Not Now, Darling!

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Who is that nervous nerd in dark rimmed glasses in perpetual motion with an all-consuming tic racing through his body running into tables, walls and people? No one I have ever saw.

Robert Kramer as Gilbert Bodley, Janelle Christie as Janie McMichael and Christian Mast as Arnold Crouch in the Miner’s Alley production of Not Now, Darling! Photo by Richard H. Pegg

On the stage he is Arthur Crouch, fur designer with Bodley, Bodley & Crouch Fur Salon in London, England. Designing furs for 14 years with partner, Gilbert Bodley, an over-wrought snobbish furrier womanizer, who lives under the strange impression he can have his cake and eat it too. Right there, in front of the universe, creating the makings for a hilarious comedic farce.

Robert Kramer plays Bodley to the hilt concocting one lie after another, digging himself deeper and deeper into a greasy pit, needing to depend upon Crouch, regretting the day he brought this brilliant furrier and inept human being into partnership, keeping a straight face the entire time.

The program says Christian Mast plays Crouch, but this is a Mast I have never before seen. Mast totally disappears under the slicked back hair, the large glasses, and the nervousness of a beetle swimming in a pool of juice.

Director, Richard H. Pegg brought together an astonishing cast bringing to life Ray Cooney & John Chapman’s knockout English farce Not Now, Darling! at Miners Alley Playhouse.

Right up front, this is a production not to be missed. It’s not only very funny with enormous humorous lines, built on an extraordinarily hysterical scenario that could so easily play out in real life it isn’t funny, which makes it extremely funny.

The difficulty, if there is one, is keeping the eyes off Mast who turns the most mundane side-glance into a major production. By remaining glued to Mast, however, one will miss several other honest very funny moments with the rest of the cast. Mast definitely owns this show, but he couldn’t do it alone, and to his credit, he doesn’t try.

Having worked together several times, Kramer and Mast feed off each other and into each other. The beauty being they draw all of the other characters into their close comedic community, allowing everyone else to shine, all the while Mast’s perpetual motion continues in the shadows. Kramer commented following Saturday night’s performance he loved playing straight man to Mast. Their individual parts glue together for an astonishing whole.

On a month’s trip to Italy, Bodley’s wife’s innocently straightforward played by Denise Perry-Olsen, allows Bodley’s womanizing child to come out to play. Hoping for some action, he promises his newly found girlfriend a Canadian Mink coat. Knowing her husband, Harry McMichael (Matt Ellison) won’t buy her the mink, and knowing if he bought it outright it would create suspicion, he withdraws $19,000 from his own account, telling her she could have it for $1,000. His problem solved. Not wanting to be a part of the bogus deal, he informs his nervous Nellie partner he is about to make his first sale, not something Crouch is chomping at the bit to do. No matter his high-strung, high flung antics, he doesn’t have a chance against the self-consumed Bodley.

As Harry ponders why the $20,000 coat is on sale for only a thousand, he decides he isn’t going to buy it. Holding Bodley to his promise Janie McMichael, wonderfully portrayed by Janelle Christie, isn’t going to leave without the coat. To prove her point she starts taking off her clothes. When things get sticky she just throws them over the balcony. Wearing the coat, when things get stickier for her, she peels off her underwear throwing them off the balcony where getting caught on the hands of the clock.

In and out Commander and Mrs. Frencham (played with spicy juice by Todd Sorenson and Linda Suttle) clamor to get her new fur coat. Picking up a purchased item should be a relatively simple matter, except the Commander double parked, his car is towed and he ends up in consternation with the police.

Meanwhile Harry returns, having changed his mind about the Canadian fur, deciding to buy it not for his wife, now hidden in a closet with the coat hiding her nudity, but for his secretary girlfriend, Sue Lawson deliciously played by Vanessa Bowle.

The constant chaos thickens the plot. To get dressed and out of the way, they convince Sue to take off her clothes to give them to Janie. Now there are two undressed beauties in two different closets. Harry returns looking for his girlfriend. Mrs. Frencham returns looking for her husband. When things can’t look any worse for Bodley the salon’s secretary Miss Tipdale (Lubna) informs him his wife is on the way up having cut short her trip.

The more desperate Bodley becomes embroiled, the more he involves Crouch and the more Crouch resists finding himself forced to cover for Bodley, cover for the shop, and his reputation, the more he becomes embroiled in the situation, the more inept he becomes, at the same time the more brilliant.

With Lawson tucked away in one closet wearing only underwear and a fur coat, her threatening husband Charlie played sharply with a threatening demeanor by Jeffrey R. Haas, shows up nearly turning Crouch into a pool of grease. One of the skillions of hysterical episodes comes when Crouch warns Bodley Charlie could return anytime. Bodley not having met Charlie mistakes the Commander looking for his wife, for Charlie sending him into the closet with Sue. Bodley’s description of Sue and the Commander’s sense of reality about his wife clash head on (giving headaches not taking them away).

Fast paced, doors slamming, mistaken identities galore, characters rushing in and out, on a simple elegant set designed by Pegg featuring an artistic mural of Bond Street by Daniel Lowenstein, and sharp crackling lighting designed by the brilliant Karolyn “Star” Pytel, turns Not Now, Darling! into a unified rib crackling production. The eye-catching costumes, and lack there of, were crucially designed by Ann Piano.

Not Now, Darling! stands tall as a must see because it is honest relegated funny, because the chemistry of the cast glues the play to the stage, because the characters are all too humorously human, and because the direction doesn’t miss a trick.