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Cash on Delivery
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
El Portal Theatre
Through December 20
RECOMMENDED
Michael Cooney’s Cash on Delivery typifies the sort of humor you find in a quintessential English farce. It’s very funny when it’s well done and a big boring yawn when it’s not. I’m pleased to report that the production at the El Portal, directed by Cooney’s father Ray (who was knighted for his contributions to British theater) falls in the former category. The premise of the play may be flimsy and paper thin even for farce, but the laughs do accumulate as the characters and their problems multiply.
The scenario — which could only take place in Britain — concerns an opportunistic guy, Eric Swan (Jim Mahoney), who’s been milking British social services for years. He’s been collecting from a variety of subdivisions on behalf of an assortment of dead or imaginary tenants, and has just decided to give it up when he gets a surprise visit from one of the system’s inspectors, a Mr. Jenkins (Brian Wallace), seeking the signature for one reason or another of one of Eric’s elderly phantoms.
On the spot, Eric opts to impersonate the individual the social worker is seeking — which then requires his friend and flesh-and-blood tenant Norm (Sam Meader) to pretend to be Eric in order to satisfy some other bureaucratic folderol. From there on the lies and pretenses proliferate, with Jenkins tracked by a parade of other bumbling and/or suspicious civil servants while Eric desperately tries to conceal his shenanigans from his unknowing and progressively bewildered wife (Henrietta Meire).
Cash on Delivery is nothing if not predictable, and some of the gags — locking people in adjoining offstage rooms — don’t integrate that well into this particular plot. But other times even the most basic slapstick turns hilarious, as when Ray Cooney, also featured as Eric’s frail Uncle George, keeps getting hit by a swinging door. It’s so dumb, yet so well executed you have to laugh.
Everyone is on top of it timing-wise, a terrific surprise given the number of Americans in the ensemble, all of whom have their accents down cold. (Mahoney is from Minnesota, and he fooled me.) Especially effective was Debra Cardona as the buxom punctilious caseworker sent to monitor Jenkins: She is pitch perfect as that sort of abrasive individual with a tailor-made admonishment for everyone. The horseplay involving her physiognomy is probably the funniest in the farce.
El Portal Theatre Mainstage, 11206 Weddington St., North Hollywood; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 3 p.m.; through Dec. 20. Running time: two hours and ten minutes with a 15 minute intermission.
