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“Know your audience” is good advice for anyone and is especially true of regional theater. The Hampton Theatre Company zeros in astutely with its choice of Joe DiPietro’s “Clever Little Lies” to open its 33rd season.
The audience in Quogue is largely made up of the 50-plus crowd who are, as they might say about each other, “comfortably fixed.” But no matter how seemingly swell everyone’s life is, there’s always something.
Such is the case with the four characters—suburban mom and dad, their adult son and his wife—in “Clever Little Lies” that lets the something go down gently as an errant feather falling to the ground. The something starts out as the steamy “I’m-in-love” affair the son, Billy, is having with a 23-year-old personal trainer at his gym, a “stunningly gorgeous optimist” adorably named Jasmine. Sex has never been so fantastic; by contrast, when his wife (Jane, as in plain) services him, it’s as if she’s a martyr like Joan of Arc, he whines. Why stay married when there is someone younger and hotter waiting at the gym? Ah yes, infidelity is universal and can always be mined for humor.
Yet before the end of the play, the something will turn into a bittersweet remembrance from Mom that touches her own marriage. Goodbye comedy, hello drama. In the hands of Hampton Theatre Company stalwart Andrew Botsford, the result is funny, knowing theater that is as cozy as a comforter and a hot toddy on a cold night. You laugh, and then you might even get a damp eye remembering that fleeting someone who was the something in your own life.
The archetypes of the cast could have been plucked directly from the audience: Mother Alice (Diana Marbury) owns a trendy bookstore selling F. Scott Fitzgerald T-shirts and “Sixty Shades of Grey” rather than anything resembling literature; Bill Sr./Dad (Terrance Fiore) is an attorney, as is his philandering son Billy (Edward A. Brennan), whose wife (Carolann DiPirro) is a satisfied new mom, a medical editor on extended leave after having a baby.
One of the funniest bits occurs in the opening scene, set in a gym locker room, as the son reveals to his father that even before his daughter was born, he began looking to Jasmine for solace and, lo, the bam-bam-bam animal sex that ensued is making him think divorce. Not what his dad expected or wants to hear! Mr. Fiore as the father has just the right mix of curiosity and dismay: Tell me what’s wrong, Son. Oh! “Stop, stop—I said stop!”
The first two thirds of the one-act play are pretty much banter and comedy, though the young wife’s situation is teetering; but you know she will end up just fine because—well, it’s that kind of play.
The four actors dance lively through this oft-told tale of love, marriage and adultery without losing a laugh line or, as it happens, any of the poignancy from Alice’s reveal late in the story when it makes a hard left into drama. Love is ruthless, she says—but here the sting is quickened by occasional jokes that happily stray in. I’ll not explain further because knowing will squander the piquancy of the moment.
Ms. Marbury, seen frequently on the Quogue stage, has a voice that shows the signs of age, but that quavering quality here amplifies the tenderness of her musing.
I’ve seen this play with Marlo Thomas in that role, and found “Clever Little Lies” quaintly tedious and irksome, like a creaking door; the bookstore jokes obvious, the plot seemingly ho-hum, the ending foreseen, but here in Quogue it felt infused with new life. With Ms. Thomas as Alice it felt as if playwright Mr. DiPietro (whose credits include the perennial “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”) wrote it to give her a star turn off-Broadway, where it ran for several months.
Here under the smart direction of Hampton Theatre Company’s newly-elected president, Mr. Botsford, “Clever Little Lies” is a true ensemble performance, and provides much more enjoyable entertainment. Whether the script changed or not, I do not know, but even the writing seemed snappier and more amusing than remembered.
The set decor by Ms. Marbury (who typically does the company’s sets) is once again faultless, straight out of a shelter magazine. A second scene in a car, as the young couple drive to Mom and Dad’s house, is a nice touch.
Even at the back of the Quogue Community Hall where Hampton Theatre Company holds forth, you didn’t miss a line—except when everyone was laughing. And the audience laughed so long at some of the lines you missed the next one.
But never mind, my spouse of many years and I were chortling along with them. And when at the end Bill Sr. said, “There’s only here for me,” I gave him a squeeze.
“Clever Little Lies” continues at Quogue Community Hall through November 12 with shows on Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., with an additional matinée on Saturday, November 11. Tickets are $30. Seniors pay just $25 except on Saturday evenings. Anyone under 35 pays $20 and students under 21 pay $10.
on Oct 30, 2017