Those Were The Pre-Hashtag Good Old Days

Sharon Playhouse has entered a time warp with its second main production of the summer, “Barefoot in the Park.” Neil Simon’s smash comedy from 1963 has not aged well. Yes, the wisecracks and one-liners are still there; the dialogue that can often crackle if delivered like handballs, fast and hard; the once amusing situations long past their sell date. But in the time of #MeToo, of independent women rising everywhere like glorious spring flowers, the play recalls a time when a woman’s role was  defined in the pages of Good Housekeeping.

Not Corie Bratter (Rebecca Tucker). Six days wed to lawyer Paul Bratter (Craig Bryant Belwood), she has found their first apartment on the fifth floor of a New York City brownstone, a tiny studio with no bathtub, a skylight with a hole in it and a separate bedroom just big enough for a “large single bed” in which she thinks the couple will sleep cozily. Corie is an unconventional type young woman, or thinks she is, who wants her new husband to join her in their new home —  she chose it without showing it to Paul — loosen up and run “barefoot through the park” in the deep cold of winter.

Corie’s character is written in the tradition of those cinematic women of 1930s films who drank life to the lees, logical in their illogical behavior, who taught men to cut loose and enjoy the fun. Yet she is no feminist revolutionary: her first goal is to make her lawyer husband a happy home, even if her idea of fun is to get drunk, ring the neighbors’ doorbells and sample strange food. Happily the proceedings are enlivened by the Bratters’ upstairs neighbor — yes, that’s the roof — Victor Velasco (Rex Smith) and Corie’s mother, Mrs. Banks (Susan Cella), both of whom remind you of what fine character acting can be.

 Smith looks splendid at 62 and fills the stage with electric energy. Cella as a recent widow who sleeps every night on a wooden board, is wonderful. Both have the timing that make Simon’s zingers crackle, and together — you knew this would happen — they make a charming couple. The same cannot be said for Tucker and Belwood (their roles were played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford in the 1963 Broadway production.) Only in their second act fight scene do they seem a believable couple, stomping and stalking around the stage.

Besides Smith and Cella, the most engaged performer on stage is local: John Champion of Sharon. In the three times his telephone repairman appears, for a total of perhaps 10 minutes, he is engaged, reactive, compelling. Just watch him observe the feuding couple’s behavior toward each other:  His head and eyes move back and forth as if he is watching a badminton match, his body twitches nervously as he wants to repair the line Paul tore out of the wall and get out.

 Clayton Phillips has directed competently but routinely. Perhaps he has pulled all he can out of this comedic warhorse. The audience laughed and enjoyed themselves. I, curmudgeon that I am, did not. I am not sure why the Playhouse’s excellent new artistic and management team chose to present a straight play, but for my money they should stick to musicals.

“Barefoot in the Park” runs at Sharon Playhouse through Aug. 12.