Look Back in Laughter
The storyline is a rationale for a compilation of sight gags, slapstick, sound gags and lots of running about in this frenetic frenzy of a farce with a swinging sixties sensibility.
ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS: Theater Review
Although A Noise Within’s 2025-26 season includes dramas and tragedies by August Wilson, William Shakespeare, and Arthur Miller, ANW has chosen to open its new season with a wild and crazy comedy. One Man, Two Guvnors is British bard Richard Bean’s 2011 adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters by 18th century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni. I’m guessing that this confection of frothy frivolity was selected to lighten the mood for a theater perched so close to where the recent wildfires wrought widespread devastation.
Bean has reset Goldoni’s play from Italy to the seaside village of Brighton in the mod England of the early 1960s. A four-piece skiffle band (music director Rod Bagheri is the lead vocalist who also plays acoustic guitar and keyboard) performs onstage live in this musical with some dancing (Indira Tyler is the 1960s dance consultant). The flimsy plot, which mainly seems to serve as an excuse to pile antics upon, involves the overworked titular character, Francis Henshall (Kasey Mahaffy, the lead in ANW’s weightier A Man of No Importance), who works for a couple of different employers. There are also romantic subplots, and if I understood correctly, amidst the humorous hubbub, an offstage murder has been perpetrated, too.
The storyline is a rationale for a compilation of sight gags, slapstick, sound gags and lots of running about in this frenetic frenzy of a farce with a swinging sixties sensibility. My favorite bit was Francis’ literally fighting with himself, a bit of physical comedy deftly executed by Mahaffy with panache that made me laugh my head off. The play’s tomfoolery also includes some audience interaction, which updates the aspiring actor’s playbook as to how to break into the theater. Previously, wannabe thesps may have thought the way to get onstage was to attend a Lee Strasberg or Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner or Lonny Chapman, et al, acting school or studio, get an agent and/or manager, attend cattle calls, etc.
But now there’s a much easier way to get a part onstage: Just buy a ticket for One Man, Two Guvnors, and as the raucous comedy unspools, you may get cast and become part of the action. (Although a member of the audience who purported that her name was “Christina Patterson” who was hauled onstage appears to actually be Vic Crusaos, an ANW/ELAC Fellow listed in the playbill as part of the show’s ensemble. There may be standards for truth in advertising, but apparently not for the thee-a-tah.)
In addition to Mahaffy, the other standout in this cast of 14 (that is, not including audience members impromptu recruited into the mayhem) is Paul David Story as Alan Dangle, a self-important, overly dramatic youth inspired by the period’s “Angry Young Man” plays, who seeks to become a serious thespian. Projections designer Nick Santiago enhances the set with veddy British imagery.
Although there are some references to the Mau Mau, Margaret Thatcher and the like, this bagatelle mostly eschews any John Osborne-like social commentary in favor of madcap merriment, distraction, diversion, and escapist entertainment. The opening night aud seemed to thoroughly enjoy itself, laughing throughout the two-act lunacy adroitly co-directed by ANW stalwarts Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott. As for moi, I was mildly amused by all the monkey business but am looking forward to Death of a Salesman.
A Noise Within presents on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with 2:00 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays through Sept. 28. Post-performance conversations with the artists will take place every Friday and on Sunday, Sept. 14. ANW is at 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. For info and tickets: www.anoisewithin.org; (626)356-3100. Free parking is in an adjacent garage.
