By snoadmin
With house music reminiscent of ’60s romantic comedies featuring Doris Day or bickering-buddy comedies like “The Odd Couple,” there was the expectation that “Tom, Dick, and Harry” would be a silly romp of a comedy with a dash of sincere sweetness.
However, the show did not completely follow through with this promise.
“Tom, Dick, and Harry,” the International CIty Theatre’s last production of the 2007 season, is a play that takes place in England. Tom and Linda are a loving married couple working toward adopting their first baby. When Tom’s brothers show up, all hell breaks loose, comedy ensues and the couple’s dreams may never be. Characters who don’t speak any English show up, a dead man’s body parts fly and the police stick their noses where they are not welcome.
Unfortunately, the production is not as funny as promised, and it is artistically inconsistent. Each actor is supposed to carry a British accent through the play. Not only do some actors completely fall out of their accents at times, including leading lady Christy Hall, but the three title characters are brothers who each have their own accents as though none of them grew up together.
The upper-class British accent Tom (Brian Stanton) has matches that of his wife Linda (Hall), and I commend him for never falling out of the accent even through all of the shenanigans he has to deal with. However, when introduced to Tom’s brother Dick (Nicolas Levene), who comes in with a fantastic Cockney accent, I was thrown for a loop because I was listening to an accent so different that it was impossible to accept that the two were brothers.
Bring in the third brother, Harry (Jaime Tintor), and there are three separate accents. Tintor slips in and out of some kind of an Irish accent towards the end of the play, but it has nothing to do with the story or action.
Did director Todd Nielson simply let the actors do whatever British accent they wanted without regard for consistency within the story? It seems like it. Three biological brothers so close in age to each other would normally all have similar speech patterns and certainly the same accent.
The set was dressed with items that didn’t fit, as though the designers just found a painting in storage and used it to fill the space on the wall or figured the table needed a little something and thought, “Why not put an empty bowl with little decorative quality there?”
That empty bowl ended up being the object of busy work for the actors, another poor choice that should have been rectified through better direction. The actors’ backs faced portions of the audience, even while speaking.
The script, written by Ray and Michael Cooney, was slightly amusing at times, though it also suffered from filler in the form of pointless and less-than-mediocre jokes designed solely to give the actors something to say.
The sophomoric humor that popped up periodically seemed to make some audience members laugh while it left others to wonder why a joke about Linda’s “pussy” (her pet cat, people) even needed to be written.
Surrounded by mostly blue-hairs, I found myself to be the youngest one in the audience, which is something that needs to be fixed. Go see more theater, even if it’s not this particular production.
I did laugh a few times, but the rest of the audience certainly found the whole experience more humorous and enjoyable than I did, and several critics apparently agree with them.
The actors’ performances, namely Stanton and Levene, are the only saving grace that makes the show enjoyable in any capacity. Overall, I think this production has a place with those who just want to have a good time and a little laugh if you can ignore all its shortcomings.
“Tom, Dick, and Harry” will be running through Nov. 18 at the International City Theatre. Ticket information is available by calling (562) 436-4610 or visiting www.ictlongbeach.org.
