Still trying to establish its status as a professional theater company, Boca Raton Stage Guild makes a major move in that direction with the selection of Charles Busch’s boulevard comedy, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, and the casting of two South Florida veteran actresses, Patti Gardner and Barbara Sloan, in the leading roles.
In what was playwright Busch’s Broadway debut, he shelved his usual homages to movie melodramas with cross-gender roles for himself in favor of a mainstream entertainment based loosely on his well-heeled Westchester relatives.
The Boca audience should have no difficulty identifying with the title character, Marjorie Taub (animated New Yorker cartoon Gardner), an affluent Upper West Side dilettante plunged into a melancholy funk by the death of her therapist. As the play opens, she has been trying to spend her way out of her depression by redecorating her already nicely appointed co-op apartment.
The jolt that eventually does the trick, however, is Marjorie’s possibly chance meeting with her childhood friend, Lillian Greenblatt (sleek, stylish Sloan), now reinvented as globe-trotting, name-dropping Lee Green. Busy raising money for liberal causes, but not so busy that she cannot whip up exotic meals for Marjorie and her semi-retired husband, Dr. Ira Taub, Lee seems to Marjorie to be everything that is missing in her life.
Marjorie is energized by Lee, who soon worms her way into becoming an extended guest. Ira (a schlumpy Michael Beecher) hears about Lee long before he meets her, which leads to an interlude in which he is convinced that she is a figment of Marjorie’s imagination. With that possibility dismissed, much of the play’s second act revolves around Lee loosening up the Taubs with a lesson in three-way sexual enlightenment, largely offstage.
While the play has plenty of humor, director Genie Croft pushes it unnecessarily into the realm of sitcom. Sure, Marjorie’s gastrointestinally obsessed mom (Iris Acker) is a string of punch lines, but the rest of cast seems to have been encouraged to pitch their performances far broader than desirable.
Nevertheless, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife is a cut above the usual community theater fare, and so is the Stage Guild’s production.
THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST’S WIFE. By Charles Busch. Boca Raton Theatre Guild at the Willow Theatre, Sugar Sand Park, 300 S. Military Trail, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Nov. 20. Tickets: $18. Call: (561) 347-3948.