REVIEW: ‘Cash on Delivery’ pays off in laughter

AMANA - The Old Creamery Theatre has yet another slam-bang, slap-happy farce on its boards with 'Cash on Delivery.”

The 10- member ensemble is well-cast and races through the script at top speed to the play's ridiculously tidy solution. The production is a revival of an Old Creamery hit from 1998. It opened Thursday afternoon (9/4/14) and runs through Sept. 28.

This team knows where the laughs are and heads for them without apology. The wild and crazy gang of actors are fun to spend a couple of hours with, and they play together quite well. The show moves along effortlessly, as the mistaken identities pile up ad infinitum. A script like this - light and slight and never subtle - must be played quickly. The audience must never be allowed to catch up, let alone get ahead of, the action.

Sean McCall, the theater's artistic director, plays pivotal character Eric, a master manipulator of the welfare system of the City of Chicago (although it feels more like the British welfare state).

Eric makes very good money for two years by false declarations of birth, death, criminal injury, unemployment, disability and relocation. Each claim gains him another check, to the point where he is making $96,000 a year. It is the unraveling of his desperate deception - he does not tell his wife that he has lost his job - that the comedy builds upon.

McCall is a master of his craft, and his comic handiwork with Mike Long is blissfully silly. They are terrific together.

Another stalwart performer is Jackie McCall, Sean's wife in real life and in the play. She is rock solid, and is the foil for much of the play's deteriorating complexities. She is her husband's 'straight man.”

A special appreciation goes to Marquetta Senters, whose bosom is the object of the play's final scene. She is remarkably good-natured about the jokes concerning her stature. The tradition of this kind of farce, rooted in the Italian Renaissance Commedia dell'Arte tradition, is usually bawdy. During Thursday's opening matinee, the women in the audience were busting a gut.

The performance is raunchy at times, but never in bad taste. One older gentleman, leaving the theater in his wheelchair, told the cast: 'Pretty wild show.” He was beaming from ear to ear. I always appreciate the cast greeting the audience at the end of the show at the Old Creamery: very friendly, very down home. It solidifies a good time.

I expect 'Cash on Delivery” will deliver its payoff with yet more proficiency during its four-week run. As the performance tightens, the

interplay between the actors will become even more infectious. The helter-skelter, headlong flow of the action will fly past.

Such celebration of life's inanities is always welcome. As is the celebration of the art of laughter.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: 'Cash on Delivery”

WHERE: Old Creamery Theatre, 39 38th Ave., Amana

WHEN: Through Sept. 28; 2 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday

TICKETS: $28 adults and $18.50 students, Old Creamery Box Office, (319) 622-6262 or Oldcreamery.com