17-Year Itch Gets Laughs in WIFE BEGINS AT 40, 7/9-27
By: Courtnie Mele Jun. 20, 2014
Hudson Village Theatre's third offering in a four-play summer season, running from July 9 to 27, 2014, is the 'drawing room comedy', Wife Begins at Forty, written by Earl Barret, Ray Cooney and Arne Sultan and directed by Glen Bowser.
George Harper and his wife Linda, are celebrating 17 years of marriage but for Linda, the passion is long gone with George falling asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, even sooner if they happen to be engaged 'in relations'! Roger, their over-sexed next door neighbour, has no such problems and reveals his secret to George: a twice weekly rendezvous with a local barmaid to keep his juices flowing, provided one gets a vasectomy to avoid any unwanted complications. To try and repair their relationship, George follows his misguided neighbour's advice but lacking the necessary bravado to pull it off, the plan backfires. To further complicate matters, Roger now has the tricky task of negotiating the subsequent divorce proceedings of his two friends. But all's well that ends well with a bucket-full of laughs along the rocky road to reconciliation.
The play boasts a triumvirate of seasoned comedy writers. Ohio-born Earl Barret wrote for both the stage and screen, contributing multiple episodes to as many as thirty-three various television shows including Bewitched, My Three Sons, Get Smart, Batman, Sanford and Son, Bob Newhart, and more. Ray Cooney began his career as a stage actor and added writing to his credits with eighteen of his plays produced in London's West End. A 1988 BBC production of Wife Begins at Forty featured Cooney as the male lead, George Harper. Arne Sultan, a native New Yorker, is known for his screenplay See No Evil, Hear No Evil, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, the hugely popular TV comedies, Get Smart (working with creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry) and Too Close for Comfort. He and Barret collaborated on See No Evil and provided the bulk of writing for Too Close for Comfort, for which they were both nominated for a Writer's Guild of America award in 1985.
A director as well as stage and screen actor and a familiar face to HVT audiences, Glen Bowser said, "We've a got a dream ensemble for this delightful comedy that was a success in London's West End. I'm sure audiences are going to have a good laugh relating to the all-too-familiar family challenges the characters are confronted with in this story". Bowser's recent directing credits in Hudson are Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak, Same Time Next Year, Opening Night, Steel Magnolias and The Odd Couple (female version) and last year he was hilarious as the retired farmer who unwittingly rented his land to a pot farmer in Harvest.
Local actor, writer and director, Matt Holland, last seen in Hudson in Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak, is the well-meaning but clueless George Harper. Making her Hudson Village Theatre debut is Tara Bissett as George's adventurous wife, Linda. Film, voice, and TV actress, Eleanor Noble, last seen in the META-nominated Centaur production of August, An Afternoon in the Country, is Linda's confidante and neighbour, Betty Dixon. A familiar face in the plays of Vittorio Rossi (Carmela's Table, The Carpenter, Paradise by the River) and Steve Galluccio, (In Piazza San Domenico, The St. Leonard Chronicles), is TV/stage actor, writer and (more recently) stand-up comedian, Guido Cocomello, who plays Roger Dixon, Betty's philandering husband and George's questionable relationship advisor. The role of the Harper's teenage son is played by Pincourt resident, Austin J. Beauchamp, who at nineteen already has a slew of screen and TV acting credits to his name. Peter Williamson takes on the loveable role of George's aging yet wise father, Bernard Harper, and Pudding, the Yorkshire Terrier, plays the Harper family's pet dog.
Karen Pearce, an RCMP officer by day who recently designed for the Segal Centre's 2013 production of Ain't Misbehavin', creates the costumes and Fany Crochetière returns for a second season to design the set, with Bowser and HVT Technical Director, Raymond Dubuc, co-creating the lighting design. Karen Cromar, also well-known to Hudsonites, stage manages.
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