[NEohioPAL] Berko review: THE UNDERPANTS @ Beck

[Roy Berko]

THE UNDERPANTS don’t quite stay up at Beck

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

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Steve Martin, author of THE UNDERPANTS, now in production at The Beck Center for 
the Arts, is known as a comedian and outrageous funnyman.  His writing in THE 
UNDERPANTS is true to Martin:  daffy, ridiculous and overdone.  

It is ironic that DIE HOSE, the play on which the Martin script is based, was a 
controversial play by Carl Sternheim.  Sternheim was one of the leading writers 
in the German Expressionism movement, which many credit with laying the 
foundation for modern theatre.  When it opened in 1910, DIE HOSE was so 
controversial that it was banned by the German government and, eventually led to 
Sternheim permanently leaving the country.  Sternheim's purpose in writing the 
script was to satirize the government, middle class morality and conformity.

According to a German commentary, DIE HOSE “centers on a married German couple 
and the scandal that follows after the wife's underpants fall down in public, as 
they wait to see the king passing by in a parade. The incident embarrasses the 
usually inattentive husband and makes the wife an unwitting object of desire. In 
fact, shortly after the parade, two men come to the couple's home, ostensibly to 
rent a room, but are really interested in wooing the wife.” 

The Martin plot is basically the same, except that he has turned the satire into 
a full-blown melodramatic farce.  Everything is overblown.  Matthew Earnest, the 
director of the Beck production, builds upon the modern author's concept and 
lets loose with bizarre accents, melodramatic double takes, prancing actors, and 
feigned emotions and gestures.  All that's missing is the mustached villain and 
impending death on the railroad tracks that were so common in old time 
melodramas and non-talky films.

Katie Nabors is sweet as the frustrated wife whose underwear falls.  We never 
find out which country and when the play takes place, though Martin does 
indicate that this is “a spoof of the American middle class.”  To add to the 
confusion, at least in this production, the accents, setting and clothing are 
anything but American middle class.

Female members of the audience, at least during the production I saw, vocally 
hissed at the many chauvinistic lines which stressed traditional male views 
concerning the role of women as housekeepers and order followers.  They laughed 
at pronouncements of what makes for a “real” man.

Greg Violand carefully overdoes the role of Theo, an uptight government 
employee, to the degree that he is hysterically funny.  We laugh with him, not 
at him, the sign of a good farcical performance.   Sally Groth, as the 
interfering upstairs maiden lady, picks up Violand's tone, and makes the role 
into a show highlight.  

Unfortunately, the other members of the cast aren't up to Violand and Groth's 
level and stay on the performance surface, often faking their performances.  
Kevin Charnas, flounces around the stage as Benjamin Cohen, a Jewish barber with 
an accent that sometimes sounds New Joisey, sometimes mock Eastern European and 
at other times is unidentifiable.  His character development is as schizophrenic 
as his accent.   Randy Muchowski adequately portrays a young artistic poet, but 
misses out on both laughs and emotional development due to his inconsistent 
character concept, while Mark Seven, as the scientist Klinglehoff, never does 
establish a clear identity. 

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: THE UNDERPANTS will amuse some and frustrate others.  The 
fact that the farce/melodrama development doesn't always work is a combination 
of the lack of abilities of some of the cast and the inconsistency in 
directorial concepts.   

Beck's production runs through April 23 .  For ticket information call 
216-521-2540.  
 
Roy Berko's blog, which contains theatre and dance reviews from 2001 through 
2011, as well as his consulting and publications information, can be found at 
http://royberko.info.  His reviews can also be found on www.coolcleveland.com 
and www.NeOHIOpal