May 22--If you are a fan of "Carpool Karaoke" and the other excellent shtick to be found on "The Late Late Show With James Corden," then you largely have "One Man, Two Guvnors," the current show at the Court Theatre in Hyde Park, to thank very nicely very much.
Corden is known to Brits from their TV screens, but his starring role in Richard Bean's massively successful and internationally admired adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century bit of commedia dell'arte ("The Servant of Two Masters") propelled him to success at the National Theatre in London's West End and on Broadway in 2012. Thereafter, CBS came calling for a man I'll bet they'd seen playing Francis Henshall, a snarky entrepreneur who tries to hold down two jobs with two bosses simultaneously, even as those two bosses have secrets of their own. Even in the 1700s people knew a bit about the gig economy. And Corden went on to score a very good gig.
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In commedia terms, Francis, whose original name was Truffaldino, was a classic Harlequin, an improvisationally inclined trickster, one of the zanni, both innocent and diabolic, perpetually mischievous (and hungry) but also fundamentally likable and in league with his audience. In Hollywood, they'd call a show like this one a caper. Adam Sandler, you could argue, is mostly a Harlequin. But Goldoni also was the source for many of our comic traditions that actually are funny -- Chris Farley and Jack Black's work being fine examples thereof.
Charles Newell, directing for Court, does not, of course, have Corden in his bag of tricks. In casting Timothy Edward Kane, who really is more of a handsome leading man, in the central role, he departs a bit from the traditions of a play that, despite its modern-day setting in South Coast Brighton, its plethora of contemporary gags, its perky Merseybeat-like musical score and its Monty Pythonesque anachronisms, remains rooted in the laughs that flow from the good old British class system, one that remains very much alive even in Mayor Sadiq Khan's London.
And that, along with a general lack of specificity, is emblematic of the problem with Newell's production.
Let me stipulate that I think "One Man, Two Guvs" is one of the cleverest comedies of the last decade, a masterfully free-wheeling adaptation that, even in a flawed production, offers up enough chuckles and giggles to lighten up your night. And let me stipulate even further that I think Newell owes no obedience to the tropes of the original production -- his audience is on the South Side of Chicago and his job is to make the show work in its place and moment. Frankly, there's only one useful criteria of judgment with such a show as this: How funny is the thing?
Modestly.
That certainly was the answer at the over-pushed and over-stimulated final preview I saw Friday night, although this is one of those affairs that generally improves as the actors get their rhythms down. Certainly the actors in question here are among the leading repertory players of the great Chicago theater experience: Elizabeth Ledo plays Rachel Crabbe, who is one of Francis' guvs, sort of, while Erik Hellman plays Stanley, who is the other. And then, in a series of roles that recall such British traditions as the great "Carry On" movies of the 1960s and 1970s, you get Pauline Clench (Chaon Cross, done up like Dusty Springfield), a vacuous young lover smitten with the actor Alan Dangle (Alex Goodrich).
Then there's wacky Dolly (Hollis Resnik, in fine fettle), whom Francis quite likes, not to mention various old men including the lawyer Harry Dangle (Ross Lehman), the landlord Lloyd Boeteng (Allen Gilmore) and Charlie "The Duck" Clench (Francis Guinan), the dad of Pauline. Since we're in the land of commedia, the main job of the oldsters is to oppose the amorous ambitions of the amorosi, even as the clever servant (which would be Kane's Francis) makes everything work out in the end.
Many of those folks have some delicious moments: Gilmore riffs well with the audience, Cross and Ledo are funny, and Lehman, who does many, many things in this show, works his tail off for your amusement all night long.
Those flaws I mentioned, though, come mostly from not trusting the simple truth of the material -- I know, "truth" sounds out of context here, but believability still is the foundation for physical comedy. And although you have an Italian play, you also have a very British and very divergent adaptation of it, which means that class also informs these gags. Although it's far more important than the accents, this show does not even remotely have that class-contrast thing down, which at times made me wonder if Court would have been better ditching all that English stuff and substituting Myrtle Beach for Brighton. I think so. You can't do it by halves.
Either way, though, it would have helped to have the facades of realistic residences on Collette Pollard's set, instead of the cupolalike structures that bugged me all night -- for they killed a lot of the gags, because you don't buy that they actually have interiors. Newell has his actors form the band in the show (the original production had an actual band). That was no doubt partly a financial decision, and it allows multi-talents like Hellman and the ensemble member Elisa Carlson to show off their musical prowess. But it also lowers the stakes whenever the actors chill out and step out of the action -- and, it often seems, their roles -- to pick up an instrument. That's never ideal for farce, which requires events to be unfolding mostly in a state of blind panic.
The famously talented Kane takes a deep dive into Francis, a tough role, and he has his moments, although I'd argue his main job is to explain and pull us through the story he's manipulating. In actuality Kane does a lot of very intense physical comedy, inventive and rich, but mostly not funny enough to be worth the price. All these set-pieces muddy and slow what's already a long, complicated narrative. Everything, ideally, should be going at twice this speed.
The costumes by Mara Blumenfeld are spectacularly good, and a collection of colorful gags in and of themselves. But they're not going anywhere. I'd give these wacky seaside Brits at least a week or two before you take the Brighton Line and join them by the pier.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
"One Man, Two Guvnors" -- 2.5 STARS
When: Through June 12
Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Tickets: $45-$65 at 773-753-4472 or www.courttheatre.org
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