BARBRA’S WEDDING


Nick Bredosky and Kaylin Zeren deliver the comedic goods in a savvily gender-swapped take on Daniel Stern’s married-couples comedy Barbra’s Wedding, now halfway through its two-Fridays-only run at LA Connection Comedy Improv Theatre.

It’s July 1, 1998, and Barbra Streisand is marrying James Brolin under sunny skies at her massive Malibu estate, which is why paparazzi are crowding the ritzy surrounding neighborhood and helicopters are circling noisily above.

And as Stern originally wrote it back in 2003, onetime sitcom costar (and currently out-of-work actor) Jerry Schiff and his library employee wife Molly are having to put up with the hubbub and the racket in what is probably the only “modest” home in the vicinity.

Hilarity quickly ensues as Jerry rants and raves about both the unwanted intrusion and a career gone nowhere since his days as “the neighbor” the once popular “Everything’s Peachy,” and his wife frets about the consistency of the Coulibiac (“It’s a hot fish pie!”) she currently preparing for lunch.

And that’s only the start of the hilarious one-act comedy I got to see performed by the movie star-playwright and Crystal Bernard (of TV’s “Wings”) at the Falcon Theatre in September of 2005.

Fast forward nineteen years and the gender stereotypes it featured (neurotic, self-centered husband and level-headed, peace-making wife) now seem, if not entirely dated, well at least a bit too seen-that done-that for 2024.

Hence the gender swapping that makes a whole new play out of the one I saw way back in the mid 2000s as Jerry (the spelling remains the same though not the sex of the fading-career-obsessed actor) and her Coulibiac-cooking husband Morris (Mo) deal with the same marital and career issues their predecessors faced, but in a decidedly fresh new way.

It’s hilarious to hear Jerry (or Gerri as I kept picturing her name being spelled) complain about not being invited to the wedding when someone like TV’s Tim Conway made the guest list (“Did James Brolin ever do the Carol Burnett show?”) or the 3-mile-run she wasn’t able to stretch for because of the TV crews camped on and around their front lawn.

And it’s just as funny to see Mo trying to talk his wife out of her craziness the way Molly did to Jerry in the original, things like not paying the men doing construction work on Drew Barrymore’s neighboring home to refrain from building one or twice a week “for total peace and quiet” or not claiming to have “done” a picture with a particularly famous Hollywood A-lister just because you happened to have been standing next to him in a photo published years ago in People magazine.

All of this adds up to a production that that feels fresh and new, especially as directed with razor-sharpness by Kara Royster and performed by the fabulous-times-two Zeren and Bredosky.

Zeren (think a young Sandra Bullock) and Bredosky (think Chris Pratt circa Jurassic World) are comedic gold as the young marrieds, the former growing increasingly more manic as the latter begins to have had enough of her frustrated ego.

And although the Falcon production ran an intermissionless 75 minutes, director Royster’s decision to insert an intermission after one character’s particularly dramatic exit makes sense given the tonal shift from multi-camera sitcom-mode to a less laugh-oriented single-camera style in Act Two that allows Zeren and Bredosky to transition to touching effect from out-and-out comedy to a more “dramedic” mode.

In addition to directing, Royster wears multiple hats as scenic, props, and costume designer (all are a-okay given the production’s budget limitations and the need to strike the set to make room for the following evening’s programming) while sound designers Huck Walton and Austin Farmer provide occasional effects.

Zener and Bredosky are executive producers. Shelley Regner is co-producer, ticketmaster, and personal shopper.

I’ve been hoping to see another production of Barbra’s Wedding since first enjoying it at the Falcon Theatre so many years ago, a wish that has finally been granted, albeit in a way I’d never have expected. The gender-swap works to perfection as does this terrifically directed and performed production.

LA Connection Comedy Improv Theatre, 3435 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank.

–Steven Stanley
November 1, 2024

 

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