‘The World Needs a Laugh Right Now’

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PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Ruffolo

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre opens its 45th season with Unnecessary Farce. Paul Slade Smith’s take on the classic bedroom farce is so extreme it approaches profundity. Just reading the script is exhausting because of the non-stop action described in the stage directions. We see two adjoining motel rooms. The wall between them is invisible, but the doors that connect the rooms—locked or not—are real. Each room also has a bathroom door, closet door and hallway door. All eight doors are in almost constant use to astonishing comic effect.

Director Ryan Schabach opens his director’s script and shows me pages filled with notes and highlighting. “This took me 14 hours,” he said. “I highlighted what the playwright gives us for doors, but then I had to figure out why each door is open or closed and why a character would choose to leave that door that way at that time.

“In traditional farce, it’s six doors,” he continues. But the playwright decided to “challenge everything” and make it eight. “Two extra doors, right? It’s math!” Schabach adds. “Two doors times the infinity of more than two hours of characters who run, not walk, in and out—two doors per minute, so two times eight, times eight actors, times 30 seconds going in and out… The minute we pace it for ‘I just need one breath,’ someone will open a door that you’re not expecting. Our combat director just spent 30 minutes of rehearsal with two actors’ bodies in space doing something that lasts half a second on stage.”

The plot is just as wild as the stage directions and starts with a sting operation. The mayor of a mid-size city—Sheboygan, Wis., in this production—is suspected of financial shenanigans. An accountant and two young cops with a video camera are assigned to get the goods on him, but nothing is as it seems. “What’s so exciting about farce,” Schabach says, “is that audiences at a certain point feel like they’re one step ahead of the game, but then, at the big reveal, it’s… ‘whoa!’” Schabach grew up in Hilbert, just outside Sheboygan. “The best farces I’ve ever seen are rooted in reality somewhere,” he explains. “Why not root this in a place I’m super-familiar with?”

The lengthy story Schabach tells of his journey from astronaut school to UW-Parkside’s graduate theatre program is funny and endearing. He moved to Milwaukee 10 years ago for a long-sought internship at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Most of his directing jobs thus far have been for theaters in Houston and Austin, Texas, to which his wife, Kay—also a professional actor—introduced him years ago. This Chamber Theatre directing job is a good next step for him. Artistic director Michael Wright is serving as his mentor.

Something to ‘Make Them Laugh Their Asses Off’

This will be Wright’s 15th and final season at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. I ask him why he chose to open with this play. “We need to laugh right now,” he answers. “The world needs to laugh. I need to laugh. Part of it was to find something for Ryan to direct, and part of it was to offer my audiences something that would really make them laugh their asses off. I think it’s really accessible to everyone. It’s incredible fun, and it doesn’t play to the lowest common denominator. It’s a really smart and surprising comedy, and I think it works well in the Cabot Theatre. It just fills that stage.”

Wright’s life partner, Ray Jivoff, has just finished his final season with Skylight Music Theatre. The two have plans to move to Door County and continue their creative work. Neither is originally from Wisconsin. “Ray asked me what I’m celebrating with this play,” Wright says. “I said I’m celebrating Wisconsin. That’s partly why we wanted to put it in Sheboygan. We both love life in Wisconsin, and I’m celebrating all that’s sweet and all that’s silly about farce.”

Rule-breaking is the essence of farce, the definition of the genre. It may be physical rules, language rules, social rules, sexual rules, playwriting rules. Farce flies around the edges of catastrophe.

“Oh my God, I love this play!” Wright continues. “Pieces like this scare me in choosing them because of that whole idea of not wanting to do only popular fare, to make money. I truly believe in this piece. It’s heart-warming and belly-laugh funny. It’s also night and day with the next play we’re doing. I always think of a season in terms of a balanced meal.”

Schabach added: “This is Michael’s last season. He doesn’t know what to say except it’s a celebration, and he’s looking forward to that beautiful place in Door County. But he’s created this meal for artists that might not otherwise have had a chance in Milwaukee. I’m here because of Michael. He’s letting us celebrate.”

Performances of Unnecessary Farce take place Aug. 9-25 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Cabot Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, call 414-291-7800 or visit milwaukeechambertheatre.com.