'The Underpants,' by Steve Martin

A trouser-dropper if there ever was one

By Mark Langton
IJ Correspondent

Only Steve Martin could take a joke about a pair of underpants and extend it into a lively evening of German expressionist theater. Indeed, Martin has stretched his gifts over the years far beyond what anyone would have first imagined from the wild and crazy guy who first hit the comedy scene with a banjo and an arrow through his head. By now, his work as a standup comic, TV sketch comedian, actor, screenwriter, essayist, playwright and novelist have all received serious critical attention, and it is now a well-known fact that Martin’s approach to comedy is as serious as a heart attack .

And yet his latest venture as a playwright, an adaptation of a German farce from 1910, ''The Underpants'' by Carl Sternheim, almost passes as a low-brow sex farce -- if not for the knowing wink of Martin’s piercing intelligence peppered throughout the play.

And under the feverish, stylized direction of Robert Currier, its bawdy, over-the-top Ross Valley Players interpretation, which opened Friday at the Barn Theater in Ross, bears a strong resemblance to old comic melodramas, with its severely made-up actors and cartoonish acting style. There are also suggestions of Sardou’s 1880s comedies in the “well-made play” vein, with their tight plotting, snappy contrived entrances and exits and lurking secrets and reversals. There are even intimations of Eugene Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd, with its profound non sequitors (as with the play’s opening line: “This is not happening!”) and deft wordplay (as when a “nitwit” is accused of “not having a nit to knit wit’”). The only complaint might be that visiting director Currier, well known for often having outrageous fun with Shakespeare as co-founder and Artistic Director of the Marin Shakespeare Company, neglected to take it even farther.

'”The Underpants” is the story of Louise Maske (Michelle Pava Mills), a petty bureaucrat's pretty but neglected young wife who was attending the king's parade when her bloomers unaccountably slipped to her ankles when she stepped up on her toes to wave. We open on to a domestic squabble; played out on Bruce Lackovic’s Old World Bavarian set design, beautifully lit by Les Lizama. The event has caused Theo, her sputtering boor of a husband (Kurt Gundersen), to get his knickers in a twist. Already unnerved by his wife's beauty -- ''You are much too attractive for a man in my position'' -- he is petrified not only of scandal but that his wife’s moment of indiscretion might lead to a demotion in his civil servant job. “Don’t underestimate the power of a glimpse of lingerie!” he moans.

Theo’s concerns are not unfounded. With the sudden appearance of two new boarders, the buffoonish poet Frank Versati (Matthew Boucher) and the hypochondriacal barber Benjamin Cohen (Philip Goleman), it becomes apparent that her wayward underpants were not only seen, they have made Louise famous – and much lusted after. The lascivious attentions of new housemates Versati and Cohen awaken Louise to her buried desires, which are additionally fanned by Gertrude (Maureen O’Donoghue), a voyeuristic busybody who lives upstairs. The late introduction of another ardent fan of Louise, the mysterious scientist Klinglehoff (Mark Shepard) adds another layer to the silliness, as he appears to be suffering from Tourrettes.

In all, the cast is very good. As Theo, Kurt Gundersen’s Prussian apoplexy is reminiscent of actor Larry Miller (who some might remember as the fawning salesperson in “Pretty Woman”), and serves as a suitable arch-villain. Michelle Pava Mills, as Louise, carries herself with sexy aplomb, managing to update the role by conveying the reawakening of Louise as a transition from repressed German hausfrau to (almost) a proto-feminist heroine. It would have been interesting to see her do more with that -- there are only so many laughs to be had with wide eyes and a clownish, open-mouthed “O” – but such are the pitfalls of a stylized interpretation.

Matthew Boucher, as Versati, the unbearably self-absorbed poet who can't quite consummate his seduction of Louise except with bad poetry (When Louise says “Take me!” Versati replies, “Yes, I will take you – and transform you into words!”), is flamboyantly, preposterously ardent, his body movements as fluid (and as ridiculous) as his cape. Boucher seems to be more in his element, though, when he makes his late entrance as the King, playing with dialect to great comic effect, almost as if the actor requires the character’s thicker disguise to cut loose.

Boucher is almost upstaged by Philip Goleman as Cohen ("...that's Cohen with a 'K'," he points out, in an obvious send-up of anti-Semitism), the irritating, self-pitying barber, who approaches his farcical role, almost incongruously, as slapstick, pulling out all the stops. Giving Cohen OCD is an inspired comic touch by director Currier, found nowhere in the script, which both actor and director mine for gold. This could be forgiven, and better enjoyed, if he did not appear to suffer from the Jerry Seinfeld Disease -- the inability to keep a straight face at inappropriate times. Both of these young actors, in fact, along with showing tremendous comic promise, also show their inexperience by being too self-aware.

On its own, underpants with a mind of their own is a very “early-Martinesque” idea. But Martin’s aspirations appear to be higher than potty humor these days, going more in the direction of a kind of literary slapstick. It’s a great idea. Risque in an Old World European sort of way, sometimes operating at wiener-joke level, a “trouser dropper” (bedroom farce) if ever there was one, “The Underpants” is worth seeing. Worthy of the guilty pleasure of a peek.

Marin Independent Journal, June, 2007
Photo by Ron Severdia