Stage West Theatre has gathered some of the best actors in D-FW for a trifle of a sex farce called\u00a0The Cottage. They get to sport posh British accents as playwright Sandy Rustin, best known for her popular adaptation of the board game\u00a0Clue, piles revelations upon reversals. Who\u2019s cheating on whom? The shorter list would be who isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
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 No\u00ebl 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.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t stop\u00a0The Cottage\u00a0from being hilarious \u2014 and also a respite from the heat outside as executive producer Dana Schultes pointed out in the curtain speech before last Sunday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
They open the show as her Sylvia and his Beau are wrapping up their annual night of out-of-wedlock passion at his mother\u2019s estate outside London. It\u2019s a sensible affair. After all, she\u2019s married to his brother Clarke (Lee George), him to Marjorie (Nicole Renee Johnson), who\u2019s pregnant with somebody\u2019s child.<\/p>\n
Young convincingly plays Sylvia as a chatty, confident woman given to flights of fancy while Gray portrays Beau\u2019s anxiety and frustration better than any actor you might see on a local stage. The secrets that spill out over the course of\u00a0The Cottage\u00a0lay waste to Beau\u2019s sense of himself and the world more than to any of the other characters, and the flummoxed Gray is there for it.<\/p>\n
Never mind the guilt. Would you like some tea? How about a smoke?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s a bit of a coward, and the purely sassy Marjorie, that includes\u00a0Dierdre (the gifted physical comedienne Kristen Lazarchick) and the possibly menacing Richard (Philip Matthew Maxwell). Their entrances prompt\u00a0The Cottage\u00a0into full chaos and even an absurd coincidence can’t ruin the adult fun.<\/p>\n