Geva Theater Center has been fortunate to get Bruce Jordan -- an early alumnus – to return to direct always-winning, crowd-pleasing productions. A memorably witty character, also known for his savvy business management and tight artistic control, Jordan has combined those qualities in directing comedies at Geva by Noel Coward, Neil Simon, and Steve Martin, as well as the uncanny blockbuster he and his partner, Marilyn Abrams, created, Shear Madness, which thus far has grossed close to 175 million dollars worldwide.
Perfect Wedding needs Bruce Jordan’s help. It’s one of those awfully silly English farces that run forever in the UK and close in a few weeks on Broadway. The best of our regional theaters sometimes produce them to great success and acclaim with masterful actors and/or a juggler like Jordan directing.
This one is not an Oscar Wilde wit-fest that provides a quotable epigram – or at least a wisecrack – in every short comment. It does try to be a Feydeau-style farce with doors constantly slamming and the wrong person always coming out. But its surprises are telegrammed ahead, and the entirely attractive cast does not include a Pied Piper whom we’d follow anywhere. So Jordan has them keep the pace very brisk and deliver any line that could be remotely funny with heavy comic emphasis while taking a stance or pose that dares the audience not to laugh.
Mostly, the opening night audience did. The applause at the end was very appreciative and friendly. I couldn’t tell how much of the looks of the show was intended to be satirical – or was taken to be. Bill Clarke’s set of a “honeymoon suite of a country house hotel … outside London” was a study of cramped coral creepiness, which I thought defined a bad sitcom wedding celebration. And the overused comic prop of a pink toilet-brush carried like a scepter and used to threaten people with like a mace, seemed less than “classy.”
Mimi Maxmen hardly garbed the wedding party with any elegance; and the gigantic white wedding gown modeled by different women (and supposedly constantly stitched and “tucked” by the prospective bride’s mother just before the wedding) looked handsome up on a pedestal, but mostly gave a nice comic effect like a snowstorm in the room.
Except for a couple of romantic moments at the end, Cary Donaldson was mostly harassed-looking as the bridegroom who opens the play awaking in a bed naked with a naked woman he can’t identify on the morning of his wedding. Pretty, blonde Kate Middleton, the woman in that bed, looked appealing in several tacky costumes, and showed off some skillful physical comedy bits in a talky yet underwritten role.
Kristin Mengelkoch, the chambermaid with too much to say about her guests, didn’t get to show off her considerable musical-comedy talents but made a strong impression with some sarcastic rants and over-the-top posturing. Tom Coiner, as the much put-upon best man, had a good deal of physical schtick and, maybe unfortunately, showed unmistakably clear diction in all the explanations he had to invent for everyone.
Teri Watts made a pretty prospective bride but hadn’t a lot of interesting things to say or do. However, Brigitt Markusfeld was both bossy and addlebrained as the bride’s mother, who kept insisting upon singing “Here Comes the Bride” in a too-high-pitched key that sounded like a distant factory whistle.
I thought it was funny. I didn’t see anything that needed to be changed. Well, maybe if they’d found a tastier script – not necessarily more meaty, just a little less cheesy.
