In the words of the legendary S.J. Perelman, comedy is a tough dollar. Perelman’s remark came to mind while I was watching The Marriage Zone, Jeff Gould’s comedy which has been revived at the Santa Monica Playhouse after a successful run at Secret Rose Theater in 2017, where it won a Valley Theatre Award. Although I went to the play hoping for some badly needed laughs, I was sadly disappointed. Very little that happened on stage tickled my funny bone. I simply sat there wondering why the play wasn’t working for me, feeling more bewildered and disappointed by the moment. The problem with The Marriage Zone, I soon came to realize, was one of credibility. I just didn’t believe in what I was watching, which was as follows. Beth and Cal (Rene Ashton and Matt Harrison, respectively), a middle-aged and middle-class couple are trying to sell their suburban home. While waiting for their prospective buyers to show up and look the house over, they bicker with each other, venomously. Then a young couple, Liz (Jacee Jule) and Mike (Michael Dempsey) suddenly enter, having seen the For Rent sign outside and thinking how cute it would be to buy a house, even though they don’t have a nickel to their name. When they are not oohing and aahing over the property, they smooch and practically have sex right there on the living room couch. Next to make an entrance are the buyers, Ellie (Leslie Stratton) and Skip (Ben Bergstrom), elderly married folk, one of whom is sweet, the other (Skip) sour. It soon emerges that these three couples are different versions of each other. Liz and Mike act the way Beth and Cal used to act when they were young and still in love and lust with each other. Ellie and Skip are, in their dotage, what the other four will become one day, unless they can learn from their elders’ mistakes. In a way, all six of them can simultaneously look into the future as well as back into the past. A seventh character, Ryan (Tanner Fontana), Beth and Cal’s teenaged son, wanders in and out of the action, listening to music on his ear-buds and wondering just what in hell was with these weird grownups. At one point, one of the characters asks whether all this is a dream. The playwright, though, seems to want us believe that we’re watching an episode from “The Twilight Zone” (hence the title of his play). By that time, I must reluctantly admit, I simply couldn’t care less what I was watching.
