More Ludwig magic from Play House Company’s swashbuckling Robin Hood adventure, ‘Sherwood,’ parodies as it parries

The Cleveland Play House’s love affair with Tony Award-winning contemporary playwright Ken Ludwig continues.

After staging world-premiere productions of his “Leading Ladies” in 2004, “The Game’s Afoot” in 2011, “A Comedy of Tenors” to open its centennial season in 2015 and “Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” in 2017, the Cleveland Play House has given a home to Ludwig’s latest work in the form of the stage at the Allen Theatre at Playhouse Square.

It is easy to see the attraction. Ludwig has mastered the farce formula — the silly situations that escalate into mayhem, the witty repartee delivered at lightning speed, and the performance of highly stylized, high-energy physical funny-business. And his most recent plays, which are comical take-offs of others’ serious works, are branded with his very own name in their titles.

“Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood” was commissioned by and received its world premiere at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 2017 under the less audacious but more assertively punctuated title “Robin Hood!” Its subsequent name change is due, in part, to avoid comparisons with the many other modern retellings of the Robin Hood legend, but, of course, comparisons are inevitable. And they come up favorably.

This CPH rendition is nearly as action-packed as the 1938 film starring Errol Flynn, courtesy of stage director Adam Immerwahr. But while Flynn’s epic battles were stone-cold-serious affairs, comedy is the driving force behind everything in this production, and Immerwahr and fight choreographer J. Allen Suddeth make sure there is plenty of playfulness in the otherwise authentic and highly entertaining swordplay. Parries give way to pratfalls and death by piercing is punctuated with an expedient exit by way of a turntable built into the stage, which adds a sight gag to the antics.

This staging is just as amiable as the 1973 Disney cartoon-telling of the tale that featured anthropomorphic animals rather than people. The play is narrated by a delightfully plucky and highly animated Doug Hara, as Friar Tuck, whose endearing and immediate direct address wins over the audience and sets the tone for all that follows. Affability is also front and center in Jonah D. Winston’s and Andrea Goss’s portrayals of gentle giant Little John and the peasant girl Deorwynn, respectively.

Several actors go so far as to assume character-defining cartoonish qualities, which are aided by Jess Goldstein’s gorgeous costuming. The short-statured Steven Rattazzi is an unabashedly cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham, and Price Waldman is a marvelously self-possessed Prince John. Both are at the epicenter of running gags, with Rattazzi being a Wile E. Coyotesque magnet for the literal slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and Waldman randomly spouting Shakespeare quotes 400 years before the Bard’s birth and with a voice reminiscent of the villain Scar from “The Lion King.”

“Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood” is significantly less romantic than the 1976 film “Robin and Marian,” starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, but so much better acted than the 1991 “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” with Kevin Costner. The love affair between Robin and Marian is an 11th-hour occurrence in this play, which allows the wonderful Amy Blackman, as Maid Marian, and Zack Powell, as Robin Hood, to create more-fleshed-out characters who are guided by a conscience to help the poor, saddled with the task of undermining the evil of Sir Guy — played with relish by Josh Innerst — and moving the storyline forward.

Given the framing of this play as a farce, it is just as silly as Mel Brooks’ 1993 “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” However, whereas Brooks’ humor is Brooklynborn-loud and high-quality low comedy, Ludwig’s is suburban-Pennsylvaniasedate and subtly clever by comparison.

Inane props — a rubber frog and a plastic water lily leaf plucked from a pocket and laid on stage to establish the presence of a pond, for instance — cunningly play off of otherwise authentic and lavish production values, including scenic design by Misha Kachman that features a huge tree surrounded by two-story stone buildings with wooden walkways and stairs. Characters provide their own cinematic sound effects, like the swoosh of a blade cutting through the air, even though Nick Kourtides employs incredible surround sound design that creates the illusion of arrows flying from one side of the theater to another.

This remarkable balance of whimsy and stage worthiness define Ludwig’s work and this production of it.

ROGER MASTROIANNI Josh Innerst, left, as Sir Guy; Price Waldman, as Prince John; Andrea Goss, as Deorwynn; and Steven Rattazzi, as the Sheriff of Nottingham, perform in the Cleveland Play House’s “Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood.”