Review: Madonna Mia! It's A SERVANT TO TWO MASTERS at the Pittsburgh Public

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Farce is my guilty pleasure. It's why Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is my favorite of his lighter works, over his more nuanced or lyrical comedies. It's why I still consider Modern Family at its peak to be very good fun. And it's why criss-crossing, scrappy shows like Carlo Goldoni and Lee Hall's A Servant to Two Masters will always have a place in my heart. True, the characters are two-dimensional at best. True, there are plot holes and logic failures. But that's not the point. In fact, that's part of the fun. And in Ted Pappas's fast-paced production, comedy is everything.

Set in 1960s Italy in a fashionable cultural district, the show follows valet-for-hire Truffaldino (Jimmy Kieffer), who finds himself acting as servant to both lovestruck fugitive Florindo (David Whalen) and rich out-of-towner Rasponi... who happens to be the late Rasponi's sister Beatrice (Jessica Wortham), disguised as her deceased brother. Truffaldino, who never met a meal, a woman or an outrageous lie he didn't immediately fall in love with, has no idea his two masters are secretly star-crossed lovers. He can't even tell the very shapely Beatrice is a woman. As he tries to keep his head above water and serve both masters without being caught, he runs afoul of complications involving Rasponi's fiancée Clarice (Erin Lindsey Krom) and her new lover Silvio (Patrick Cannon).

In the lead role, Jimmy Kieffer is a creature of pure impulse- fast-talking, libidinal and endlessly hungry. He acts without thinking and then must catch up to his actions, and Kieffer's mix of teddy-bear charm and slightly sleazy con-artist grifting goes a long way to making Truffaldino such an appealing antihero. Kieffer, who recalls not only James Corden (who has played the titular role in several adaptations of Goldoni's comedy) but Russell Brand in his verbose comedian-Lothario mode, has a knack for very gentle, very subtle physical comedy. He doesn't go in for pratfalls, but bits of business in which he attempts to seal an envelope or open a letter are exactingly precise and almost painfully funny in the British clowning fashion commonly associated with Mr. Bean and his ilk. His two counterpoints as lead both play their type well, with David Whalen's noir-influenced sudden double-takes and narrations to the audience being endlessly amusing. Jessica Wortham's Beatrice comes closest to stealing the show, with her hat-and-walk transformations from Beatrice to Rasponi coming at an increasingly rapid pace.

Wortham has a meaty part to play, but her two female co-stars have more one-dimensional characters. Pittsburgh favorite Daina Michelle Griffith is somewhat underused as sexy maid Smeraldina, though she makes the most of her one big scene in which she chews into the patriarchy. Similarly, Erin Lindsey Krom is appealing and sweet as ingénue Clarice, but doesn't have much to do in the way of comedy or plot, especially compared to her "mangenue." Patrick Cannon's dizzying mood swings as the bipolar Silvio swing back and forth from elation to weepy, pathetic sorrow, then around to murderous rage, recalling Raul Julia's work in The Addams Family and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Both lovers additionally play harried comedic waiters under the command of glad-handing, somewhat camp, restaurateur Brighella (Bob Walton).

It is in Brighella's domain in Act 2 that the play begins to metamorphose from straight farce to gleeful surrealism, becoming an almost Austin Powers take on Venice in the swinging sixties. The background music becomes more prominent, and Smeraldina gets an extended frug sequence, making like Ann-Margret outside Brighella's restaurant. Later, Brighella and his waiters give an improbable, daffy performance of a classic Italian song well known in pizza parlors across the land, Truffaldino gives an Andy Kauffmanesque lip-sync performance to Pavarotti, and the whole show ends with an audience singalong. It's that kind of piece. Amy Clark's garishly period costumes and James Noone's scenic design of sketches brought to life in an Eloise-meets-Edward-Gorey fashion, create the right atmosphere for gleefully ludicrous proceedings.

No show is perfect: the balance of acts felt a little off with the musical numbers all relegated to Act 2; the moments of slapstick violence, while amusing, felt somewhat out of place and broad, more 1960s Batman than Fawlty Towers. But these are minor quibbles in a show like this. Given the opportunity to sing "That's Amore" at the top of your lungs in Pittsburgh's most dignified theatre space, or to see a hirsute British grifter struggling not to eat the bread in his mouth not once, not twice, but three times, you'd be a fool to miss it. Things like that don't come along every day, you know.