Underpants, The

When an adaptation is true in substance and effect to the original play while the adaptor both cuts and adds matter so as to make the play work for a contemporary audience, it's cause for celebration. Celebrate Steve Martin's way with Sternheim's roccoco-style German farce! Not only are all the essentials intact, so is the spirit of the time (about 1911).

Into the prim and proper home of bourgeois government clerk Theo Maske comes much ado, caused by his wife's underpants having dropped as she watched the King's parade from the front window. Theo's already exasperated with Louise for not attending to his strict housekeeping rules, and now he has a disgrace to try to smooth over.

Upstairs neighbor Gertrude is also upsetting him more than usual by assuring that gossip about the bloomers has spread through the city.

Response to the Rooms for Rent sign in the Maske window grows due to the incident. Cohen, a hypochondriac barber, is first to show up to bargain for a room. It doesn't take long for him to note Theo's prejudice, so he insists his initial is "K" (the most prominent of similar running jokes). Next , noble young Versati, in colorful trappings of a would-be poet, insists on renting a room for a year. Theo, who needs the money if he's ever to begin a family, figures out a way to divide the rental space between the two men. Of course, when Theo's not at home, the men are after Louise. When he is around, he's not above trying a little hanky panky of his own.

With Gertrude egging her on, Louise turns romantic and rebellious. She tries intrigues to go along with Versati and a sleeping potion to quash C/Kohen's advances. She goes so far as to drop more than her underpants. What a point for Theo to come in on her!

Comes another would-be renter, a gentleman formal in speech as in spats. A scientist, he's the only one who admits to ecstasy over what he saw at the time of the King's parade. (Note: Martin should have not have substituted King for Kaiser. Except for this and strained references to flatulence and belches, Martin usually has kept to Sternheim's era.) In the final moments, a surprise entrance brings goings-on nicely full circle.

Director Barbara Redmond puts her actors through all the paces of farce, and they come out winners. Heather Kelley's Louise goes from proper and upset to cheeky to brazenly romantic to disappointed but probably not cowed. Whether blustering or bragging as Theo, puffy Brent Bateman is an extraordinary big blow! He's one with the character through which Sternheim most satirizes sexism with double standards, German nationalism, prejudices, middle class pretensions, and just plain self-importance.

A good foil for Kelley's Louise, Michelle Trachtenberg captures mischievous Gertrude's sense of self, despite a probable fate as a spinster.

With sweeping gestures and sumptuous syllabication of dubious verse (as well as some of David Covach's cleverest costumes), Dolph Paulsen captures Versati's flamboyance. By contrast, in his formal clothes and with his head jutting out like a tortoise's from his shell of a hat, DeMario McGrew puts a distinctively silly spin on scientist Klinglehoff.

No one could be funnier, though, than David Yearta as K/Cohen. His body often twisted like a question mark, his face twitching, Yearta can ease K/Cohen from a fanatic for Wagner into a sniveling suitor and then a little man with concern for his health his only constancy.

Finally, Steve O'Brien makes the most of a brief appearance.

James Florek's period set and Rick Cannon's traditional lighting provide atmosphere that's as right as Martin and Sternheim's dialogue. Director and actors give their best in the service of light-hearted entertainment with serious undertones that convey a sense of a certain time and place but in a contemporary way.