BWW Reviews: MOVE OVER MRS. MARKHAM Closes Oyster Mill Year With Laughs

Ray Cooney is England's king of the bedroom farce, best known for his RUN FOR YOUR WIFE and for IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY. But his late 60's-early 70's set MOVE OVER MRS. MARKHAM may be funnier than either of those. It's definitely the sort of play that should be on the Oyster Mill Playhouse stage where, fortunately, it has been now. Oyster Mill has the configuration for farce, as well as intimate seating allowing audiences to miss no hilarious move, much less the necessary entrances and exits for the best farces.

S.F.J. Martin has directed an able cast, particularly the lead, Mrs. Markham herself, Aliza Bardfield, who is becoming the area's reigning queen of blissfully blinded British characters. Whether the central, confused figure in an Agatha Christie, or the cheerfully dotty wife in a farce, Bardfield can be expected to hold her weight in the part and then some (necessary given her petite frame). Here. Bardfield gave busy housewife Joanna Markham verve, quick thinking, and an underlying dizzy-blonde characterization that kept the audience entranced despite all of the consternation on stage.

Even farces may have morals, and the moral of MOVE OVER MRS. MARKHAM is simple: Never let your flat turn into the neighborhood assignation point. Whether adultery or merely fornication is intended, expect that everyone will turn up at the same time after the same thing with, sometimes, the same people. That very point is what keeps Cooney and John Chapman's play moving - whether it's Joanna's friend Louise with the gentleman with the bowler, Louise's husband with the telephone operator, or the interior decorator who might or might not be gay with... well, that's its own set of issues over the course of one insane night.

Jeremy Burkett is delightful as Alistair Spendlow, the frustrated interior decorator. No, his frustrations aren't sexual - they're almost entirely because Joanna's husband Philip (Gordon Einhorn) refuses to pick a color scheme for his study. Or... that was his only frustration before the night in question. Supposedly intending an assignation with the Markhams' au pair, Sylvie (a funny Marte Engle), he might possibly wind up with anyone, because everyone seems to be moving in and out of the oval bed he's designed for the Markhams' bedroom.

Kathleen Tacelosky and Stephen Orr play the Lodges, Joanna's best friend and her husband, Philip's, business partner. Henry is an accomplished philanderer, and Linda has decided to take up the hobby herself with Walter Pangbourne (a charmingly droll Greg Merkel). Each has arranged independently to use the Markham flat for their own purposes on the same night that Spendlow's decided to borrow it, instigating the bedroom crisis.

Karen Lloyd is drily hysterical as Miss Smythe, the author of a series of children's books about dogs, a dog lover herself, who wants Lodge and Markham to publish her future books, and who walks in to discuss business as the revolving bedroom door goes on around her. Amanda Stine is also on stage as Felicity Wilkinson, the telephone operator who is hoping to spend time with Henry Lodge in the midst of the turmoil.

The closing show of the season, MOVE OVER MRS. MARKHAM, though very different from Oyster Mill's very fine production of EVITA, highlighted what Oyster Mill does best, and does best in a way that few other area theatres do. The new season is ushered in by AN INSPECTOR CALLS, another of the sorts of show that Oyster Mill carries off so successfully. For information about AN INSPECTOR CALLS, and for more details of the 2015 stage season for Oyster Mill, visit www.oystermill.com.

`

To post a comment, you must register and login.