Milwaukee’s fall theater season officially begins with the annual August production by Milwaukee Chamber Theater, now entering its 45th year of operation. According to producing director C. Michael Wright, the recent sad news events across America and the world have inspired the company to do a pure comedy. Enter Unnecessary Farce by Paul Slade Smith. In this door-slamming free-for-all, a pair of cops (played by Ben Yela and Rachael Zientek) have set up a sting operation in a pair of identical hotel rooms in Sheboygan, Wis. They are searching for missing funds from the mayor’s office, and assisting them is a young, attractive female accountant, Karen Brown (played with the perfect amount of sexual tension by Amber Smith). Her job is to question the mayor (the always dependable Jonathan Gillard Daly, playing a somewhat baffled bureaucrat) about his role in possibly embezzling the funds. Their plan is interrupted by the hilarious Agent Frank (Tim Higgins), whose job is to “case” the hotel room to ensure the mayor’s security.
The plot gets muddied quickly, and soon the audience is laughing every few minutes at the mistaken identities, blunders, plot twists and bedroom situations. Credit for pulling off the wacky plot goes to the talented cast, under the able direction of Ryan Schabach.
Paul Slade Smith, a New York-based playwright and actor, made his playwriting debut with Unnecessary Farce. Since its premiere in 2006, the play has received more than 275 productions, including one by Peninsula Players in Wisconsin’s Door County. In his introduction to the play, Smith writes that “believability is the key to comedy in this play.”
Indeed, at least some of the characters do seem very “real,” starting with the two cops. As Eric Sheridan, Ben Yela starts the laughs with a smartly done answering-a-phone-call-while-getting-dressed sequence. He is talking on the phone to his never-seen “chief,” who has set Sheridan and his female partner, Officer Billie Dwyer (the terrific Rachael Zientek) on this case.
As they bumble through the task at hand, they eventually meet up with Rick Pendzich, playing an angry Scottish hitman who always does the job while being dressed in full Scottish attire and playing his bagpipes. It is the police officers’ job to keep their wits and catch the bad guys before anyone actually gets “iced.”
The two identical hotel rooms (nicely brought to life by scenic designer Martin McClendon) have enough doors (eight, to be exact) to keep the characters on their feet and constantly entering and exiting the stage. The set is a key element to the hilarity that ensues within, and Milwaukee Chamber delivers what it promises: two hours of laughter.
