What happens when a housewife leaves her kids with her mother and goes to a local hotel wearing only a pair of black, strappy high heels and a black mink coat? In Stuart Wolpert's hilarious comedy "The Marrieds," at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center, she gets to know her neighbors--and not in the biblical sense.
A middle-aged couple, Alan (Kurt Fuller) and Susan (Alison Martin) Nederman, escape the burden of their daily worries at a local hotel. But when the newlywed couple next door, Joe (Geoffrey Lower) and Jane (Mary Page Keller) Fuller, get noisy enough to interfere with Alan's sexual concentration, Alan complains to the management. Joe comes over to apologize, and with this "cute-meet," the couples form a friendship that will cover a decade's worth of tribulations.
Wolpert filled this sweet comedy with snappy zingers and hopeful sentiments about marriage and monogamy, proving that functional families can be funny and marriage doesn't kill the libido. The Nedermans and Fullers both raise children and face marital crises that we learn about in six snippets of life that have an episodic, slightly sitcom feel. But there's no need for canned laughter.
The children are only an offstage presence--talked about but not heard and seen only in passing (as dolls). Wolpert centers this comedic whirl on the lovable, egocentric Alan, who too often frankly states his feelings. With bulging eyes and a rapid-fire rant, Fuller gives Alan a slight touch of obnoxious smarminess that is offset by good intentions.
