‘Habeas Corpus’ is hedonistic hilarity at SCR

Tom Titus

Back in the early 1970s, South Coast Repertory was pushing the

artistic envelope with newer, farther-out plays, a good share of them

with a British accent. How the company missed Alan Bennett’s “Habeas

Corpus” is anybody’s guess.

But, better late than never. SCR has latched onto Bennett’s

raunchy 1973 English farce and has transformed it into the funniest

show you’ll see on any local stage this year, or perhaps any year in

memory. It’s simply knockdown, drag-out, falling-down farcical.

Bennett -- who cut his satirical teeth as a member of England’s

“Beyond the Fringe” troupe, which included Peter Cook and Dudley

Moore, some four decades ago -- wrote “Habeas Corpus” about the same

time his countryman, Joe Orton, was creating “What the Butler Saw,” a

similar sort of sex farce, accenting the medical profession and its

weaknesses of (and for) the flesh. It’s a tossup, which is funnier,

but “Habeas Corpus” is a galloping piece of hedonistic hilarity

calculated to split your stitches.

Originally intended to be performed without scenery, the SCR

version benefits from the imaginative scenic design of Christopher

Acebo -- a series of carpet-covered anthills, which serve various

functions in director Bill Rauch’s wildly accelerated production. One

such mound even opens to reveal a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in her

decidedly younger days.

As in “Butler,” the centerpiece of “Habeas Corpus” is a randy

physician with an eye for the nubile young ladies, a role splendidly

interpreted at SCR by company veteran Hal Landon Jr. The primary

object of his affection, not to mention several others’, is Lynsey

McLeod, who spends a good portion of the play (also as in “Butler”)

only partially clothed.

Caitlin O’Connell is a study in comic elegance as the good

doctor’s wife who’s being pursued by an old flame, the head of the

English medical society. Patrick Kerr fills this role, that of Sir

Percy Shorter, and his limited stature, matching his surname, leads

to countless jibes and double entendres.

The progeny of the doctor and his wife are a frustrated pair --

Christopher Liam Moore is a hypochondriac son convinced he has a

fatal disease and Kate A. Mulligan is their plain, shapeless daughter

who discovers a new, exciting social life when she dons her

mail-order breast implants.

Mulligan is pursued with ecclesiastical vigor by Daniel T. Parker

as the local clergyman dubbed “Canon Throbbing,” offering the play’s

funniest line (only in the light of more recent transgressions in the

clerical ranks). Richard Doyle stumbles around, pantsless, through

most of the proceedings, adding dollops of risque comedy, while

Phillip C. Vaden is a hoot as a frustrated patient bent on suicide.

All this is, indeed, hilarious, but there are two other elements

to Bennett’s play that really kick the comic temperature into

overdrive. Jane Carr is outrageously funny as “Mrs. Swabb,” the

doctor’s erstwhile assistant who doubles brilliantly as the play’s

sly narrator. And Lynnda Ferguson, absent for all but the last few

seconds of the first act, captures the stage in the second as a

titled lady whose lone indiscretion during the London blitz produced

McLeod’s character.

One other stylistic element propels the SCR comedy -- Bennett has

written much of his dialogue in rhyme, so that the piece plays much

like a Shakespearean comedy, but modernized with such lines as “Don’t

tell me you wouldn’t, given the choice / Old men with schoolgirls,

ladies with boys.”

Director Rauch has pulled out all the comedic stops to offer SCR

audiences a rampantly hilarious bundle from Britain that has been far

too long in arriving on our shore. Also, if you remember the late

1960s and early ‘70s, you’ll get an additional belt out of Paul James

Prendergast’s nostalgic musical background.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.