Review: NANA'S NAUGHTY KNICKERS Is Back Home at Rainbow

When a first-time playwright produces a play that becomes a hit of any sort, it's close to a miracle. When a playwright can live off of a play, especially a first one, words don't describe the amazement. Nonetheless, Katherine (Katy) DiSavino accomplished just that in 2010 with NANA'S NAUGHTY KNICKERS, a farce of outstanding silliness and nonsense that has already made it into multiple-language translations (who knew that Turks like farce?). It premiered at what is now Rainbow's Comedy Playhouse, formerly Rainbow Dinner Theatre, which is not all that surprising since she and its owner-producers share a last name (Katy is David and Cynthia DiSavino's daughter), and, having travelled around the world since then, is back home.

Despite the name, NANA'S NAUGHTY KNICKERS isn't a bedroom farce, and it's barely close to a sex farce at all - it's all about business, and it all takes place in Nana's - Sylvia Charles' - living room, which is also her showroom. Despite a restriction against running businesses out of the apartments in her building, Sylvia is making a small fortune as the designer and proprietor of the senior citizen equivalent of Victoria's Secret. Her living room, formerly owned by a bootlegger, contains unsuspected hiding places that reveal clothing racks and the like when opened, and she opens them for other older women needing some ways to spice up their lives. It all goes to pot when her niece Bridget comes to stay for a bit and walks right into Nana's business operations. Bridget's not only surprised about Nana's business itself, but about Nana's failure to pay taxes or have a business license, especially now that the business is so large that it's outsourcing sewing operations.

Sherry Konjura is Nana, or Sylvia Charles, and she brings with it her usual energy and charm. Sylvia has no time to slow down, and Konjura keeps rolling with Sylvia's rapid successes and crises. She's aided and abetted by neighbor Vera Walters, played by Dianne Danz and by Lois Sharrott; she's the Vera to Sylvia just as another Vera was the love-hate sidekick to a certain aunt named Mame. Vera is the original dirty old lady, and she, and the audience, enjoy it thoroughly. Angela deAngelo is Bridget, the newly enrolled law student, and she brings an agreeably pleasant shock at Nana's shenanigans as the young woman in the position of "if the children only knew what the old folks are getting up to".

The neighborhood cop, Tom, is played by Jonathan Erkert, who has the pleasure of pursuing both Bridget and her wayward car, while ducking the massive adulation of his physical attributes by Vera. Landlord Mr. Schmidt, desperate to catch Sylvia in some sort of trouble, is Joe Winters, whose Snidely Whiplash attitude towards rental is pure fun to watch. He'd have Sylvia out the door in a second, hauled off by Tom, but there's her client Clair (Casey Allyn, plainly having fun) to contend with as well.

If Bridget's arrival weren't enough to cause trouble, there's the misdelivery from the manufacturer - Sylvia's business name is confusingly similar to the name of another city business, whose erotic lingerie is more of the leather and chains variety. The goods are tracked to Sylvia - who has no idea how she'll market them, or where her own lingerie has gone - by Heather, a pink-haired alt-everything kind of New Yorker, who offers to help Sylvia with her own business and promptly mistakes the landlord for a customer. In the best tradition of farce, chaos ensues. Er, that is, more chaos ensues.

Heather, played both by Jessa Lynn Casner and Anna D. Bailey, is one of the most amusing characters in modern farce. If you're younger and you know New York, you've met someone like her; you can even meet a few people like her in Lancaster. She's street-smart, hip, and alternately full of practical wisdom and totally lacking common sense. She's a fashion extremist, a bit of a punk rock fashion victim with a S&M edge, but she's the nicest person you know. She's the contrast to Bridget, who's full of common sense, sensible outfits, and suburban repression that even her Nana doesn't have. If DiSavino did nothing else, creating Heather alone has improved the face of modern stage comedy.

Being raised by a family that stages farces clearly rubbed off on DiSavino in a great way - she brings a set with five doors and three hidden areas - backs of closets, walls, and fireplaces give way to shelves, racks, and display cases. It's fortunate that Cynthia DiSavino had the set design, as always, as well as directing, because this show requires a set that looks like the perfect Manhattan apartment but has plenty of what's meant to look like mechanical gadgetry for hidden spaces popping up constantly. And it works perfectly in DiSavino's hands.

It's on through April 2, so if you haven't gotten there yet, get in there now; this is one of the modern crop of new-classic farces, along with Paul Slade Smith's UNNECESSARY FARCE. Visit www.rainbowcomedy.com for tickets and information.

To post a comment, you must register and login.