Known for his comedic rants on “The Daily Show” and Comedy Central series “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil,” stand-up comedian Lewis Black displays his kinder, gentler side in his farce “One Slight Hitch.” Joe Grifasi, who directed last year’s production of “One Slight Hitch” at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, directs this Northwest premiere featuring a local cast at ACT Theatre.
Arrival of the bride’s ex on the wedding day makes a shambles of picture perfect wedding plans helmed by the bride’s mother to make up for her own minimal, wartime wedding. Many of the elements of screwball comedy are present here: Situation-driven comedy, single-minded characters and their resulting miscommunications, a familial plot involving marriage. But “One Slight Hitch” never quite attains the manic energy of screwball comedy. Black, who is better known as a standup comic than as a playwright, peppers the play with admittedly funny lines. But in spite of perfectly-timed comic delivery, in particular by R. Hamilton Wright and Marianne Owen as the bride’s parents, the action lags between one-liners, especially in Act I with its increasingly tiresome repeating gag of keeping the ex out of sight in the guest bathroom. The energy level picks up in Act II as the ex finally emerges from the bathroom, the (unseen) guests and shrimp boats begin to arrive, and the large quantities of alcohol consumed in Act I take effect.
That’s not to say that “One Slight Hitch” doesn’t have its pleasures. R. Hamilton Wright performs some fun physical turns as the increasingly intoxicated Doc, whether he’s juggling a cigarette and a glass of liquor, or struggling across the stage with a wedding cake. Marianne Owen’s Delia has her own slapstick moments as she demonstrates the maniacal but easily derailed focus of the perfectionist. John Ulman as ultra-conventional bridegroom Harper delivers his platitudes with unflappable conviction.
Bride Courtney (Kimberley Sustad) and her sisters, sexpot Melanie (Kirsten Potter) and teen P.B. (Katherine Grant-Suttie) do their best with the material, but their characters as written rarely surpass stereotype. Similarly, we are told ex-boyfriend Ryan (Shawn Telford) is a free-spirited creative type, but what we get onstage is an annoying couch-potato.
Black has some interesting things to say about the generational divide between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers in terms of expectation and the ability to achieve happiness. But like the one-liners, Black’s musings are too few and far between in the play’s single-threaded plotline. Perhaps if he introduced a runaway leopard….
“One Slight Hitch” plays through July 8 at ACT Theatre.
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