THEATER REVIEW : Practice Should Improve ‘Bedroom’ Timing

LONG BEACH — Farce, by definition, depends on how many doors are on stage for the characters to whiz in and out of as the action accelerates. Alan Ayckbourn, that trickster of British comedy, does it with beds in “Bedroom Farce.”

Don’t get the wrong idea. The play could almost have a G rating. The beds are only the squares where Ayckbourn keeps switching his comedic pawns in their efforts to keep Trevor and Susannah from breaking up their marriage or, at least, to get them home together in one piece.

On Long Beach Playhouse’s Mainstage, director Ashley Carr Jr. does a laudable job of staging Ayckbourn’s jigsaw puzzle on a much-too-extended setting by Steve Harvey; the bedrooms seem too far apart for comfort or for ease in comic timing.

Slightly sluggish timing is this production’s flaw, but that should even out with playing. The rhythms are right, Carr has seen to that, and a brightening of the pace is inevitable. Comedy such as Ayckbourn’s--like Coward, like Wilde--is like playing Mozart, and as tricky.

Bedroom No. 1 belongs to Trevor’s parents, Ernest (Robert Thorpe) and Delia (Corinne Williams), who worry over Trevor’s marital problems. Thorpe’s self-made success of a father and Williams’ almost patient mother are just offhand enough to bring them to life.

In bedroom No. 3, Kelly Herman and Derek Stefan are both fine as Trevor’s ex, Jan, and her husband, Nick, whose back has gone out just as his jealousy of Jan’s lingering affection for Trevor flares up.

The innocent bystanders who unknowingly throw a spanner in the works occupy bedroom No. 2. It is at their housewarming that Trevor and Susannah have their brawl. Jeff Lappin and Mary Boessow are both funny and touching as Malcolm and Kate, Lappin kinetic with frustrated double-takes and Boessow beguiling with unself-conscious physical shtick.

Ruth Perry is delightfully volatile and distracted as Susannah, but along with most of the cast could resist punctuating the gags. The only cast member who has mastered the conversational tone that gets Ayckbourn’s laughs without effort is Daniel Lee Riley as Trevor. A studiously careless response and a quick glance do the trick, and Riley knows how to use subtlety for the right effect.

* “Bedroom Farce,” Long Beach Playhouse Mainstage, 5021 Anaheim St., Long Beach. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 18. $10. (310) 494-1616. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes. Daniel Lee Riley Trevor

Ruth Perry: Susannah

Jeff Lappin: Malcolm

Mary Boessow: Kate

Derek Stefan: Nick

Kelly Herman: Jan

Corinne Williams: Delia

Robert Thorpe: Ernest

A Long Beach Playhouse production of Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy. Directed by Ashley Carr Jr. Setting: Steve Harvey. Lighting: Gary Fitch. Technical director: M. Scott Nine.