The perils of polygamy

When French author Honore de Balzac quipped, "To provoke laughter without joining in it greatly heightens the effect," he might well be referring to the sense of humor of his neighbors across the English Channel. The tongue of the Frenchman finds pleasure in his cuisine; that of the Englishman in its wit. When you consider that English cooking has nothing much to offer the palate than kidney pie, the Englishman makes up for his tasteless dishes by his talent in titillating the funny bone. And tickling the funny bone, British playwrights have done in style from the Elizabethans to the Restoration, from the Victorians to the contemporary.

Two English comedies bear this out: Repertory Philippines’ production of Ray Cooney’s Run for Your Wife and Bankard TicketCharge’s production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives .

Cooney’s comedy of errors is about a London cabbie, John Smith (Miguel Faustmann) with a double life. Feathering two nests, he flies back and forth between Barbara (Liesl Batucan) who lives in Streatham and Mary (Ana Abad Santos-Bitong) who stays in Wimbledon. A neat arrangement which requires perfect planning, tracking across town with perfect timing, and keeping a secret black book with cryptic symbols like CDB, meaning "a cuddly day with Barbara", etc.

John’s double life is running smoothly like Big Ben when a minor traffic accident throws his schedule off-track. A bump in the noggin is recorded in the police blotter and his schedule goes haywire. Detective Sergeant Troughton (Arnel Carrion) materializes at his Wimbledon flat to investigate. John asks bosom buddy Stanley Gardner (Jeremy Domingo) to cover for him. In the meantime in Streatham, Barbara reports her missing husband to the authorities, Detective Sergeant Porterhouse (Meynard Peñalosa) promptly shows up to ask questions.

John escapes from Mary and Troughton and seeks refuge in Barbara who is only too eager to get him to jump into bed with her. But he finds that he can’t get off the hook that easy. Stanley shows up and so do Mary, Troughton and Porterhouse. The meddling of a gay neighbor, Bobby Franklyn (Roman Ripoll) only complicates the situation. He passes Stanley and himself off to Troughton as gay lovers and Barbara as a transvestite neighbor. The poor bloke is made to believe that he has fallen into a den of iniquity populated by "pansies". Even Porterhouse is revealed to have a secret life as "Gruesome" who has a lover named "Pussy". As for John, he has piled up lie upon lie such that he gets entangled in his own lies.

Director Zeneida Amador states in her Director’s Notes that Run for Your Wife is "the most moral play" she has seen in a long time — "because all it does is tell you that the worst thing you can do to yourself is lie and cheat."

The cast makes no effort to adopt the intonations of London’s lower middle class. These folks who take the tube to the work place, drudge in factories, drive trucks or cabs, watch Mr. Bean on the telly, drink ale at the neighborhood pub and play darts, have their own lingo which makes little sense outside of their own circle and Rep’s players have done well to leave this dialect alone or risk driving their audience batty.

The company’s prince of players Faustmann, has a field day playing John Smith, making you feel that he is one cabbie who can lie his way out of a paper bag. As Stanley, Domingo is a scene-stealer who is a menace to everyone in the cast. As the two Mrs. Smiths, eye-fulls Liesl and Ana don’t even have to emote to catch the eye of their admirers in the audience who will have to eat their hearts out seeing Miguel with both hands full of these beauties. All in all, Run for Your Wife is well worth the couple of quids you pay for the tickets.

Bankard’s Private Lives reveals another enclave of English life – that of the idle rich. These people have a town house in the fashionable side of London and a country manor in Devonshire or some such district, each with a wine cellar. They feed on truffles and Russian caviar. They get invited to royal functions at Buckingham Palace. They have season tickets to the ballet and the opera in Covent Garden. They ski the Swiss Alps. They flee from the harsh English winter and fly to the south of France, Florence, Venice or the Greek Islands, or go on a cruise on the Queen Mary to the Bahamas, they go to Ascot in all their fineries for the races and get their pictures published in the society page.

The paparazzi haunt them relentlessly and splash their candid shots all over the scandal sheets. Noel Coward uses a hidden camera with powerful lenses and shoots them at close range in their most private moments in his high comedy on high society.

The setting is a fashionable resort on the French Riviera–more specifically the terrace of adjoining suites of a hotel. The guests are two pairs of newlyweds on their nuptial night: Elyot Chase (Michael Williams) and his bride, Sibyl (Lara Fabregas), and Victor Prynne (Richard Cunanan) and his bride, Amanda (Pinky Amador). As chance would have it, Elyot and Amanda were formerly married but the relationship had ended on the rocks. And what do their new spouses want to talk about on their honeymoon – much to their chagrin? What else but their first marriage! It’s the height of bad taste for Sibyl and Victor to reopen old wounds such that their new partners begin to regard them with growing distaste. When – inevitably – Elyot and Amanda meet again, their old passion is rekindled and they fly to Paris. And all these happen in the first act.

The stature of a writer is established when he is imitated by other writers. Noel Coward is unique. If someone writes like Noel Coward, it must be Noel Coward. Playwright, director, actor, he was in a class all by himself. A Picasso of the comic pen, he sketched in lines of repartee, irony and paradox portraits of English high society in the 1920s. He perceived the posturing of men threatened by boredom and convention by escaping into an amoral world of their own making.

In his Director’s Notes, Paul Holme states: "Elyot and Amanda are charming but unprincipled. Forever acting, their motto appears to be ‘when in doubt, strike a pose. If they are determined about anything in life, it is not to be serious.’" These characters "raise triviality to the status of an art, even a philosophy, and when the two discuss what makes them tick we hear their creator speaking."

If Elyot and Amanda do not run off to Paris, they are doomed to tame domesticity with Sibyl and Victor. Together in their love nest, they are ecstatic in their passions but they also torment each other no end. Whatever choice they make, the outcome is the same. To add one final irony to Private Lives, one may classify this comedy as a "closet" tragedy, the tragic flaw of the protagonists being in the wildness of their spirit in a conventional world.

Holme’s insightful direction, the brilliant cast, Rogelio Chua’s artistic direction, Leo Rialp’s set design, Aries Alcayaga’s production and stage management, Luther Gumia’s lights, Jobin Ballesteros’ music and sounds, and Ogie Juliano’s Gay ‘20s costumes make Bankard’s production of Noel Coward’s masterpiece one hell of a show.

If Private Lives were made into a melodrama for the boob tube and Amanda dies in a car crash while being pursued by Victor and the paparazzi, commoners like Barbara Smith and Mary Smith while watching the show will not fantasize about belonging to the Rich and Famous and meet the same end as Lady Di. They won’t dream about feasting on truffles and caviar and be content with kidney pie.

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For comments, suggestions, howls of execration, send e-mail to jessqcruz@hotmail.com..