{"id":656,"date":"2009-07-15T10:14:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T15:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/?p=656"},"modified":"2009-08-09T12:32:34","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T17:32:34","slug":"theater-review-perfect-wedding-by-robin-hawdon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/?p=656","title":{"rendered":"Theater Review: <i>Perfect Wedding<\/i> by Robin Hawdon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No one does bedroom farce like the British, and a fine example just blustered onto the New York stage with the Vital Theatre Company&#8217;s sharp new production of Robin Hawdon&#8217;s <i>Perfect Wedding<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>A man wakes up on his wedding morning in the hotel&#8217;s bridal suite with a naked woman he doesn&#8217;t know.  Hilarity ensues, and a touching love story too.  Teresa K. Pond&#8217;s sure-handed direction shapes Hawdon&#8217;s snappy dialogue, slapstick humor, and blurry maze of plot twists into a cheery evening of laughs and good feeling.<\/p>\n<p>The dialogue has been slightly Americanized, but the British pedigree shows, not only in the door-slamming, under-skirt-hiding story, but in the occasional unnatural phrase <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: left\" src=\"http:\/\/static.blogcritics.org\/09\/07\/09\/108233\/perfect-wedding1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/> (e.g. &#8220;very well&#8221;). However, 99 percent of the time, the actors (and the adaptation) hit just the right notes of absurdity, desperation, and overdoing it.<\/p>\n<p>Elastic-faced Matt Johnson plays Bill, the panicked groom, with a sweetly expressive mixture of bug-eyed fear and little-boy-lostness.  The beautiful Amber Bela Muse does a nice job with the straight role of the clueless bride, although there&#8217;s a late scene or two where she seems a little too calm for a bride on her wedding day.  <\/p>\n<p>The effervescent Dayna Graber threatens to steal the show as the wisecracking, mint-popping hotel housekeeper who gets caught up in the proceedings.  But Tom (Fabio Pires in a very promising Off-Broadway debut) distracts us with his finely tuned fury upon discovering that Bill&#8217;s best man is by no means the only role he&#8217;s destined to play in this careening plot. <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid gray; margin: 10px; float: right\" src=\"http:\/\/static.blogcritics.org\/09\/07\/09\/108233\/perfect-wedding2.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/> And Kristi McCarson, in the initially thankless &#8220;other woman&#8221; role of Judy, captivates with her stark revelations in Act II.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. McCarson also looks stunning in the wedding dress, which gets its own credit, being on loan from English couturier Jane Wilson-Marquis. If you like this wedding dress, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winniecouture.com\/stores\/wedding-dresses-chicago-il\/\">go to site >><\/a> here which sells similar designs! It&#8217;s quite a gorgeous garment.  I won&#8217;t give away how Judy ends up wearing it.  Suffice it to say the bride&#8217;s mother (Ghana Leigh) is involved.<\/p>\n<p>Enough.  Whatever troubles you may bring with you into the theater, this crackerjack production will make you forget them, at least for a rollicking hour and forty-five minutes.  <i>Perfect Wedding<\/i> plays at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, New York, through Aug. 2.  Get tickets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vitaltheatre.org\/\">online<\/a> or call (212) 579-0528.<\/p>\n<p><i>Photos: Sun Productions, Inc.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No one does bedroom farce like the British, and a fine example just blustered onto the New York stage with the Vital Theatre Company&#8217;s sharp new production of Robin Hawdon&#8217;s Perfect Wedding. A man wakes up on his wedding morning in the hotel&#8217;s bridal suite with a naked woman he doesn&#8217;t know. Hilarity ensues, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/?p=656\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Theater Review: <i>Perfect Wedding<\/i> by Robin Hawdon&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonsobel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}