Play It Again, Sam

Written By Woody Allen

Directed by Elliot Thomson

At the Dunster House Dining Hall

Through this weekend

THE hardest part of putting on Woody Allen's Play it Again, Sam is convincing the audience to accept that someone other than Woody himself can play the lead role and still make it funny. He'd better be good, we say to ourselves, choking our resentment, or we want Woody back.

Luckily, Robinson Everett brings enough that is fresh to Woody's old role that we don't even miss him in this Dunster House production. Moreover, the rest of the cast, which seemed to fade into the background in the film, has a chance in the stage version to relax and make the most of their characters, who prove surprisingly funny unto themselves.

The plot of Play It Again, Sam is a simple and perfect vehicle for Allen's shlemiel persona, here called Allan Felix. Felix's wife has just left him, and he bemoans his impossibly bad luck with women. His harried businessman friend Dick Christie (Nick Raposo) arrives with his flaky wife Linda (Lucy Soutter) to comfort him. They try to fix him up with dates until Felix realizes that he's fallen in love with Linda, and that through his relationship with her he's finally overcome his total lack of confidence with women. Along the way, Felix, a writer for a film magazine, is visited by the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, who offers him useful advice on love in that famous gravelly monotone.

The meat of the play, of course, is Woody's one-liners, Choice morsels include, "I used to get migraines, but my analyst cured me. Now I get tremendous coldsores," "I'd sell my mother to the Arabs for that girl," and "My parents never got divorced, though I begged them to." There simply isn't a joke-free minute in the whole script.

The whole of this Dunster House production is marked by tight direction, lively acting and capable technical work (especially by the sound people, who dug up some great Thelonius Monk as background music for Felix's unlikely attempts at seduction). Everett is especially good in the lead, believably lovable and neurotic, but he really couldn't steal the show from this well-balanced cast.

Andrew Osbourne makes a divine Bogey and gets lots of laughs with his high-collar trenchcoat. Don't worry about women, he advises his hapless apprentice, "It's nothing a little bourbon and soda wouldn't help." Felix answers, "If I had a thimble full of bourbon, I'd go out and get tattooed."

Nick Raposo is also hilarious as the mad businessman constantly leaving phone numbers with his answering service. Lucy Soutter's performance as Linda wavers on the wooden once in a while, but she has about her a pleasing nuttiness reminiscent of some of Woody's best leading ladies.

The cameos are real scene-stealers, though, with first-place going hands down to Lara Palevitz as Felix's dream version of his yet-to-arrive blind date. Palevitz plays her as a paragon of the 1940's cigarette girl ultra-bimbo and draws many a chortle.

If you've got anything like a soft spot for Woody Allen, you can't go wrong with this show. Play It Again Sam is well-conceived, well-produced, wellacted and very, very funny. Go ahead, kid. Even if you don't enjoy yourself, there's nothing a little bourbon and soda wouldn't help...