Farmington Hills

Players present farce with speed and coordination

By David Wallace
C & G Staff Writer

Before even accounting for the laughs, those who buy tickets to the Farmington Players’ production of Michael Parker’s “Whose Wives Are They Anyway?” will get their money’s worth watching the cast hit cue after cue in the racy farce.

The story concerns makeup company executives John Baker and David McGachen, who plan a weekend of golfing at the Oakfield Golf and Country Club while their wives enjoy a shopping weekend in New York City. Disaster strikes when McGachen, in the country club’s lobby, accidentally meets the makeup company’s new head, D.L. Hutchison, who starts work on Monday. As if meeting the new boss on vacation weren’t bad enough, Hutchison remarks that she would never employ someone who went golfing without his wife and tells McGachen she looks forward to meeting his spouse that evening.

This sends McGachen into a panic, and he convinces a reluctant Baker, who once portrayed a woman in a play, to portray McGachen’s wife for cocktails with Hutchison, who has never seen Baker. After all, they are makeup executives with plenty of samples in their car.

McGachen’s plan is absurd, but the rest of the play rewards the audience’s willful suspension of disbelief as McGachen’s lies multiply, drawing more people into the charade and amplifying the tension and silliness.

“People gotta come in ready for the race, because once we start, it’s a go!” said John Boufford, who plays McGachen.

The production also relies heavily on the set, which producer Tim Timmer noted was a bear to build. The set allows the audience to simultaneously glimpse the club’s lobby and the rooms belonging to Baker and McGachen, and the play’s action often uses that point of view for comic effect.

Also, there are at least eight doors on the set that people variously enter and exit, and at least four phones ringing and being answered. Throughout the action, the eight characters are either deceived, deceiving or drawing the wrong conclusions, and only perfect timing — an entrance here, an exit there — keeps them going in the wrong directions throughout the play’s roughly two hours.

“That was the hard part,” said Maureen Mansfield, who plays Hutchison. “It’s trust, too, with your fellow actors. It’s trust that they’re going to be where they’re supposed to be, say what they’re supposed to say, and with this crew, you can. It’s just a great group of fellow actors.”

No one scrambles through more humorous onstage costume changes and frenzied dashes to keep the deception alive than Geoff Wehner, who plays Baker.

“It’s only the two costumes. It’s just all the back-and-forth that’s murder,” said Wehner. “I had to make a flowchart to remember where everything was, which bed the wig was in, where the dress was, whether I was supposed to be a man or a woman, half-man, half-woman, which half of which.”

“Mary Ann (Tweedie) has 21 entrances, and I have 25 entrances. We have little cheat sheets backstage just to remember what our cue lines are. But yeah, the timing is everything in a farce like this,” said Tony Targan, who plays Wilson, the country club’s handyman who is always in the right place to think the wrong thing.

Tweedie plays the prudish club manager determined not to have any base behavior in her country club. As part of the high jinks, various characters find reasons to be in bed with each other or bump into each other and fall into compromising positions just in time for another character to see them. In one memorable scene, one character is talking about golf while the other character thinks the conversation is about sex.

“It is a little bit along the lines of Benny Hill,” said director Dennis Broadhead.

The actors liked the opportunity “Whose Wives” affords to stretch out their talents.

“I’ve been directing, myself, a lot, and I haven’t actually been onstage in a long time, but I’ve done a lot of shows with Dennis, and when I heard he was directing this, I thought, OK, it’s time,” said Mansfield. “And actually, I haven’t played the straight guy before. My natural inclination is to try to make people laugh, so playing the straight guy is really a challenge. It’s a fun challenge.”

“Comic timing is hard. I wanted to get some experience doing that,” said Laurel Stroud, who plays Laura Baker, John Baker’s wife. This is a farce; of course the real wives show up after Baker and McGachen establish their stand-in wives for Hutchison.

Diana McSweeney, who plays wife Karly McGachen, said she likes farces because they are great fun to prepare, as well as perform.

Tickets to “Whose Wives” cost $16 for adults, and $14 for seniors and students. The Players will perform the show at 8 p.m. Feb. 17-18 and 23-25, and March 1-3. Matinees will be staged at 2 p.m. Feb. 19 and 26. Purchase tickets online at farmingtonplayers.org or at (248) 553-2955.
 

You can reach C & G Staff Writer David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1053.