Perfect Arrangement
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Cititour.com Review
Imagine if Lucy was actually sleeping with Ethel, and Ricky and Fred were lovers. That indelible image might flash through your mind a few minutes into Topher Payne’s incredibly smart , funny, and remarkably topical 1950-set comedy “Perfect Arrangement,” which is now being presented by Primary Stages at the Duke at 42nd Street under Michael Barakiva’s excellent direction. What initially looks like an episode of something like “I Love Lucy,” as six beautifully dressed folks trade quips and drink cocktails at a swanky Georgetown apartment (dreamy set by Neil Patel, gorgeous costumes by Jennifer Caprio), soon develops into a very different picture.
State Department personnel man Bob Martindale (the seemingly upright Robert Eli) and his well-coiffed wife Millie (Mikaela Feely-Lehman) are entertaining their best friends, Bob’s snappy secretary Norma Baxter (a superb Julia Coffey) and her schoolteacher husband Jim (the adorable Christopher J. Hanke), along with Bob and Margo’s straight-arrow boss Theodore Sunderson (Kevin O’Rourke, perfectly cast) and his ditzy society wife Kitty (the consistently scene-stealing Jennifer Van Dyck). But there’s more than canapes and cocktails on the menu, as Sunderson explains Bob and Norma’s new assignment – to rid the department of all deviants.
And therein lies the problem: the room is crawling with homosexuals. Bob and Jim are lovers, who live next door (reached through the closet, no less), as are Millie and Norma. Bob somehow thinks this “perfect arrangement” can continue unscathed, even as he and Norma could become targets of their own investigation. Naturally, reality proves far more complicated – especially when it turns out that sexually promiscuous State Department employee Barbara Grant (a divine Kelly McAndrew) will do whatever it takes, and tell whatever she knows, to get off Bob’s hit list.
Payne not only writes clever yet realistic dialogue, but it’s a real joy to watch how his four main characters add depth and dimension as the evening progresses. Even Kitty proves more substantial than she appears, and Barbara is far more than the man-trap we’ve been fooled into believing she is! As the couples are forced to contemplate their identities, sexual and otherwise, as well as what they will (and won’t) give up to keep their arrangement in place, we each begin to question our own value system. (Okay, so I felt the same way watching Robert Redford and Demi Moore in “Indecent Proposal.” And no, I’m not telling you my price!)
The end result is at once surprising and inevitable. Isn’t that just perfect?
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://primarystages.org/shows/current-season/perfect-arrangement
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/15/2015
Closing 11/6/2015
Theatre Info
The Duke on 42nd Street
229 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
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