Run to Run For Your Wife

 

Joshua Nicholson and Maria Silverman in Run For Your Wife (photo by Bella Muccari)

This is an off, off Broadway gem that will chase away the winter blahs for an evening and maybe even the whole week because you'll keep laughing about it that long. Don't let that second off mislead you,  Run For Your Wife is a top notch production with some seriously talented comic actors. Written in 1983 by Ray Cooney and playing at The Gallery Players Theater on 14th Street in Brooklyn, it's the story of a London cabby who happens to have two wives, and the lengths he'll go to stop them finding out about each other. The single set, cleverly designed to be two apartments in one (one for each wife,) suggests London's go go days in the 1960s or 70s, a style that is also borne out by some

of the groovy costuming. The show's very talented cast-members run through their lines with the impeccable timing that farce requires, in the process creating hugely funny and memorable characters. While the jokes are funny and suit the situation, so can be a little obvious, it is the misunderstanding and broad confusion on the stage that makes this play so hilarious. The plot keeps you guessing how the lead will get out of this one, a task made more difficult by the help of the layabout bum from upstairs and the arrival of rival police inspectors. Excellent performances by the credulous wives and a bit of a mess made by another neighbor, keeps the doors slamming and the story churning. It all makes for a great evening of theater.

It's a short ride on the R train out to the theater. Run for Your Wife closes on February 1st, so you better hurry. You will not regret it.

Manhattan Painted Cobalt

                                                                                                                                    Photo by Katherine Sharp ©

A friend sent along a photo she took recently on Central Park South at the end of a cold January day. It seems to just capture the moment when the city passes through the earth's penumbra before the full onset of night. Except for the presence of the brightly lit Bloomberg tower, it evokes Manhattan in the 1970s with its oily sheen and silhouetted skyline. Back then, this spot was the intersection of fashionable and dangerous. Central Park South was fashionable to live on then. Now, it is not. Central Park at night was scary. Now it feels quite safe.

This corner of the city still has the ability to capture the imagination. It has always attracted a slick crowd and now it seems to have been taken over by foreigners. Taller and taller buildings financed by sovereign wealth are going up here and people coming from somewhere else are moving into them. The hair styles, clothing, body types are all different from what you see elsewhere in the city. It's all serious eyed, well dressed men with short cropped hair and black cars so you can't tell if they are bodyguards to the oligarchs upstairs, or just gay. In the 1970s it was taxi cabs and wavy-haired Midwestern hustlers like Midnight Cowboy, and executives wives and blond divorcées from the coast. The same skinny women promenade past the buildings now, updated in French twin sets and hailing taxis in their matching shoes as they check the hotel and restaurant windows to see who's inside.They pass in ones and twos, always on the building side of the street, never along the park. You never know if they are the real deal or just hangers on. Or prostitutes. For someone who is not impressed by all the dubious money and style that has flooded this place, it creates anxiety about income inequality. My own, in particular. How much better I could spend it.