Everything about Charlotte Rep's new production of Barefoot in the Park is smartly done. So I enjoyed myself, despite the fact that I never saw a single compelling reason why Rep had revived Simon's lightweight comedy. Milking yuks from a 40-year-old script isn't nearly the same as demonstrating enduring relevance -- or making good on the promise in Rep's season brochure to present a "fresh look" at the 1963 smash. Breach of promise, if you ask me.
Copies of 1960s magazines in the lobby -- along with well-timed servings of Sam Cooke's "Having a Party" and Neil Sedaka's "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" in the show's sound design -- convinced me that the idea of freshening the script had gone the way of the dodo bird and Michael Bush. Nostalgia seems to be the driving impulse here.
It's a welcome impulse when it brings Kirtan Coan back for the first time since she played Amanda Wingfield in Rep's 1987 production of The Glass Menagerie. The willowy actress is amazingly transformed as Corie's mother, her breathless entrances just the beginning of her hilarious physical comedy. Stephen Ware's return to Rep's mainstage is almost deja vu. Victor Velasco's hair is different from the Tito Morelli "do in the 1991 production of Lend Me a Tenor, but he wears nearly the same fedora.
We haven't seen Brian Robinson at Rep since 1998, but now as Paul he plays the neat freak's drunken spree with a starchy charm. Elizabeth Wells Berkes is not extraordinarily cute as Corie, but she meshes perfectly with the quirkiness of Paul, her mom, and the telephone man. She also throws an adorable tantrum.
Hey, some people adore Neil Simon. True believers shouldn't hesitate. Rep's Barefoot is good clean fun, the theatrical equivalent of a baloney sandwich served on a silver platter.
