Tipsy Pirandello

By T.E.K.

THE PLAY'S THE THING

Adapted from FERENC MOLNAR by P.G. WODEHOUSE

There was a time when playwrights did not damn the world or preach to it, or try to save it. They simply savored the champagne fizz of its worldliness.

Hungarian-born Playwright Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952) graced that happy time with many an urbane trifle. The Play's The Thing is a choice example.

If it spends most of its time winking at the audience, the play is saved by its Continental suavity.

The hero (Hugh Franklin) is a playwright. The playwright's young composer godson (David Dukes) is engaged to a tempestuous prima donna (Elizabeth Owens). Late one night godfather and godson overhear the lady, through paper-thin walls, in a vocal and vigorous session of lovemaking with an actor (Neil Flanagan). While the godson threatens suicide, the godfather hits on a ruse. The guilty lovers, he will pre tend, had actually been rehearsing a play -- which has still to be written.

The run-through of that play with in the play gives Molnar's own a rousingly hilarious third act, call it tipsy Pirandello. He gets a very able assist from the daffy humor of P.G. Wodehouse's adaptation. Earlier on, The Play's the Thing is not always spirited.

While the lines are amusing, the story is sometimes becalmed -- but never for very long. Paced by Gene Feist's animatedly stylish direction, the Round about Theater Company makes this revival a comic refreshment.

-T.E.K.

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