ENGLISH JEWEL
1773 play ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ inspired modern comedians
The play that launched comedic giants like the Marx Brothers and Monty Python opens tonight at the VSA North Fourth Art Center.
West End Productions is opening its inaugural season with “She Stoops to Conquer,” with weekend performances through March 12.
A 1773 comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, the play sizzles with a convoluted plot rife with mistaken identities, rustic rubes, endless misunderstandings and a barmaid who isn’t who she appears to be, pitting country manners against city snobbery.
“It’s one of the jewels of English Restoration comedies,” director Joe Feldman said.
The action occurs in the dilapidated country home of the Hardcastles. Mr. Hardcastle has invited two aristocratic young men to visit in the hopes that one will marry his daughter Kate. But his mischievous stepson Tony has intervened, convincing them the home is an inn. They arrive and proceed to treat the family members like servants.
“Everybody gets all mixed up, but in the end love conquers all,” Feldman said.
Its mix of farce, cheek and innuendo stakes a meaningful claim as a forerunner of Groucho, Jerry Seinfeld and innumerable TV sitcoms, he said.
“When you watch a Marx Brothers film like ‘Duck Soup’ or ‘A Night at the Opera,’ or Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian,’ they’re very farcical,” Feldman said. “It’s sort of nonstop humor. When you see Groucho hunched over, wiggling his eyebrows, it really owes a great debt to people like Goldsmith.”
Feldman’s wife, Colleen McClure, recently founded West End Productions to focus on the work of playwrights from the British Isles. McClure was born and raised in Britain.
“There is quite a large British ex-pat British community here,” Feldman said, “and they’re part of the theater community.”
Between four and five of the play’s cast members are British, he added.
“We don’t have to do a whole lot of dialect work.”
The play stars Neil Faulconbridge (Mr. Harcastle); Colleen McClure (Mrs. Hardcastle); Tim Riley (Charles Marlow); Jessica Osbourne (Kate), Tim Crofton (Tony Lumpkin); Blake Magnusson (George Hastings) and Bridget S. Dunne ( Constance).
West End Productions will stage “Educating Rita” on May 5 and “Abigail’s Party” on Sept. 22.