Event

Run For Your Wife

''Run for Your Wife!'' puts America's fondness for British comedy to a stress test.

In this comedy about bigamy, a dull man turns out to have a hyperactive romantic life. That is the beginning of the evening's tomfoolery. John Smith, a London taxi driver maintains two separate households, one in Wimbledon, the other a few minutes away in Streatham. Because of an accident too complicated to explain, his worlds collide, and the police are called in to investigate. With increasing ineptitude, the taxi driver tries to keep one wife from learning about the other. Mr. Cooney uses every subterfuge in the joke book, including the pretense of his being homosexual. Whenever possible, the play makes fun of stereotypes (dumb cops, swishy gays and prefeminist women who think only of getting their man into bed). The ingenuity is to have both homes on stage at the same time, so we see the wives simultaneously though they remain invisible to each other. To complicate the plot, almost everyone is mistaken for someone else, one wife for a nun, the other for a transvestite, and that leads to two more subjects for ridicule. Sex appears to be on everyone's mind, though there is an ingenuousness in that department. Much of the confusion derives from the cute terms of endearment characters use for their mates. It does not pay to ask questions - to wonder why the two policemen are so incredibly gullible, and why they are devoting so much time to a minor case, or what the two attractive women see in the colorless cabdriver. Definitely a must see!!