Reviewed November 29
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes
A Potomac Stages Pick for sparkling energetic comedy

Louise the young housewife (Anne Bowles, left) listens with rapt attention to her meddling neighbor (Lynn Steinmetz, right) as she encourages romantic involvement with the besotted poet in order to experience the thrill vicariously. (photo: Christopher O. Banks)

Those who have seen Picasso at The Lapin Agile already know that Steve Martin can write very funny dialogue and structure a short play so that multiple characters interact believably. In this, another one act display of verbal delights, Martin proves that the success of the first play wasn’t a fluke - the guy really can write! Here he is adapting a short piece by German playwright Carl Sternheim (1878 - 1942). It was banned when first performed in 1911 but has become his best known of a number of what was known as a school of “grotesque comedies.” The grotesqueness in this case was of the incongruous distortion kind, not the ugly kind. It bent situations beyond their normal boundaries and, in that, found a unique humor. Martin adds his verbal flair to provide a string of one-liners, each of which fits the situation perfectly, matches the personality of the character very well and hits its mark as satire. What is more, they are almost all very, very funny.

Storyline: A German civil servant is shocked and concerned over the possibility of loosing his livelihood over the scandal that he foresees when his wife’s underwear slips to her ankles just as the King passes as she is watching a parade. His world is turned upside down but not by scandal so much as by the new found wealth when men start lining up to rent their spare room, men who are smitten with the young lady they saw in such a compromising situation out on the parade route.

Director Steven Carpenter treats this as farce and not as slapstick comedy and that is very much the secret of its success. There are a few pratfalls and one character does get hit in the face with an opening door, but these bits of physical comedy are few and far between, leaving the actors free to develop the humor of their characters and highlighting the string of incongruously honest asides and witty remarks with which Martin has peppered the play. The energy here comes from the ensemble work in setting and then keeping a pace that is just below the manic so that it never seems forced but it never pauses for a breath either.

The center of focus for the work is, as it must be, the young wife who dropped her drawers at such a spectacular moment. Anne Bowles, who has done some excellent work at a number of local theaters in the last two years, is marvelous in the role. She is the picture of the young bride and her frustration over her husband’s lack of amorous attention in the first year of their marriage feeds the plot as first a gallant Nigel Reed, as a besotted poet, and then a repressed Chris Davenport, as a Jew trying to survive in anti-Semitic Germany, arrive to rent the room where the underpants girl resides. Reed has a great way with a quick line. Just look at all he can do with the exclamation “I can’t believe you believe what you believe.” Davenport is his match in that. He can make the most out of just stating his name as Benjamin Cohen and then quickly adding “Kohen ... with a K.”

Larger roles are also handled with verve. Michael Glenn sets the entire tone of the play with his first line as the husband who has just witnessed what he believes to be unbearably embarrassing and career threatening. “This didn’t happen!” explodes from his mouth both as an assertion and as a plea to the gods. Lynn Steinmetz, as the woman who lives upstairs and can hear every word spoken below gives a very funny performance as she encourages romantic involvement with the borders in order to experience the thrill vicariously. The effect of it all is a highly entertaining short evening.

Adapted by Steve Martin from the play by Carl Sternheim. Directed by Steven Carpenter. Design: Tracie Duncan (set) William Pucilowsky (costumes) Marianne Meadows (lights) Keri Schultz (stage manager). Cast: Jeff Baker, Anne Bowles, Vincent Clark, Chris Davenport, Michael Glenn, Nigel Reed, Lynn Steinmetz.