Cocktail Hour, The

WASPS -- the derisive acronym pinned on white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in our diverse society -- may, as some contend, be a dying breed, but playwright A. R. Gurney has found them to be fertile ground for canny observations throughout his career. The Cocktail Hour, in Bunbury Theatre's hugely enjoyable production, crisply directed by Juergen K. Tossmann, is classic Gurney, in which he gently kids but also uncovers certain values in the culture that produced him.

To the well-to-do family headed by patriarch Bradley (Ray Simmons) and his wife Ann (Mary Ann Johnson), the evening cocktail hour is a sacred ritual though nowadays, as Ann says during a visit from playwright son John (Philip Lynch), a thinly-veiled version of playwright Gurney, and daughter Nina (Susan McNeese Lynch), "I know you children all think you're too busy to have it." A cocktail hour, unlike a cocktail party to which you invite people, is family; private and personal, Ann proclaims as she and her husband tick off its benefits:  "it allows people to unwind, it allows people to sit down together at the end of the day to talk things over, settle things down." Even the bishop when he came to dinner used to say that the cocktail hour took the place of evening prayers. This particular cocktail hour, however, is far from tranquil as the parents and children unwind in amusingly volatile ways that crack their civilized veneer. Son John, it seems, has put the family into his play called The Cocktail Hour (poor T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party comes in for some ribbing with this announcement) and is nervously visiting the parental home to seek permission for staging it. 

Ray Simmons and Mary Ann Johnson are flawlessly in sync as the tradition-driven parents horrified about having the family beans spilled in John's play but touching in their devotion to each other. Simmons is a magnificent blusterer, with a whole catalogue of incredible doubletakes, while Johnson is delightfully droll and grandly offended when her children use an occasional obscenity.  Philip and Susan McNeese Lynch, married in real life, revel in their sibling rivalries and hang-ups.  His sudden uncovering of the meaning of a childhood play he wrote is a hoot, while her over-the-top harangue about the way she thinks the family has treated her brings audience applause. With this funny and highly-skilled cast, there's definitely dynamite in the family dynamics.