Watching the Brits get their knickers in a twist about sex is just funny.
I don’t know why, any more than I know why slamming doors is funny, or why thoughts of Prince Charles in the throes of passion with Camilla Parker Bowles is funny. They just are.
“No Sex Please, We’re British” makes it plain not much has changed in the decades following Oscar Wilde’s demise: The Brits are still uptight when it comes to hooking up. And the more uptight they get, the more entertained we are.
I admit it – I saw a trifle (“No Sex Please”) and a masterpiece (“The Importance of Being Earnest”) on successive nights – and enjoyed both just as much. Now, I realize mentioning cowriters Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foote in the same breath with Wilde might give any academic apoplexy, but believe me – there’s plenty of that to go around in this madcap farce that ran from 1971 to 1987 – the longest-running comedy in West End history.
It’s now getting a surprisingly confident, playful run at the Victorian Playhouse, where the play may not be fresh, but the smell of the paint on the set always is.
What’s fascinating about this period piece is how it starts out as a British “Barefoot in the Park” and morphs into an anthropological freak show populated by these exasperated and sexually repressed Brits.
We open with two adorable, proper newlyweds who have just moved into their flat above the bank where Peter works as a manager. Lovely Frances has ordered Scandinavian housewares, but is deluged with pornography instead.
Had she simply marked the box “return to sender,” we’d have had no play. But in 1971, while America was in the throes of the sexual revolution, across the pond, the mere possession of porn was a criminal offense. So Peter, Frances and his excitable assistant Runnicles spend the evening trying to ditch the dirty goods with all the fervor that you or I might employ to disarm a dirty bomb.
Throw in an unwelcome mother, an uptight boss, an unnervingly weird bank inspector and a couple of hookers, and a relentless cavalcade of misadventures ensues. It’s all in the great tradition of farce – physical comedy, surprise visits, mistaken identity, slamming doors and comic exasperation. Lots of comic exasperation.
Though the one-joke premise eventually strains, the energy of this cast never does. The play runs 20 minutes longer than it should, but director Arthur Goodman’s staging moves along at a quick pace. He gets fine performances from the hard-working trio of Jono Waldmar as Peter, Ariana Griffith as the proper wife and Seth Maisel – who works himself up into a sweat as Peter’s beleaguered assistant Runnicles (he’s on the hook for having signed for the initial delivery).
Waldmar makes for a dashing – and did I mention exasperated? – leading man, but Maisel is the jet propulsion here. There’s a late infusion of fun from scantily clad hookers played by Amanda Van Nostrand and Catherine Accardi, who admit there has been no postal mistake here – it’s all part of the porn company’s effective strategy to “misdeliver” its goods. “You’re the first to complain,” she tells Peter.
In that statement, there is some measure of hope for these stuffy Brits.
A honeymoon at Haight-Ashbury is clearly in order for these two young lovers.
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“No Sex Please, We’re British”
COMEDY|Victorian Playhouse, 4201 Hooker St.|Starring Jono Waldmar, Ariana Griffith and Seth Maisel| THROUGH APRIL 7|7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 20 minutes|$16-$20 | 303-433-4343 or denvervic.com
