London’s Favorite Farce Heads for Broadway

LONDON —  Ray Cooney’s “Run for Your Wife,” the longest-running comedy on the London stage, is Broadway-bound after 6 years on the West End.

“It’s so readily acceptable; that’s what people relate to,” Cooney, 56, said of his farce about a bigamous taxi driver.

“It can be summed up so simply,” he said. “People can understand the dilemma of an innocent guy who, because he didn’t have the heart to say no, has got two wives.”

Cooney last went to Broadway with his 1967 London hit “Not Now, Darling,” but it closed after just 6 weeks.

“Run for Your Wife” starts previews at New York’s Virginia Theater Feb. 22, opening March 7, after a tryout stint Jan. 17 to Feb. 19 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami.

Cooney directs and stars alongside Paxton Whitehead, an alumnus of the hit Broadway and London farce “Noises Off.”

After such successes as “Move Over, Mrs. Markham,” co-written with John Chapman, “Two Into One” and “Wife Begins at 40,” Cooney believes that he is ready to try Broadway again.

“My plays are pure situation,” he said. “There are no local jokes.”

“Run for Your Wife” has been slated for Broadway for years, and Cooney has directed it in productions in New Jersey with David McCallum, in Baltimore with Bob Dishy and at Oakbrook, outside Chicago.

But Cooney said only now had talent and script meshed properly. Under a special agreement with the American actors’ union, Equity, three British actors will appear in the play for 4 months on Broadway, at which point the five Americans completing the New York line-up will transfer to the London production at the Criterion Theater.

While emphasizing his play is a farce, Cooney said “Run for Your Wife” had a darker underside.

“If the story of this bigamist had been written by Tennessee Williams, it would be a tragedy,” said Cooney, pointing out that his twice-married cabbie has committed a criminal offense for which he could go to jail.

“If you’re going to write a pure, for want of a better word, farce, I think it does need to have tragedy at its core.”