Exhibitionism

The London Cuckolds: Face-Off

Running Time: 2 hrs, 30 min

Cuckold. Don’t you just love that word? Do you know what it means? It refers to a husband whose wife is unfaithful. Did you know that there isn’t a word that describes the opposite state, a wife whose husband is unfaithful? Because that’s expected, right? Does anyone detect a double standard here? Don’t you just love this culture?

Of course, you could blow it off and say, hey, this isn’t our culture. This is British culture. This is Restoration comedy, often referred to as the “comedy of manners,” a form that exploded in London theatre during the middle of the 17th century in reaction to the moral suppression that characterized the puritanical rule of Oliver Cromwell. Restoration comedies are populated by stereotypes whose outwardly moral lives are actually characterized by booze and sex and deception — all in good fun, naturally.

Booze, sex, and deception — sounds All-American to me, and that’s exactly what you find in the Bedlam Faction’s production of this Edward Ravenscroft play. (A note to the Faction: Please put the playwright’s name on the program. Sure, he’s long dead and his work is public domain, but inquiring minds want to know.) The story has all the typical — and hysterically funny — elements of Restoration comedy: Three husbands — Wiseacres, Doodle, and Dashwell — have three wives — Eugenia, Arabella, and Peggy — each with different and distinct character traits: One is witty and intelligent, one innocent and uneducated, and one self-righteous and pious. Each of the husbands argues that his wife, because of her innate qualities, is the most likely to be faithful. Of course, the husbands are idiots so egotistical and stupid they don’t perceive that their wives are searching intently for meaningful relationships and, much more importantly, good sex outside of their impotent and one-sided marriages. The deceptive natures of these women are illuminated through the characters of Ramble, a rake who attempts to bed each of the wives; Ramble’s friend Townly, a drunkard who manages to fall into the beds Ramble can never quite seem to access; and Loveday, a former lover of Eugenia who hasn’t quite gotten over her — or gotten her under him, as the case may be.

The Bedlam Faction. It’s a great name for a theatre company, and “bedlam” is a highly appropriate way of describing their playing style. In their Mission Statement, the Faction describes their approach to theatre as “unique” in that they have no director, producer, or designers — the actors collaborate on all aspects of the performance. Here the Faction has layered a 1960s motif over the play, and it’s appropriate given the sexual excess evident from almost moment one. A band plays period pop-rock standards before the show, at the intermission, and during the scene breaks. The elementary set design and costumes are characterized by loud colors and patterns, and the costumes, especially for the women, reveal more than a bit of leg and other assorted flesh. Scenes burst with energy and blast their way across the stage — a tryst between Eugenia and Loveday is staged with a variety of dance movements — and the performances, for the most part, are big and broad. “Rubber-faced” is a highly appropriate way of describing the majority of the cast.

Which brings up a major problem. What you find here is not so much a group of actors telling a funny story as a group of actors insisting that what they’re doing is funny. They rocket through Ravenscroft’s text as if it was an afterthought, mugging so much and so often that you sometimes see a half-dozen or more different faces made by a single performer while another is speaking. Many times you have to strain to hear them, and too often you can’t understand them. (A director quite likely could have resolved many of these problems, but as mentioned before the Faction has no director — or at least, the actor or actors who allegedly functioned in that role didn’t fulfill it very effectively.) Rarely have I seen a cast so eager to make me laugh, but I didn’t laugh because the actors did nothing but beg for laughs at the expense of Ravenscroft’s script and the characters they were playing. They didn’t illuminate the story or help me care about it or them because any possible subtlety was lost in the frenetic tempo and constant face-making. By the time it ended, I felt like the titular husbands: disappointed, betrayed, cuckolded.

This article appears in November 30 • 2001.