It’s never too cold to go ‘Barefoot in the Park’ at The Dio
PINCKNEY, Mich. – Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park first performed on Broadway in 1963, but almost 54 years later the script holds up just fine except for the $125 monthly rent the young couple at the center of the story are paying for a mid-town Manhattan fifth-floor walk-up skylight apartment.
Newlyweds Paul and Corie Bratter are very much in love, but they let the growing pains of living together for the first time create a lot of needless friction. This is life after six days of Honeymoon sex at The Plaza Hotel when they have to start talking to one another, paying bills and dealing with life. The friction starts with Corie having said yes to taking the 5th floor apartment with a leaky skylight, no real bedroom or bathtub instead of the 3rd floor apartment Paul had agreed to. The comedically crappy quality of the apartment, and the lung-collapsing hike to get to it provides a parade of typical Neil Simon sight gags.
Mary Dilworth plays Corie with an unbridled enthusiasm for the cruddy cramped apartment, her new husband, her quirky upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco (Dan Morrison), and life itself that we come to find is a bit at odds with Paul, a buttoned-up lawyer (Peter Crist). Just how did these two get together? Is it an opposites-attract thing? Dilworth looks like the girl-next-door type, but has a fiery sexual passion and energy that leaves sparks around the stage. Crist has a narrower bandwidth to play with, exemplified by his frequent “I have to be in court in the morning” admonitions to his bride about needing to get some sleep. But he works Paul’s reserve well, and sets up his character’s transformation at the end of the story.
Morrison as the bohemian neighbor and Sonjia Marquis as Corie’s Mother are delightful to watch interact. Morrison’s Victor has no money to speak of, yet belongs to a gourmet club that includes Prince Phillip and the Kind of Sweden, who meet every five years to cook themselves an incredible meal. And he completely sells that yarn. He is a moochy, but charming and caring man that we come to like almost immediately. Marquis’s Ethel is cautious, a bit repressed, and rather exhausted from the hikes up to the apartment, and yet she also conveys a sweet convivial randiness that lurks just below the surface, and which Morrison’s Velasco teases out. They are well-paired and have great chemistry.
This Barefoot is directed by Greg Bailey, and not artistic director Steve DeBruyne, who plays the role of a telephone repairman with two memorable scenes as one of the victims of the five flights of stairs, and who is earnestly interested in the fate of the newlyweds. As usual, DeBruyne’s comedic timing is spot on. The cohesion of the play, and the teamwork of the actors that the play requires very much shows through in Bailey’s direction. There is a little bit of a lull in the energy at the start of the play and lack of spark with the audience, but one wonders if some of them unfamiliar with the play may have been expecting a musical? –that is the frequent fare at The Dio. The lull was brief, though, and once this well-chosen cast got rolling with the first-rate Simon dialogue, all was well.
Matt Tomich’s set design does well to capture the spare apartment with the giant skylight that comes into play more than once. And somehow he McGyvered a narrow column of snow to fall through a written-in-the-script hole in the skylight with no visible signs of a device at the top of the Dio’s peak-ceiling. Well done.
The play takes place in February in New York City, and this sweet, taut, well-played comedy is extremely welcome during this Michigan February when sunshine seems as scarce as Super Bowl and Hamilton tickets.
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The Dio is a dinner theatre and this month’s fare is their signature and delicious fried chicken, pasta, salad and brussels sprouts, with ice cream for dessert.