Several small local theaters have turned the presentation of silly British sex farces into a mini cottage industry. And why not?
Talk about easy pickings: For 50 years, playwrights like Alan Bennett and Ray Cooney have delivered bawdy laughs and physical comedy at the expense of seemingly respectable British fops who just can’t get enough sex.
The higher-class the target, the better. “The Upper Class Twit of the Year” was the kind of sketch that turned Monty Python into an international phenomenon in the 1970s, the same time Bennett was turning out popular comedies such as “Habeas Corpus,” which not-so-subtly introduces a vicar named Canon Throbbing.
Most British farces are immune to “The Pond Crossing.” Lecherous butt-pinching is funny, after all. But “Habeas Corpus” is an oddity from 1973 that, while providing many chuckles along the way, delivers just as many head- scratching lines and references we Americans can’t possibly understand or laugh at. And it commits the cardinal sin of comedy: It never seems to want to end.
“Habeas Corpus” takes aim at the sexually obsessed “permissive society” of the early 1970s. The aging, carnal Dr. Arthur Wicksteed (Verl Hite) is doggedly pursuing the well-endowed young sexpot Felicity Rumpers, who’s pregnant and intent on marrying Wicksteed’s freakish, hypochondriac son Dennis, who has convinced her he’ll be dead in months. Wicksteed’s wife, Muriel, lusts after an old flame now heading the British Medical Association. He’s a politico with a scandalous past of his own, of course, having sired an illegitimate child during the first Great War with a woman who now presents herself as a great lady of society.
There are more hypocrites with more checkered tales.
Director Richard Pegg elicits funny physical bits from a skilled and enthusiastic cast, notably the comically confident Lindsey Pierce as Wicksteed’s sex-charged wife, Muriel. But ironically, the play’s best when it’s not trying to be silly. Like when Wicksteed (a role created by Obi-Wan himself, Alec Guinness) stops leering and starts waxing honest and affable about the universal sadness of aging. And when his sweet spinster sister Connie expresses her shame at being flat-chested.
As Connie, Kestrel Burley is one of a trio of fresh young actors Pegg introduces here, including Bethany Lillis as the voluptuous Felicity and a remarkable Adam Perkes as the doctor’s grotesquely awkward (and, of course, horny) son.
It’s a fun night: It has rollerskating, polka-dot boxers and fake boobs. But the expected bevy of mistaken identities and sexual encounters grows monotonous and arbitrary.
It’s just impossible to understand many of the lines or the subtext they draw upon. As the largely ignored housekeeper, Theresa Reid makes for a charming, rhyming narrator, but I didn’t understand a word the playwright Bennett put in her mouth.
People say, “Maybe you had to be there.” I say, “Maybe you had to be British.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Habeas Corpus” **1/2 (out of four stars)
British farce. Presented by Miners Alley Playhouse, 1224 Washington Ave., Golden. Written by Alan Bennett. Directed by Richard H. Pegg. Through Feb. 28. 2 hours, 35 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 6 p.m. Sundays. $20. 303-935-3044 or
