UNNECESSARY FARCE
by Paul Slade Smith
April 26 to May 18, 2019
Director: Katherine Bignell-Jones
Producer: Julie Rush
Photos by Thomas Kowal and Jennifer Monteith
Click on the ticket below to find out how to buy one (& for show dates.)
OUR TALENTED CAST (click on composite photo to see more)
“Jeff Burke’s portrayal of the mild-mannered mayor … is a charmer especially when he thinks he is watching hotel porn.”
“Mr. Mackey and Ms. Jordan display a sound sense of split-second timing to hook our interest”
“Ms. Shue … gallantly attained the necessary frenetic pacing.”
“Michael Vidde is comically and completely natural as the bad guy Scottish villain”
“As special service agent Frank … Duane Taylor admirably heightens the comic tension”
“Director Katherine Bignell-Jones direction is solid. Her vision of controlled buffoonery, physicality and split-second timing is strongly evident.”
~ Reviewer Joe Szekeres [full review HERE]
About the play….
Two cops, three crooks, eight doors, no waiting…. Unnecessary Farce is an award-winning stage comedy that combines all the elements of classic farce with a contemporary plot.
In an economy motel room, an embezzling mayor is supposed to meet with his female accountant. In the room next door, two undercover cops are supposed to catch the meeting on videotape. But there’s some confusion as to who’s in which room, who’s watching the video, who’s taken the money, who’s hired a hit man, and why the accountant keeps taking off her clothes.
Unnecessary Farce received its premiere at the BoarsHead Theater in Lansing, Michigan on October 27, 2006, and has had over 240 productions to date – throughout the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland (in a Swiss German translation), Iceland (in Icelandic) and Canada (in both English and French)
“Dazzlingly funny. Can a playwright re-invent the comic shtick of in-one-door, innuendo, out-the-other-door? In the case of Unnecessary Farce, the answer is yes.”
~ City Pulse (Lansing, Michigan)
“Like the farceurs of old, he relies on character, rather than contrivance, to drive his increasingly frenzied, unrelentingly funny plot.”
~ Boston Globe
About Paul Slade Smith, the playwright….
Smith is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn, New York. As an actor, Paul has appeared in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, My Fair Lady, and Finding Neverland on Broadway, and national tours of Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera, and productions at American Repertory Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, The Goodman, Steppenwolf and Theatre Under the Stars.
His latest play The Outsider, opened just outside New York City in early 2018, described by one reviewer as “an insightful, witty satire about modern American politics. Funny, timely, and – dare we say – entirely possible.
“Farce, to me” says Smith, “is the purest form of comedy. It’s for people who like their comedies to never stop being comedic. It’s such an important part of theatrical tradition.”
About Katherine Bignell-Jones, the director…
There’s nothing Katherine likes directing more than a good fast-paced, door-slamming, witty farce. This will be the fourth consecutive season that Katherine has directed a play for Village Players’ audiences – following last year’s slapstick-in-rhyme The Liar, 2016-17 season opener Les Belles Soeurs, and the 2015-16 season finale Fox on the Fairway! In 2016, she also directed God of Carnage in the Toronto Fringe and Nana’s Naughty Knickers for Theatre Etobicoke. Other selected plays she has directed are Terror By Gaslight (Kanaidjun Entertainment), Killcreek (Bojit Productions), Bedfull of Foreigners, Too Many Cooks and Who’s Under Where? (Theatre Etobicoke), and Final Curtain (LaSalle Players).
Village Players 