The laughs continue on the Golden Apple Dinner Theatre stage with Ray Cooney’s British farce “Caught in the Net.” The show is the sequel to the hilarious “Run For Your Wife.”
As with most series, the first of the two shows is the funniest, but the sequel — with its pleasant cast — still rolls with humorous punches.
The play takes audiences about 15 years into the future, where London taxi driver John Smith (Ernest Weldon) is still living his secret double life. He has two wives who don’t know about the other, though they live about five minutes apart. Only John’s best friend and porter, Stanley Gardner (Cliff Roles), knows the secret.
This time around, though, keeping the secret becomes more complicated when John’s two teenage children — Gavin (Colton Herschberger), the son of Barbara (Heidi Davis), and Vicki (Geena M. Ravella), the daughter Mary (Leigh Anne Wuest), meet on the Internet. They discover their dads have a lot in common: the same name, the same occupation and the same temperament. So it’s no wonder the two teenagers want to meet in person as well as meet the other’s father. John, of course, is dead set against it.
The audience sees some of same hysterics as before — confused wives and now equally confused children. Weldon and Davis have solid performances as John and Barbara. Ravella radiates the typical “I-know-better-than-my-parents” teenager will, while Herschberger, who gave a decent performance overall, stumbled over lines a few times during Tuesday night’s performance.
As in the first show, Roles brings his humorous, refreshing flair to the play as Stanley. But there are moments when he is upstaged by the amusing Richard LeVene, who plays Stanley’s senile father. LeVene fills the show with great comic relief.
The second act is full of surprises and the ongoing series of cover-ups John and Stanley try to spin to keep the the wives from discovering the truth.
As Cooney seems to enjoy creating characters who like to visit other people’s houses and never leave, “Run For Your Wife” offers giggles for nearly every moment.
January Holmes, features writer, can be reached at 745-7057.
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