Is As Good As You’ll Find Anywhere

By Julie Stern

RIDGEFIELD — Beyond Therapy, Christopher Durang’s 1981 screwball comedy, is one of the most frequently staged works at community playhouses  across the blue states of America, and Ridgefield Theater Barn’s current production of it, directed by the Emmy Award-winning veteran Lester Colodny, is about as good a version of it as you are going to see.

Prudence and Bruce are thirty-ish Manhattan professionals — he’s a lawyer, she’s an editor — who, in the hope of finding stable romantic relationships, have resorted to classified ads. They come with baggage. She is a judgmental  perfectionist, unwilling to tolerate any sort of human fallibility. He is a bi-sexual, whose live-in male lover is getting really sulky about Bruce’s new venture.

When their first date in a trendy restaurant is an unmitigated disaster, Will Jeffries’ revolving set allows the scene to shift smoothly to the offices of their respective therapists, where by turns they pour out their frustrations, and slowly begin to recognize — as does the audience — that the two “mental health” professionals are stark raving lunatics. 

Prudence’s shrink, Dr Stuart Framingham, is a super macho would-be stud who hits on all his women patients in an attempt to cover up his own substantial sexual inadequacies. Bruce’s doctor meanwhile, Charlotte Wallace, is a ditzy flower child who seems to have a case of Tourette’s Syndrome, coupled with Attention Deficit Disorder, not to mention a serious memory impairment.

When Bruce places a second ad, designed to attract a different sort of woman, he reels in the same catch, as Prudence is hopefully looking for someone more suited to her dreams. This time the date lasts long enough to lead to further possibilities.  They make a new date for Bruce to cook dinner for the two of them at his apartment, which allows the therapists to get even wackier, and  sets up a meeting between Prudence and Bob…

Durang’s  outrageous plotting, and some excellent comic acting, keeps the audience snorting with laughter (including a real-life psychiatrist who was sitting at our table!). My personal favorites were Pam Ezquelle Hurt as Charlotte Wallace, and Aaron Kaplan as the outraged Bob. Their confrontations  in her office (where Bruce had set up an emergency visit, in order to get Bob out of the apartment during the dinner date) was truly funny.

Dana DiCerto as Prudence,  Kyle Pinto as Bruce, and Will Jeffries as the libidinous Stuart are also excellent. In a cameo as Andrew the waiter — a reform school graduate who provides a possible happy solution to the problem — David Bass acquits himself very well.

For sheer satirical comedy, well rehearsed and deftly directed, Beyond Therapy makes for a highly entertaining evening out, especially as you sit there at the table with your own picnic, watching the characters in a restaurant where the service is truly impossible.

(Performances continue weekends until October 3. Call 203-431-9850 for details.)