"Three Men on a Horse" rides again in New York
Three Men on a Horse
United Press International
FREDERICK M. WINSHIP
April 1, 2011
NEW YORK, April 1 (UPI) -- "Three Men on a Horse", a Broadway hit in 1935, is receiving a New York revival, its fourth, by The Actors Company Theater with a well-cast production that proves that an exquisitely constructed farce can have a long shelf life.
Granted that the John Cecil Holm-George Abbott play had only a month's run when last revived on Broadway in 1993, this latest production at the Off-Broadway Beckett Theater, to run through April 23, deserves to be warmly received by critics and audiences alike, if only as a reminder of the genius of Abbott.
The comedy maestro of Broadway for more than 70 years, he took a pallid original script by Holm titled "Hobby Horse" and tweaked it into a winner whose Broadway premiere staging ran for more than two years in the depths of the Great Depression. It was made into a film by Warner Brothers in 1936.
The show directed by TACT executive director Scott Alan Evans focuses on the knack of a nerdy, henpecked greeting card writer Erwin Trowbridge to pick winners of horse races, although he never places bets himself. When he mentions this at a bar, he is overheard by three small-time, ne'er-do-well professional gamblers who latch onto him for tips and win one race after another, making it possible for them to live a middle-class life that has previously eluded them.
Since Erwin's tips come to him only when riding a commuter train from his suburban Ozone Heights, N.J. home into Manhattan, the low-life trio finds themselves doing a lot of travelling with him until they finally become doubtful of his choices. When they force Erwin to place a bet, his talent deserts him and so do his gambler companions who have involved him in a world of turmoil. He returns to his job writing sentimental couplets and to his wife and settled suburban life, all of which provide him with a new sense of satisfaction.
The vision of upward class mobility shared briefly by Erwin's riffraff companions is not as meaningful today as it was to audiences in the economically depressed 1930s, but that does not detract from the essential hilarity of "Three Men on a Horse", a comedy with a Damon Runyan flavor that is fortunate to have Geoffrey Molloy, a widely experienced Off-Broadway and regional theater actor, in the role of its straight man, Erwin.
This meagerly talented, not-too-bright everyman, who can be exasperating when he refuses to gamble because he considers it a morally reprehensible vice, is perfectly characterized by Molloy, who is able to make Erwin sympathetic as well as funny in his perversity. He is also touchingly affectionate with his somewhat annoying wife Audrey, played with a complete lack of sophistication by Becky Baumwoll.
Of the 10 other members of the supporting cast, Gregory Salata is outstanding as the conniving Patsy, the fedora-wearing ringleader of the professional gamblers, and James Murtaugh is a scream as the Erwin's outraged greeting card company boss, Mr. Carver, a character who appears only in the third act. Juliana
Zinkel is a riot as Patsy's blonde airhead moll, Mabel, a former Ziegfeld Follies girl, and Ron McClary makes the most of the small role of the bartender, Harry.
Don Burroughs and Jeffrey C. Hawkins are amusing as the other screwball gamblers, especially when they try to reassemble a file of Mother's Day card greetings that Erwin has written for Mr. Carver and they have torn up. Of course they mix rather than match up the paper fragments with results that get belly laughs from the audience. It's a simple plot gimmick, but in the hands of playwrights Holm and Abbott, it works.
Brett J. Banakis' set design easily shifts from the Spartan living room of the Trowbridge home to a Manhattan hotel barroom and a room in the same hotel occupied by the newly-affluent Patsy and Mabel, all effectively lighted by Mary Louise Geiger. Martha Hally's period costumes are delightful, reminding us of the time when even gamblers were suited like gentlemen and women worse skirts that never rose above mid-calf.