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| Beth Self and Rachel Roberts |
Neil Simon’s passing on August 26th created a
moment of nostalgia for American theater audiences, suddenly eager for another
taste of the playwright’s comedic brilliance. HART Theatre serendipitously met
this demand just two weeks later with the opening of Barefoot in the Park, one of Simon’s earliest, most successful, and
best-loved romantic comedies. The show runs until September 23d, so there is
still a bit of time to catch this sweet, funny little gem.
Barefoot is set in
the early 1960s, and tells the story of newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter, just
moving into a tiny 5th floor apartment (no elevator, of course) in a
New York City brownstone. Just over a week into their marriage, the naïve,
free-spirited Corie decides that she and her button-down, conventional young
lawyer husband have nothing in common – their first real argument goes very,
very badly and before they know it divorce is on the table. With the help of
Corie’s rather odd mother, Ethyl Banks, and an even odder neighbor, the
mysterious and exotic Victor Velasco, everything works out OK in the end – a
classic Neil Simon mash up of external cynicism and internal romanticism, where
eccentricity somehow provides a meandering path to traditional marital bliss.
One secret to a successful Barefoot is the casting, and HART’s folk made the brilliant
decision to cast two real newlyweds, Rachel and Andy Roberts, as Corie and
Paul. Aside from the Roberts pair’s considerable acting chops, the “awww”
factor is heightened by the fact that Rachel and Andy first met several years
ago as ingénue leads in HART’s production of Anything Goes. By the time the audience got through the cast bios
they were solidly rooting for both the real life and stage couple, and we were
not disappointed by what Director Aaron Morrow calls “that crazy, wonderful
chemistry.” Rachel takes “cute” to new heights, and reveals that she is when
necessary a world-class pouter and shouter. Andy creates for his character a
rigid, uptight diction and bearing that make his efforts to find a comfortable
marital common ground touchingly pathetic – we cannot help but empathize with
his confusion about how to please his maddeningly lovable bride.
The other key “couple” is Velasco (Johnnie Torres) and Banks
(Beth Self). Torres is as good a Velasco as I have seen – a curious combination
of sincerity, worldliness, poverty, and gallantry with just enough sliminess to
make it all very, very funny as he flits and oozes around the stage. Self’s
take on Ethyl is a bit more bewildered and slapstick than some, but she’s very
entertaining and the audience really responds to her wacky delivery – in other
words, it works! Rounding out the cast are Mark Ferris and Mark Putnam, trading
roles as the telephone man and the delivery man. The two consistently make the
most of their exhaustion after climbing all those stairs, and at the end of Act
I when they are doing the scene change they are so entertaining that much of
the audience stays to watch their performance even after the houselights go up
(a serious error, as it means missing out on the fresh-baked intermission
cookies).
The playwright’s death may have played a role in filling
seats at opening weekend, but the quality of the acting should ensure that
there will be good houses for the remainder of the show’s run.
Barefoot in the Park runs
through Sunday, September 23d with performances at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and
Saturdays and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays at HART Theater, 185 S.E. Washington,
Hillsboro.
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