Review—13 Rue de l'Amour

I've been visiting mom in Washington, so we did our usual thing and hit the theater. In the past we've been kind of eclectic--all the way from Greater Tuna Christmas to A Body of Water. This time it was 13 Rue de l'Amour—the sort of door-slamming sex farce that the troupe was trying to produce in Noises Off. I was a little uncertain what to expect, since the theater's publicity compared it with the Marx Brothers and mentioned "partial nudity," while a local reviewer thought it was stiff and unfunny.

Off to the theater. I remember Olney, Maryland, as a sleepy one-horse town that had a combination hardware store and gas station. Now, of course, it's a glossy suburb of Washington, where the BMW's outnumber the Fords. The Olney Playhouse has been there since the 1930's (when it began as a summer stock theater in a roller skating rink), and I love going back. One reason I love it so much is that I get to have dinner at the Olney Ale House (go for their home-made beef stew and house brand of beer). And summer stock, even in suburban Washington, is an excellent excuse to spend a pleasant evening strolling about between supper and curtain.

The play, first published in 1892 as Monsieur Chasse! (a classy little double-entendre because one character keeps telling his wife that he's going hunting for the weekend) is one of those delightfully shallow things that plays best on a Vaudeville stage. To make it work, you need a beautiful young woman, a handsome young man, her older and slightly pudgy husband, a slim young male college student who isn't afraid to strip nude on stage (rear view), identical suits cut from ghastly red plaid fabric for the young man and the portly husband, two police officers and an idiot police inspector, and an overweight (and incredibly made-up) German concierge who used to be a countess until she fell in love with a muscular lion-tamer. Get the picture? People hiding in closets, doors slamming, an incriminating note that is stuffed in a trousers pocket (and of course the trousers get traded about from character to character). Sight gags that any teenage boy would understand but most middle-aged women don't get (or at least pretend they don't).

Loads of fun. The reviewer was right, though. Wrong too. This is vaudeville, not high theater. The actor is supposed to deliver a line, mug for the audience, and pause while we get it. We're never supposed to believe those things in the basket are actually meat pies—they looked like they were made of plaster and painted pink. We never forget that this is a play—sort of a long, sophisticated joke.

The playhouse was just made for this sort of production. It's brand-new, but has a period feel to it. Close, intimate architecture, a thrust stage, FOOTLIGHTS, and tableau curtains. The sets looked like a collision between Toulouse Latrec and Sergeant Pepper. Once again, we were reminded that we were part of a 100-year-old French joke.

I'm glad I went. Glad, too, that I opted to avoid the heavily political one-man play on the other stage (I am my own wife). This was an evening for laughs. If the standard for a good evening at the theater is a house full of smiling patrons, this one made it.

Footnote #1 That tableau curtain gave some trouble. As the second act opened, the drawline let go (just as the German concierge entered to give her "two maids dusting" plot exposition). As it descended, it wiped out a small table with a bottle of wine, a vase of flowers, and two wine glasses. To her credit, Madame Spritzer (yes, that was really her name) sort of ad-libbed and acted around it as desperate techies attempted to fix things. One young man ended up simply holding it back for the entire second act. The intermission was a bit long, as more desperate techies struggled with it. When the third act began and the curtain opened flawlessly, the audience burst into applause.

Footnote #2 I'm not sure what sort of clientele I was expecting. I was surprised, though, that almost the entire audience was well over 70 years old. Mom wondered if maybe a sex farce (with partial male nudity) was just a bit too tame for today's generation.

Footnote #3 The next day, Mom and I were in a greeting card store miles away and one of the ushers accosted us. We spent several pleasant minutes talking about the theater and the show. Not exactly what I think of in suburban DC.