Ken Kaissar must have catalogued gags and gambits he’d seen in farces and screwball comedies because he included a slew of them in his fast, funny, and joke-crammed play, “A Leg Up,” at the Bristol Riverside Theatre through Sunday, October 9.
Better yet, nationally produced Israeli-American writer augmented the treasured and time-honored with inventions of his own, such as the eponymous leg.
The leg in question is a computerized prosthetic so sensitive to impulses from the human brain, it anticipates them and acts in ways that are different from what its wearer intends. For instance, it leaves off behaving normally, whether taking strides, shuffling to “Tea for Two,” or starts kicking randomly and wildly.
This errant leg, at least the perfecting and financing of it, provides the premise for Kaissar’s laugh-laden farce, but it is one of dozens of elements that keep it rollicking.
Kaissar — Bristol Riverside’s co-producing director and playwriting instructor at Rider University — is as adept with language as he is with comic bits, so “A Leg Up” not only trades on physical mayhem but features a barrage of wonderful jokes, word plays, and snide answers to obvious questions that harken back to the stage comedies of Kaufman and Hart or even Noel Coward and George Bernard Shaw. All of which are ably staged by director Amy Kaissar, who is married to the writer and serves as co-producing director.
True, “A Leg Up,” could use a little editing and trimming. It could also afford to lose some repetitive shtick, such as the lead character constantly confusing Ukraine with Russia (written before the latest upheaval). The good news is even if Ken Kaissar’s show needs honing and polishing here and there, it offers enough comic material to keep audiences entertained and admiring of the author’s snappy dialogue and farcical set-ups.
Adding to “A Leg Up’s” direct visual and aural delights is the playwright’s ability to include all kinds of contemporary sexual trends and present them with a witty combination of sardonic commentary and open-minded respect.
Hysteria in all of its meanings provides the context of “A Leg Up,” and both Kaissars create it with reckless, yet sure-handed, abandon: Ken devises a story with non-stop complications, where each twist and turn opens another comic possibility that Amy capitalizes on to the utmost.
A man with inherited, now completely squandered, wealth is depending on his large investment in an innovative prosthetic leg to renew his fortune. He is particularly eager to have the engineer who developed the artificial limb to eliminate its kinks (or kicks) before a demonstration of its alleged versatility to an important, influential client, a U.S. Senator who is the presumptive Republican presidential candidate in a nearing election.
While this corrective process is going on, the man is visited by his mistress who reveals she is with child, his child. As the illicit couple is figuring out what to do, the man’s equally unfaithful and not particularly loving wife returns to announce she wants to end the marriage now that she’s found lesbianism.
Sexual innuendo, dexterity, and variety abound as Kaissar introduces characters who prefer same-sex partners, go either or both ways, or are proudly and contentedly transgender.
Amid this bomber crew of sexual appetites is a maid who is swept up in a panoply of bedroom mayhem, though alternatively buoyed and appalled by, the hijinks of her philandering, penniless, conniving employer and his seemingly nymphomaniac wife. What farce, after all, can thrive without a maid in its center?
Amy orchestrates all of her husband’s ideas with masterful aplomb. She builds chaos as if it is an evolving, uncontrollable wave, starting with the basics then billowing into pandemonium. One scene, available as a promotional video, shows the cast in hectic frenzy. The maid, once a dancer who worked with Baryshnikov, ends this escalating sequence by pirouetting to position then executing a perfect split.
Amy has turned disorder into art by staging pandemonium so tightly. Unlike in current films that contain busy battle scenes in which nothing specific is discerned, Amy makes everything look out of hand but directs your eye to various characters so that you get to savor each character in his or her state of passion or anger or emotion that requires physical expression.
Both Kaissars are deft at keeping matters funny and in perspective while avoiding anything that could be construed as offensive, even by modern standards. It is because they handle all with abundant humor that provides the overall tone for their production.
Ken’s story is clear, and Amy’s direction gives all of “A Leg Up’s” facets the chance to be appreciated and savored.
The production is smooth, fleet, and always with some gambit in play. The cast is adept at handling all of the maneuvers required of them, but some stand out while others proceed comfortably.
The two best performances contrast elegantly, one being large, varied, and angst-ridden, the other being cool, matter-of-fact, and natural.
Jennifer Byrne is a literal whirlwind as Sally, the Ukrainian maid, as she whisks up and down stairs fulfilling her warring employers’ bidding, some of which involves carrying a variety of drinks and victuals, some of which open Sally to new levels of depravity that offend her religious soul but awaken her libidinous instincts.
Byrne is a master at portraying someone who is bent on doing her duty as an employee while having to react to a series of demands that tax her propriety and cause her to act out, comically of course.
Big and exhausting as Byrne’s extraordinary performance is, Marla Alpert plays a transgender businessperson, Stephanie, with quieter but equally effective aplomb.
Alpert is the picture of a smart person with a purpose and no time to explain who they are or inclination to do so. Stephanie keeps tasks at hand in front of her, and Alpert admirably resists doing anything but acting as her character would in this given situation, male or female, transgender or not.
James Joseph O’Neill is perfectly Cowardian as the patrician depending on a windfall from the artificial leg to restore his claim to the high life he leads. Joe Siciliano aces all aspects of a role that casts him as the model demonstrating the prosthesis while being in love with two of the women on hand.
Joe Hogan turns his head towards the front of the stage and flashes a smile every time someone mentions his character’s presidential ambitions. Brittney Lee Hamilton goes from needy to shrewd as the impregnated mistress. David S. Robbins has an ironic way with Kaissar’s lines and obviously delights in being more than his characters originally seems. Liz Maurer exudes satisfied fecklessness and sexual desire as the wife whose money motivates a lot of the plot and the characters’ plotting.
Jason Simm’s set is gorgeous. You want to move into it at first sight. Linda Bee Stockton’s costumes are perfect in style and taste for the characters she’s dressing. Minjoo Kim’s lighting dims and brightens in its own brand of commentary. Michael Kiley’s sound design is fine, although some of O’Neill’s early dialogue is swallowed when he speaks from a high, upstage right bedroom.
A Leg Up, Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe Street, Bristol, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, October 9, Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 2 p.m., and Sunday, 3 p.m. $45 to $56. 215-785-0100 or BRT’s website at brtstage.org.
