Theater Review - Wedding jitters

Georgia Ensemble Theatre’s Perfect Wedding may not be a perfect farce, but it’s still a pretty good one, with staging as clever as its characters are not.

British bridegroom Bill (Hugh Adams) awakens on his wedding day in a hotel bridal suite to find himself in bed with a sylph-like stranger (Rebecca Dutton). With the wedding only hours away and the bride (Rachel Sorsa) soon to arrive, Bill and best man Tom (Mark Pitt) must frantically hide the girl and conceal Bill’s drunken shenanigans. Soon enough, the girl masquerades as a chambermaid, a real chambermaid (Anne McCarthy) pretends to be Tom’s girlfriend, and things get increasingly more complicated. But not too complicated, as Robin Hawdon’s script, however silly, never loses clarity and contains a surprising core of sweetness concerning the one-night stand.

The production amusingly incorporates period fashions like beehive hairdos and Nehru jackets, but the most conspicuous detail is Christopher Kohan’s set for the bridal suite’s bedroom and exterior room. The walls and doors are only frames, so we can see the slapstick that the characters can’t, and the entire thing’s on a revolve, so sometimes we face the bedroom side, sometimes the other. At times director James Donadio puts funny action on the wrong side of the furniture, but he gives a dynamic, cinematic feel to moments when actors move through doors while the whole room turns.

With his wet-head hairdo Adams looks like he’s melting into a puddle of sweat as he klutzily tries to avert disaster. He’s well matched with Pitt, who superbly plays Tom as the dumbest of blokes. It’s funny just watching Tom try to think. The mother of the bride gives the show’s flamboyant performance (to say more would spoil a surprise), but the other actors have too much energy to be upstaged.

Perfect Wedding relies too heavily on running gags with a toilet brush, and eventually wears out its welcome. Thanks to a spirited cast, though, the Wedding party might be fools, but they’re fun fools worthy of a good reception.

curt.holman@creativeloafing.com

Perfect Wedding plays through Nov. 30 at Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St. Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 4 and 8 p.m.; and Sun. 2:30 p.m. $16-$33. 770-641-1260. www.get.org.