If you’ve never seen Arlecino, a.k.a. Harlequin, clowning around in classic Italian comedy, you have a treat in store if you make it to Florida Studio Theater. There, where he’s been a ‘60s, working-class, unemployed “one man” Brit, he finds employment. It’s with not a single master but “two guvnors,” and keeping up with the demands of both result in farce, fracases, frolic, fun.
Energetic, clever Connor Carew as Francis Henshall gets to work for Brighton bad guy Charlie (Wilbur Edwin Henry, commanding) and nationally notorious Stanley Stubbers (Montgomery Sutton, suavely scary). Francis wants what Arlecino always goes for: food. His attempts to eat create a dramatically funny conflict with the jobs he has to carry out. In one extreme case, he has to call on an audience member to guard a tureen filled—oops!—with purloined meat, fish, veggies. But that’s only one in a number of eats destined to elude him.
Francis’s other quest, while trying to keep each master unaware of the other, becomes romance. It’s not with Charlie’s daughter Pauline (a pretty but dim bulb played by Christina King). She’s in love with Alan (tough Tommy Crawford), son of Charlie’s lawyer Harry (Andy Prosky, slick). Alan thinks Pauline has bewitched him, so he takes off for his supposed rival Roscoe. Only his killer knows he’s dead because his twin sister Rachel (Amy Hutchins, agile and artful) has disguised herself as Roscoe. Charlie’s bookkeeper Dolly (imposing Vanessa Morosco) intervenes, the violent Stanley goes sweet on one of the gals, and that leaves another for . . . Frances!
Betimes, Frances becomes involved with two male audience members he gets to help him carry a trunk (which seems more farcical in the doing than in telling about it), as well as a prickly head waiter (Zach Shotwell) and Alfie, a doddering old man trying his luck at waitering. Alfie (in Teddy Yudain’s performance) proves capable not only of a lot of action to make onlookers breathless; he “turns into” a younger man in the band on occasion. There may be ends to Francis’s quests but not until he initiates a number of silly acts, farcical tricks, and comic schtick. Many consist of little skits, known in the commedia as lazzi or little “games.” One of the shortest but sweetest has Francis in a pub imitating an Irishman. A potent means of scene changing—aided by an Ensemble—is a band of five playing and singing appropriate songs, mostly rockabilly and take-offs on the Beatles. Joseph Discher sanely directs the madcap proceedings, though it seems miraculous that the characters don’t collide. Apparently consultation with Richard Crawford on physical comedy helped. Sets provide both stability and movement of activity, and all technical elements support the production tastefully.
