Stage West Theatre has gathered some of the best actors in D-FW for a trifle of a sex farce called The Cottage. They get to sport posh British accents as playwright Sandy Rustin, best known for her popular adaptation of the board game Clue, piles revelations upon reversals. Who’s cheating on whom? The shorter list would be who isn’t.
Set in the English countryside in the early 1920s, a critical moment for women as they have won the right to vote, divorce and inherit property, Rustin puts a feminist patina on the proceedings even as she draws from the comedies of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw. The problem is the women behave as badly as the men, making the political content, such as it is, strictly superficial.
That doesn’t stop The Cottage from being hilarious — and also a respite from the heat outside as executive producer Dana Schultes pointed out in the curtain speech before last Sunday’s matinee. The punchline-filled writing inside a steel trap of a plot is sharp, and the performances are winning, starting with Natalie Young and Parker Davis Gray.
They open the show as her Sylvia and his Beau are wrapping up their annual night of out-of-wedlock passion at his mother’s estate outside London. It’s a sensible affair. After all, she’s married to his brother Clarke (Lee George), him to Marjorie (Nicole Renee Johnson), who’s pregnant with somebody’s child.
Young convincingly plays Sylvia as a chatty, confident woman given to flights of fancy while Gray portrays Beau’s anxiety and frustration better than any actor you might see on a local stage. The secrets that spill out over the course of The Cottage lay waste to Beau’s sense of himself and the world more than to any of the other characters, and the flummoxed Gray is there for it.
Never mind the guilt. Would you like some tea? How about a smoke?
The many twists to come are first triggered when Sylvia tells Beau she has sent telegrams to their spouses disclosing their long-running tryst. Giving away much more would ruin it for anyone seeking a cool, funny, end-of-summer escape.
It’s enough to say that when the parade of arrivals to the front door begins, things are going to get more complicated and perhaps a tad over the top. Besides Clarke, who’s a bit of a coward, and the purely sassy Marjorie, that includes Dierdre (the gifted physical comedienne Kristen Lazarchick) and the possibly menacing Richard (Philip Matthew Maxwell). Their entrances prompt The Cottage into full chaos and even an absurd coincidence can’t ruin the adult fun.
Through Aug. 30 at 821-823 W. Vickery Blvd., Fort Worth. $48.50-$56.50. stagewest.org.