A show-saver shines in ‘No Sex’ at the Playhouse

Remember the movie “42nd Street” when Warner Baxter told Ruby Keeler,

“You’re going out there a chorus girl, but you’re coming back a star?”

Sheer showbiz movie fantasy? Doesn’t happen in real life? Well, not

often maybe, but occasionally a supporting performer will step in to

replace an injured leading actor and walk off with the show in the

process. It’s happening right now at the Huntington Beach Playhouse.

Two days before opening night, Scott Narvers suffered a serious

collarbone injury in a fall during rehearsal for the farcical comedy “No

Sex, Please, We’re British.” Director Patrick Fennell called on Kurt

Finney, who was playing the minor role of a police superintendent, tofill

the critical gap, bringing in Warren Wilgus to assume Finney’s old

assignment.

Finney not only has filled the role, but mastered it -- no small order

in this frenetically paced bit of pandemonium. Learning the lines in two

days is an admirable task in itself, but adapting to the rough and tumble

stage business this show demands is a Herculean task, and Finney has

pulled off the near-impossible feat of meshing seamlessly into the show.

“No Sex, Please” is a vintage piece of bawdy chicanery from

playwrights Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot, which focuses on a

newlywed couple expecting Scandinavian glassware in the mail, but who

instead receive parcels of Nordic porn. As the blue stuff keeps pilingup,

the bride and groom scheme frantically to dispose of it, delegating most

of the disposal duty to the clean-cut junior clerk in the husband’s bank

-- the role thrust suddenlyupon Finney.

James W. Gruessing Jr. and Mindy Krejci keep up the merciless comic

pace as the young couple, but it’s Finney who gleans the most laughter

with one sight gag piled on another. Gruessing’s manic exasperation rives

the sequences as his character functions as sort of a theatrical traffic

cop, bringing on one gag in one door while booting another out.

The newlyweds’ porno problem is exacerbated by the arrival of his

genteel mother, who proceeds to make herself a bit too comfortable at

home. Jeanne Nelson functions smoothly in the role, with brittle

invective masked by polite discourse. Gordon Marhoefer cuts a stately

figure as the bank manager with an interest in Nelson’s principal, among

other things.

Wilgus’ nosy police superintendent always seems to arrive at the most

inopportune time, while Philip Andrews enters as a snooty bank examiner

and ultimately becomes the centerpiece of a three-way erotic

romp-engineered by the sultry Vanessa Ray and Trish Riley as a pair

ofpleasure princesses.

Shakespeare or Shaw it’s not, but “No Sex, Please, We’re British”

waves the Union Jack with vigor, and Fennell’s Huntington Beach actors

tackle the plot’s absurdities with alacrity. Gruessing also designed the

multi-doored setting and its constantly closing kitchen hatch door, which

eventually gets its comeuppance in the play’s final moment.

Freewheeling farce, when properly done, can be immensely enjoyable,

especially when it overcomes the odds the way the Huntington Beach

Playhouse’s production has with Kurt Finney vaulting to stardom virtually

overnight. This one is as raunchy as they come, and also asfunny.

CUTLINE: Jeanne Nelson, Mindy Krejci and Gordon Marhoefer enjoy a rare

quietmoment in the Huntington Beach Playhouse’s riotous farce “No

Sex,Please, We’re British.”

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.

F.Y.I.WHAT: ‘No Sex, Please, We’re British’

WHERE: Huntington Beach Playhouse, 7111 Talbert Ave., Huntington Beach

WHEN : 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7

p.m. Sundays through March 10

COST: $14 - $17, plus $1 city surcharge PHONE: (714) 375-0696