Alarms and Excursions

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Alarms and Excursions, a new play by Michael Frayn makes its regional premiere at Boulder’s Nomad Theatre.

Frayn, who wrote Copenhagen and the wildly hysterical Noises Off, went with another wildly hysterical idea: write eight short funny scenarios on the impact modern technology thrusts upon modern life. Because everyone is caught up in the whirls, rings, and buzzers, that frequently have a mind of their own, the idea is indeed wildly funny. The script, however, doesn’t produce, and wildly funny it isn’t. If this is a new play, and it’s about modern technology, one wonders what society he writes about. Answering machines play apart. Cell phones don’t. Microwaves, oven timers, and smoke detectors have their say. Nothing mentioned about computers.

Directed by Howard Lester, who also plays one of the four cast members, the other three — Deborah Curtis, Benjamin Summers, and Karen La Moureaux, deserve a tremendous amount of credit. Zany, they are. Work hard is the understatement. Talented, no question, but they pump hard for the few laughs that trickle from the audience. This is not a laugh a minute; roll-on-the-floor show by any stretch of the imagination. It is a chuckle of recognition, with a smile of been there, done that.

Set designer Sarah Waterman has designed a remarkable creative set that can be transferred within seconds, from a dining room area, to a motel, an airline cabin, a lecture hall, and a sketch on the run all over the city.

Alarms and Excursions suffers from what so many comedy sketches suffer from. A brilliant idea knows where and how to start, but doesn’t know how to end. Consequently, the sketches go beyond the funny mark to the laborious. That’s when one becomes conscious of how hard the cast pumps the lines, and how hard they work.

In the first sketch, “Alarms,” John (Lester) and Jocasta (Curtis) have invited Nicholas (Summers) and Nancy (La Moureaux) to dinner. John can’t figure out how the wine opener works, when they hear a ching. No one can figure out where it comes from. It isn’t the wine opener. It isn’t the oven timer. It comes up with a sound all by itself. Aha, it is the smoke alarm. Everyone runs around like a chicken with their head lopped off. Jocasta repeats over and over that it must need new batteries, with everyone else being too busy to hear her. She produces a drawer filled with instructions for everything they’ve ever owned. The hysteria continues. No one stops to think. Everyone is in everyone else’s way. Nancy breaks the wine bottle still trying to open it, passes out under the table, and no one can figure out where she is. How she can be missed under the table remains a mystery. The phone constantly rings. Attempting to get her to the hospital, everyone runs in six different directions, and one makes a note of never accepting a dinner invitation from John and Jocasta.

“Glasnost” features Curtis as Lady Armament lecturing. Dressed to the hilt with a purplish-feathered hat, she becomes victim to the technician who operates her electronic prompter. For her down the nose disparaging comments, the he plays with her, slowing it down, speeding her up. The sketch is fresh and funny until the end. Lady Armament pulls put a gun, and races off the stage to go after him. With the prolific availability of gun rage in our society, why do playwrights still think it’s funny for someone outraged to pull out a gun? Once upon a time ago, it may have been funny, but today when no one knows when and where a gun will appear, the tickling of the funny bone turns to anxiety. As Lady Armament, Curtis is brilliant containing a delectable character.

Summers shines with his talent of different characters, changing his looks in an instant. La Moureaux knows comedy and understands the value of timing and pacing lines. Good as he is, Lester shows stress from acting and directing. He tries too hard.

One of the best-written sketches comes at the end involving an answering machines and constant miscommunication. The characters are wonderfully developed. In today’s times, funny as the setting is, one can’t help but wonder why they all don’t have cell phones. In that case the funny would take on a completely different upside down turn, and hopefully shorter.

All the sketches need to be tightened. Some of the most humorous moments come not from the script, but with the scene changes. The outstanding cast shows their mettle as artists, knowing how to have fun on stage.

It’s only fair to say, again, I’m hard on comedy. Would that the punch lines were sharper and cleaner. Would that Frayn devised some surprises along with his predictable humorous circumstances to move Alarms and Excursions out of the realm of smiles of recognition to honest laughter.