Classic Neil Simon comedy holds up splendidly over time

VALLEY: "Barefoot in the Park" makes yesteryear seem charming.
By MORT MAIMON
Daily News correspondent
Published: August 29, 2006
Last Modified: August 29, 2006 at 04:40 AM

WASILLA -- Neil Simon's comedy "Barefoot in the Park" is a smart choice for opening the 31st season of Valley Performing Arts in Wasilla. Set in pre-2001 New York City at a time when negligent landlords and tension between newly- weds could be dominant concerns, the play elicits wistfulness, a nostalgia for less troubled times.

Simon's work comprises a nourishing chowder of a play. The base consists of equal parts of a well-intentioned ingenue of a wife and her fairly pompous lawyer-husband. There's a dash of an insecure and lonely mother (hers) and the spice of a charming but deadbeat European poseur. Nothing highly imaginative here, but the concoction achieves Simon's purpose -- two hours plus of unpretentious theater fun.

On opening night, the first act, perhaps understandably, started slowly. The characters spoke mainly to each other, seemingly unconcerned about their audience. In a play employing cerebral humor, this kind of detachment can work. The funny bits in such plays are incremental and build in momentum as the audience "gets it."

But Simon doesn't do subtle and urbane. His appeal to laughter is situational -- as in regular references to the ordeal of climbing five flights to get to the small apartment occupied by Corie and Paul, the newlyweds, couched in sharp one-liners. His secondary shtick is the use of foreign-sounding gibberish that supposedly identifies food or comprises song lyrics in some esoteric language.

This kind of humor has to be sold to an audience. Dialogue must be enhanced by expression, gesture, pause and the like. On occasion in Act I, these qualities were AWOL.

After Act I, happily, the performers played effectively to the audience. As Victor Velasco, self-proclaimed arbiter of taste, Rod Mehrtens gave an excellent performance. While engaged in an obviously habitual con game, he suggested an inner vulnerability that is appealing.

Wendy Golter, who plays Corie's mother, Ethel, could have portrayed a cross between Auntie Mame and the controlling mother in "Gypsy." Director Steven Cuthburt wisely avoided this temptation, and Golter projected nicely as a woman trying hard to avoid the stereotyped neuroses that afflict some mothers whose daughters have recently married.

The leads, Robin Harris as Corie Bratter and John Harris as Paul Bratter have, perhaps, the advantage of cultural insights into their roles since they are actually husband and wife. Their casting certainly provides an opportunity for life to enrich art.

In any case, they have the requisite chemistry to make their roles come to life. Their dialogue, especially in arguments, was convincingly pointed and provides agreeable emotional variety to the comedy.
I do have one qualm about Corie. Early in the play, Ethel refers to her daughter as "impulsive." I saw too little of that quality in Corie, who tends to obsess about the inevitability of things going wrong. If, on occasion, she resisted temptation to allow thought to come between idea and action, she'd have manifested that impulsivity and provided more of a counterpoint between her personality and Paul's.
At the opening performance on Aug. 18, the audience was close to capacity, a testimony to the support so well-deserved by Valley Performing Arts. After working out the occasional kinks of Act I, the play justified the enthusiastic response it received.

For those who wonder whether "Barefoot" is too dated, too much a theatrical artifact, let me ease your misgivings. It is a charming, diverting comedy. Its references to fixtures of yesteryear like Toni home permanents, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and "What's My Line?" will inspire smiles at memories of an era long gone. For me, they added sentimental value to a comedy whose other assets make it well worth seeing.

Mort Maimon lives in Anchorage.