Neil Simon comedy in Ardglass

Neil Simon comedy in Ardglass

4 April 2012

AT St Nicholas Primary School this week, Ardglass Players treated audiences to another comedic feast.

Barefoot in the Park (1963 ), Neil Simon’s finely written, comedy charts a newly married couple’s experiences in their first apartment. In a very small, freezing dump of a top floor Manhattan apartment we meet Corie and Paul Bratter. Their highly passionate relationship descends into comical discord, which is spiced by interplay with their eccentric and exotic 58 year-old neighbour, Victor Velasco and Corie’s straight laced mother, Ethel Banks.

Corie (Sarah Power), an adventure-seeking young woman, discovers another free spirit in Victor. Paul (Neil Dickson), a very conventional man and newly qualified lawyer, is simply seeking a quiet life. With the pressures of his first court case and adjusting to married life, he is quickly at odds with his wife and neighbour and more in accord with Ethel.

The dialogue needs to be delivered staccato style in a New York accent. All the players achieved this with consummate ease. For successful theatre the audience needs to be transported quickly to an alternative, and believable, reality.

The skill of the actors, the excellent set (Francey Morgan) and sympathetic lighting and realistic sound effects (Danny Doherty), with the effective, but unseen, hand of director, Maureen Rice, achieve this in the opening minutes. The result is an evening of laughter filled entertainment for an engrossed audience.

Awaiting both husband and furniture, the play opens with Corie greeting telephone engineer, Harry Pepper (Kevin Magee). Gasping for breath from a five flight climb, Kevin cleverly pitches his interplay with Corie, playing much to the audience, like a stand up comic. This technique entraps the audience and gets them laughing and involved at the outset. The Himalayan like trek to reach this love nest is well reinforced by the delivery man (Paul Bignall), with his few wheezing words and his departing looks of intense relief.

Sarah and Neil are excellent as the young newly weds. Sarah brings vivacity to the part; and is equally convincing as the excitable, life-loving newly wed and as the sob-torn devastated wretch who believes her “days old” marriage is suddenly heading towards divorce.

Neil is very relaxed and seems totally at home on stage. He is absolutely credible as the infatuated husband and as the poor, confused and frustrated individual whose life has been turned upside down by his adventure seeking wife. Both are also at home with the sarcasm which is so much part of Neil Simon’s and New York humour.

To work, the humour requires both skilled delivery of quick fire dialogue and appropriate body language. The two young actors demonstrate professional level skills in both. They are on stage nearly all the time. It is on their success that the play hangs. They provide the environment in which Sean O’Hare, Victor Velasco, and Patricia Stewart, Ethel Banks, can bring their special skills to shine.

Patricia, pitches her lines of trying to say the right thing so well. Her transition from a straight laced, bad back sufferer, rattling with indigestion pills, to potential fun loving companion to Victor is cleverly achieved. Her subtle changes, from pursed lip to smiling countenance and from slightly hesitant hunched posture (when is the bad back to strike again?) to one of confident gait, reveal her acting skills.

Sean has a part which could descend into caricature, however, he brings his easy stage presence, a well pitched Eastern European accent, and immaculate comedy timing to develop a real, and hugely entertaining, character. Cleverly, he readily conveys the impression that this 58 year old has the energy of a teenager.

The audience cheer the actors, but in their enjoyment they are also in debt to Maureen Rice, whose tireless energy drives each Ardglass Players’ success — also to her set builder, her lighting expert and her back stage crew (Ann Napier, Anne Ray, Lenore Rea) and to the many who helped with props and make up and to Tommy Smyth (programme design and photography).

So, in addition to thanking all on stage for a very skilful and most entertaining performance, this reviewer wishes to say a “thank you” to these unsung heroes and heroines.