from the Times Union
Audience loves 'Family' farce.

Special to the Times Union
By Michael Eck

LATHAM -- Sometimes a critic just has to trust an audience. Wednesday's crowd for Ray Cooney's "It Runs in the Family" was roaring, so the show must be funny. "Family" is making its regional premiere at Curtain Call Theatre, which has had success in the past with works from British farceur Cooney.

And "Family" is nothing if not a farce -- slamming doors, spit takes and all. Cooney is both a writer and an actor, and at home he frequently appears in his own plays. Curtain Call doesn't have that luxury, but resident director Steve Fletcher has fun with the script anyway.

The play takes place three days before Christmas in the Doctor's Common Room of St. Andrew's Hospital, London. Dr. David Mortimer is preparing a career-making speech in the quiet room, but it won't stay quiet for long. A former nurse, Jane Tate, arrives, and it's made clear pretty quickly that she and the good doctor had a few fair liaisons in the sluice room years back. It's also made clear that those trysts had a result -- namely a lad named Leslie.

For his 18th birthday, Tate decided to tell her son the truth -- well, some of the truth -- about his siring, and now he's on a mission to find his unnamed father. All he knows is that dad is a doctor at St. Andrew's.

Soon all hell breaks loose. It has to. It's a farce.

The comedy in "Family" is frighteningly predictable, and filled with mistaken identities, misplaced words and muddled motives. And since Cooney's a Brit, it's also filled with men in drag. But the predictability didn't get in the way of the laughter Wednesday. Perhaps that's due, at least in part, to the sheer gusto of Fletcher's cast.

On Wednesday, they quite literally ripped one of the doors off its hinges, and then, with improviser's elan, John McDermott and Aaron S. Holbritter worked ad lib remarks about the accident into the dialogue. Touche.

McDermott plays Mortimer, and he brings his considerable skills to bear on the raging role. CCT regular Holbritter is fellow doc, Hubert Bonney. Holbritter huffs and puffs through the show, which finds him flinging Leslie (Stephen Hensel) about the room, tugging at the Matron's (Jessica Guyon) uniform, and posing as a nurse, a vicar and Leslie's dad.

Hensel's physicality is even more impressive, although his acting skills still need to be honed. The cast is filled out with Brian Molis (as Dr. Mike Connolly) and a trio of local vets -- Monica Cangero, David Meyersburg and Howie Schaffer. Cangero, in her CCT debut, is one of the show's bright spots as Jane Tate.

"It Runs In The Family" is light fun, nothing more or less.