Laughs run in the family at ACCC play

Everyone is familiar with Sir Walter Scott’s admonition, “Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” British Playwright Ray Cooney has built a career of interpreting that idea in farcical comedies. Allen County Community College’s production of Cooney’s “It Runs in the Family” opens tonight, continuing Friday and Saturday. All shows are at 7:30 p.m.
The story line of “It Runs in the Family” is simple enough —and common to popular entertainment. A nurse returns to the hospital she worked at 19 years ago, to inform a now-prominent doctor that he fathered her son.
Doctor Mortimore, played convincingly by Neal Johnston, at first refuses to believe the news. After the thought has incubated the shortest while in his mind, he realizes the offspring of his past dalliance could negatively impact his chance at becoming the hospital’s new head physician — and enrage his wife.
In his befuddled state, the doctor quickly concocts a series of outlandish fabrications to tell his staff — and his intrigued wife — about the mysterious woman in red who refuses to leave the doctor’s common room. The self-serving doctor is quickly caught in his own web. The lies, of course, must be piled on deeper, becoming more foolish as they go. Therein lies the humor.
All the audience, having watched the opening scene, know the truth the good doctor is trying to cover up. That his colleagues and Nurse Tate, the newly-reappeared mother, would so willingly go along with his efforts at deception, might be a little hard to swallow for an American audience. But this is British comedy, and in Britain, propriety is everything.
Fans of Monty Python are familiar with this precept. For those new to the genre, it’s not too much to ask to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy this lovely farce.
There are a smattering of one liners that will make you burst out laughing, sometimes because those little quips speak pure truth amidst the web of lies.
Garrett Skidmore plays the mohawked-teenager Leslie Tate, who has only just discovered he has a living, breathing father. His mother had told him his father was dead, but for his eighteenth birthday decides to tell him the truth. She informs him only his father is a doctor at St. Andrew’s Hospital in London, leaving him to wonder who. After a night of binge drinking, the easily agitated teen goes forth in search of the man.
When high-heeled Jane Tate strides into the doctor’s common room, demanding Mortimore meet his distraught son, the doctor snorts, “I may be alive Miss Tate, but I am not available!”
The teenager’s drinking allows for the addition of a police sergeant to the play, providing a bit of slapstick later.
Tony Piazza, ACCC’s theater director, chose the play for a number of reasons.
“I was looking for a light-hearted show for this time slot,” he said. That the play is set at Christmas time afforded a good fit.
“It’s a good community theater piece because it has a lot of older parts,” Piazza said. At ACCC, however, the cast are all students. Because a number of those students are on theater scholarships, Piazza tries to find plays that match his cast make-up of seven men and five women. Cooney’s farce fit the bill.
“The only drawback is I was looking for an American comedy,” Piazza said. “I couldn’t find quite the right vehicle.”
Piazza said the cast learned their British accents fairly easily, with the exception of the “ah” sound. “The ‘ah’ sound is the tough one. We’re can’t and it’s all cahn’t,” he said.
Johnston, as Mortimore, and Aleisha Weimer as his unsuspecting wife make a wonderful dysfunctional couple. It’s obvious the doctor thinks he can keep the wool over her eyes. But Weimer’s character is honestly endearing in her concern for those she perceives are sad cases at the hospital.
Tyler Bryant as the put-upon Dr. Bonney probably shows the most resiliency in character, as he has to play a fool, a doctor, and chivalrous hero for his cad of a colleague. He’s even asked to become head nurse (called a matron in the Brit parlance).
Mortimore, after first denying his problem, defies his responsibility, then asks his colleague to act in his stead as the boy’s father.
It must be a deep friendship indeed to make someone take on such a cause.
The rapid pace of Mortimore’s inventions might have you, like Dr. Bonney, saying, “I’ve lost all track of what I’ve been covering up.” Regardless, it’s all good fun. And, as another playwright tells us, all’s well that ends well.