Taubert Nadalini and Katy Downing (Photo by Zachary Kanner)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Pacific Resident Theatre
Through June 15
RECOMMENDED
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the sex comedy was embraced by the masses as a popular form of entertainment. Britisher Ray Cooney, whose bawdy farces were a staple on London’s West End for some 40 years, was the master of the form, with his play Out of Order winning an Olivier Award for Best Comedy in 1991, while another, Run for Your Wife, was the longest running comedy in West End history.
The sex comedy was also a staple in the American hinterlands, where (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) sex farces were a popular standard in dinner theaters — those gloriously downscale venues where aging stars got a second chance for a paycheck. Of course, dinner theaters, like drive-in movies, have largely disappeared from the American scene. But in areas where access to theater was severely limited, the sex comedy ruled, with audiences delightedly munching their way through steam table food while whooping it up through two acts of botched liaisons and mistaken identities.
It’s hard to imagine, in this progressive and politically correct era, that Cooney and his ilk would still have such wide appeal. (Pondering that, I can almost hear the theme song for “The Benny Hill Show” echoing in the background.)
Who knew that that the time was ripe for revisiting the sex comedy? The astute creative staff at Pacific Resident Theatre, under the guidance of longtime artistic director Marilyn Fox, certainly did. PRT, which is typically noted for its productions of classical plays, stepped out of its wheelhouse for Chaya Doswell’s delightfully transgressive and purely hilarious world-premiere comedy, Fostered.
The title refers to the Foster family, led by matriarch Karen (Terry Davis) and slightly dotty patriarch Sandy (Tony Pasqualini), a comfortably affluent couple who take pride in the successes of their practically perfect offspring: Rachel (Hope Lauren), a multi-million-dollar-a-year divorce attorney, who is in an apparently happy long term relationship with Daniel (Hiram A. Murray), an associate at her law firm; Alice (Katy Downing), the apparently happy mother of two who married her college sweetheart at a tender age; and Jeremy (Taubert Nadalini), a successful financial guy who is also apparently happily married and planning to start a family.
By contrast, the fourth and youngest, Maggie (Jillian Lee Garner) is a perpetually unemployed couch surfer who rails against the capitalist system while getting regular payments from her capitalist parents, who consider their daughter a hopeless, failure-to-launch loser. But as it later turns out, Maggie may only “apparently” be a loser. The Fosters are all about appearances, and those long accepted family dynamics are about to undergo a tectonic shift.
Unbeknownst to their kids, Karen and Sandy are selling their Scarsdale home — beautifully realized in scenic designer Rich Rose’s detailed set, complete with working fireplace (electric, of course) — and moving to Hawaii. They intend to keep their move secret until they get on the plane and leave. But when their “successful” kids, each in the middle of a domestic catastrophe, start trickling back to the refuge of their family home, carefully suppressed secrets are revealed — including Karen and Sandy’s, shall we say, unusual relationship with Shafeek (Satiar Pourvasei), a Middle Eastern refugee whose omnivorous and opportunistic sexual appetites mask the fact that he is something of a sage.
The tension in this suddenly reunited clan augments as the booze flows freely, lubricating a series of shocking revelations and surprising sexual hookups — comically unexpected encounters straight out of farce. But don’t dismiss Fostered as your typical sex comedy. The play is actually a cogent treatment of how we become trapped in the ossified personae we assume to please and appease our loved ones, leaving little room for maturation or emotional growth—until, as with the Fosters, the long years of repression result in inevitable implosion.
The production is handsomely mounted in every particular. As for director Andy Weyman and his superlative cast, they go boldly over the top in pursuit of laughs, yet keep the action moored in essential plausibility and truthfulness. And while Doswell’s outrageous new comedy probably wouldn’t play in, say, a dinner theater in Peoria, if such a thing still exists, it’s a perfect fit for the Pacific Repertory Theater, which should be commended for recognizing such a vibrant theatrical voice and bringing it to full fruition in this genuinely funny new play.
Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Thur.-Sat., 8 p.m. Sun., 3 p.m., thru June 15. (310) 822-8392. https://pacificresidenttheatre.org/ Running time: one hour and 55 minutes with an intermission.
