wishes for a firm guiding hand somewhere in the production with the conviction to pick the right horse and ride it through this thin material. We might end up at the same unsatisfying destination, but would at least have had some exhilaration and sense of movement.
The husband divides the room and rents it to both tenants, while the upstairs spinster urges the wife to plunge into an affair with each of them.
'The Underpants'
