'BAREFOOT IN THE PARK'

8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 17 (matinees: 3 p.m. Feb. 9, 16)

Diamond Head Theatre

Tickets: $12-$42

733-0274

www.diamondheadtheatre.com

Despite the long-running success of Neil Simon comedies, they aren't wind-up devices that only require being turned on to play successfully. We see all the clockworks in his "Barefoot in the Park," now at Diamond Head Theatre, but not much more.

The 1963 comedy was Simon's first big Broadway success, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Robert Redford (who also starred in the 1967 film with Jane Fonda).

The script is firmly locked into an early '60's ethic, when life seemed newly fresh and blissfully naive. Its newlywed central characters are starting out married life in a cramped and cold, fifth-floor walk-up apartment, with only their love to keep them warm. Simon's dialogue is appropriately bright and witty.

"I didn't want him to come 'till after the furniture arrived.

How long did you say you were married?

Six days.

He won't notice the place is empty till June."

While the script lacks the depth and serious undertones of Simon's mature work, it still offers a thin layer of opportunity to develop character. The new husband is a serious fellow, while the young wife is a free spirit. He can't cut loose or match her spontaneity and won't walk barefoot in the park with her when the temperature is 17 degrees. That personality difference eventually leads to conflict.

"My laundry come back today?

Yes, your laundry came back today. They stuffed your shirts beautifully."

Successful staging doesn't mean making these characters contemporary. It means using a light touch to recreate a 40-year old world in which they can naturally fit. Imagine a comic time capsule in a vintage diorama.

Rob Duval's direction at DHT lacks the necessary tone. Imagine mechanical dolls thumping around inside a cardboard box.

Erin Kim and Todd Coolidge play the young couple. Kim was a successful Aldonza in last year's UH production "Man of La Mancha," but clicks on and off between bouncy, pouty, and angry in this production. Coolidge warmed up to an excellent "King John" in last summer's Shakespeare Festival, but manages mostly a physically manic frustration as a Neil Simon hero.

Her teased hair collapses and he eventually loses a sock. Both externally hyperventilate. Well, nobody ought to claim that romantic comedy is easy to play.

Supporting roles in this production are there because they're there.

The bride's well-meaning mother (Lisa Konove) inhabits the periphery and is brought in by the playwright at calculated plot points to complicate the action. Konove creates a human character, but one that is too well-grounded to end up in her Act Two befuddled predicament. Allen Cole plays an eccentric, foreign upstairs neighbor because the script says so.

Mike Scott Robertson and Jim Hesse appear briefly for telephone repair and deliveries and to personify the heavy-handed sight gags resulting from climbing five flights of stairs.