The curtain is about to go up on new production at Hudson Village Theatre: Wife Begins at Forty, a play that looks at the misadventures of a long-married couple.
You’ve been married for a good spell and your get up and go has finally got up and left.
You’d prefer to snooze than to samba, and thoughts of staying out past midnight give you the shakes. What to do?
The play Wife Begins at Forty deals with the misadventures of long-married couple George and Linda as they try to spice things up.
Hudson Village Theatre presents the British comedy, beginning July 9.
The play has comedy pedigree, written by humour veterans Earl Barret (Bewitched, Get Smart, Bob Newhart), Ray Cooney (a prolific playwright who starred in the 1988 BBC television adaptation of the play) and Arne Sultan (See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Too Close for Comfort).
Glen Bowser, who directs the HVT version, comes to the play from a place of knowledge.
The twice-married, now single stage and screen actor laughed out loud when he read the script.
“You know it’s good writing when you laugh out loud,” Bowser said during a telephone interview from his home where he was convalescing following an operation for a detached retina in his right eye.
George (played by Matt Holland) and Linda (Tara Bissett) have been married for 17 years and no amount of dressing up in super- hero costumes seems to get the juices flowing any more.
George is perfectly happy with the situation, but Linda is jumping out of her skin with frustration that the passion is gone.
“I actually lived a similar scen- ario to George,” Bowser said. “You think it’s all good, but it isn’t. I didn’t even know she was unhappy.”
In George’s opinion, his life is as it should be. He has a wonderful wife and son. The carpet is new and so are the drapes. Why rock the boat?
“It’s that Venus and Mars thing with men and women,” Bowser said. “The guy’s approach is very logical. If something goes wrong, his reaction is to fix it. The woman takes a more emotional path.”
Not to ruin the punchline, but George takes some questionable advice from his skirt-chasing neighbour Roger (Guido Cocomello) about how to fix his flaccid relationship.
“It’s a play with heart,” Bowser said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
The cast is rounded out by Roger’s long-suffering wife Betty (Eleanor Noble), George’s father Bernard (played by Peter Williamson), teenage son Leonard (Austin J. Beauchamp) and family Yorkshire Terrier Pudding.
Pudding, in real life, is trained to run obstacle courses. Bowser watched her in rehearsal and was impressed with her ability to follow cues, so isn’t too concerned about breaking the cardinal rule of not working with animals in theatre.
“What happens, happens,” he said. “The actors will adapt.”