The time is 1936. The place is a Paris pink-and-blue, lavish apartment with adjoining balcony. Opera producer Saunders is harboring star tenor Tito Merelli and wife Maria while awaiting two other opera tenors to join Tito in an enterprising “Three Tenors Concert.” They don’t appear, and that’s where fun (for audiences) begins.
Author Ken Ludwig employs all tricks of farce—French and otherwise—from multiple doors that will both lock in and open up to reveal surprises to mistaken identities to meetings of people at just the wrong times. Probably the biggest, most consistent laughs come from everyone mistaking a Bell Hop (Beppo) for tenor Tito (both played to perfection by star Aaron Munoz).
Andrew Benator as Saunders presides well over the action as he would managing an opera. Luckily, he learns his assistant Max is both an actor and tenor (competently demonstrated by Michael Perrie, Jr.). The third tenor appears—established star Carlo (young, handsome Hank von Kolnitz). Problem is: von Kolnitz’ Carlo may be winning to audiences but Tito intensely dislikes him, regarding him as a competitor.
A leading woman who first emerges from a door is Jennifer Cody’s volatile Maria, Tito’s spouse. She suspects his infidelity (even if in the past) and loudly expresses her initial disappointment at what she believes to be Tito’ s forgetting of her birthday. It’s not long before one of Tito’s old flames, the oversexed Racon (played very sexily by Lucy Lavely), is at the apartment door and then behind another one with her surprisingly more sexy than ever “Tito.”
What will the upset Tito do about his wife, Racon, and Carlo? And why do he and Maria have qualms about behavior of their daughter Mimi? (Beautiful but blushing Alanna Smith shows Mimi has much to blush about, we keep learning). This will be the play’s last concern after settling the question of concert or not.
Director Sean Daniels makes all the activity seem normal, considering Ludwig’s characters and farcical situation and activities. Daniels not only has blocked the hectic scenes well but also made sure that the one real operatic song heard—“Brindisi” from “La Traviata”—can be appreciated even in a “real” drinking situation in a farce.
FST’s sound and light staff are to be credited for everything being heard and seen in excellent volume and lights. Both the scenery and furnishings are great and the colorful costumes match or complement all. Costuming of the women, in particular, characterizes them.
Only the best meanings of “farce” apply to this play and production.
