One Man, Two Guvnors: A Half Baked British Farce

One Man, Two Guvnors, a play by Richard Bean
Directed by Spiro Veloudos, Music Director Catherine Stornetta
Lyric Stage Company of Boston
140 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02116

Matthew Whiton - Scenic Design;Tyler Kinney - Costume Design; Scott Clyve - Lighting Design; Andrew Duncan Will - Sound Design; Nina Zendejas - Dialect Coach

Running time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes
with one intermission

Box Office: 617-585-5678     Play runs through October 12, 2013

American writers make screwball comedies, just not as wacky and convoluted as the Brits (whose tastes in comedy you can trace back to Moliere and the Italian commedia dell'arte). This one goes a mile a minute and you need a road map to keep track of the play's route. Neal A, Casey as Francis Henshall, describes himself as "the role model for village idiots everywhere."  Francis is the play's pivotal nutcase -  by turns hapless and wily, makes the most of his slapstick role and fits right in with the blowhards, braggarts, and buffoons who populate the story.

"One Man, Two Guvnors" might also be titled "One Man, Two Plays". The first act of the 2 ½ hour show is pure British madcap comedy. If you enjoyed the Monty Python or the Fawlty Towers series this would be your cup of tea. Running sight gags, pratfalls, byzantine connections linking characters together, and hilarious one-liners delivered deadpan or with a wink to us in the audience, and nutty songs that add frosting to the zany layer cake of a play. Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, the fellow with two guvnors, is the chief reason to order a slice of this comedy. The trouble is the cake, which rose well enough in the first act, falls flat in the second act.

I confess that I couldn’t understand many of the rat-a-tat lines delivered by characters in the first act but I laughed along at the loopy comedy. Let’s see, there is Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, Tiffany Chen as Pauline Clench, Larry Coen as Harry Dangle (yes, there are obvious lines thrown about with that name), John Davin as Alfie, McCaela Donovan as Rachel Crabbe, Aimee Doherty as Dolly, Harry McEnerny as Gareth, Davron S. Monroe as Lloyd Boateng, Dale Place as Charlie “The Duck” Clench, Alexandro Simoes as Alan, and Dan Whelton as Stanley Stubbers. Their lives are all connected in some vague way. Each of them has a blast overacting, hyperventilating and playing outlandishly.

Francis, a bit of a flibbertigibbet with an apparent eating disorder, is the man with two bosses. He manages to concoct zany stories to cover up the mistakes that irritate each boss, gets into a love match with one of his bosses secretaries (Aimee Doherty as Dolly steals every small bit she has), cooks up several  moments of playful absurdity with members of the audience, and is an endearingly picaresque space shot trying to make a living by using his wits, which are deficient but swallowed by his gullible guvnors.

Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall and Aimee Doherty as Dolly. Photo Mark S. Howard

Theren are song and dance numbers, sort of Gilbert and Sullivan style, played with a live band in the theater wings, that are meant to underpin parts of the plot, such as it is. The colorful set design is ingeniously devised, swiftly moved about by the actors between scenes, usually accompanied with zippy music.

Oh, and there’s mistaken identity, people who are alive that are supposed to be dead (or was it the other way around). Honestly, at some point it doesn’t make any difference. There’s a familiar ring to the plot. It is based on an 18th century Italian comedy, Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters. It is sort of a Shakespearean Comedy of Errors – multiple plots, mistaken identity, young lovers trying to overcome difficulties, slapstick, tangled sub-plots, and earthy humor.

The second act just doesn’t take off. It almost doesn’t matter. You can see that the coincidences begin to congeal into an absurd but serviceable ending in which everyone is paired up or suitably stationed.

If you like Gilbert and Sullivan with a twist, this might be the tonic for you. If you’d like to see how one man, Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, can anchor an air headed (and I say this with love) comedy with a cast of ten characters depending on him to be the sun around which they orbit, this is musical comedy is for you.

Comments

[Ann Baker]

You did Great. Guv's is FLUFF.