Three Men on a Horse
Three Men on a Horse
EDGE
Jonathan Leaf
March 10, 2011
The current Three Men On A Horse playing at Theater Row runs out of the money.
The show is a revival of a 1930's comedy by George Abbott and John Cecil Holm. It's often said to be a classic farce, and with that thought in mind the National Actors Theater presented it on Broadway in 1993 as a vehicle for the company's founder Tony Randall and his longtime friend and The Odd Couple co-star Jack Klugman. Critics threw the blame for that disastrous production on Randall and Klugman.
Maybe it's time to acknowledge that at least part of the difficulty lies with the trivial and predictable script, which stands up as perfectly as FDR did back in the days when the play was first presented. If it's any indication of its importance in the career of "Mr." Abbott, whose status as a theater director and fixer of shows is legendary, perhaps we should note that it isn't even mentioned in his Wikipedia profile. (Among the dozens of plays and musicals on which he worked for which his directorial credits are listed: Twentieth Century, On Your Toes, The Boys From Syracuse, Pal Joey, On The Town, Call Me Madam, The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.)
In this production the pace is that for a trotter, not a thoroughbred.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around a nervous nellie (Geoffrey Molloy) who -- inexplicably -- has been given superpowers at handicapping horse-races. Comic hi-jinks (inevitably, of course) ensue when our double-flushing hero is effectively kidnapped by a group of wiseguys intent on exploiting his gifts. This prompts his wife (Becky Baumwoll) to put out a missing person's report on him even as his boss (James Murtaugh) and brother-in-law (Scott Schaffer) search him out and run into the not-so-baddies and their leader's kind-hearted mistress (Julianna Zinkel). The script is full of the usual unexplained Damon Runyon-influenced conventions. Thus, the gangsters only occasionally seem interested in crime, and they're mostly sympathetic if doltish.
Basically, it's a three act sit-com.
For such a show to work, the casting and direction have to be spot-on. Yet in this production the pace is that for a trotter, not a thoroughbred. In addition, everyone in the cast has been directed towards acting cliches. Hence, the easy-on-the-eyes moll has been told to play Adelaide from Guys and Dolls, and the gangsters are all imitating the Bowery Boys. At the performance I saw the show only really started to hit its stride and get consistent belly-laughs with the entrance of the frantic employer in Act III.
Still, a number of the performers manage to acquit themselves quite credibly. Among these are Zinkel as the moll, Murtaugh as the boss and Ron McClary as a put-upon bartender. The sets, credited to Brett J. Banakis, are fetching.