The Swinging Sixties have rarely if ever swung as wildly and wackily as they do in the physical-comedy-packed screwball funfest that is the West End-to-Broadway smash One Man, Two Guvnors, A Noise Within’s couldn’t-be-more-fabulous 2025-2026 season opener.

 Transposing Carlo Goldoni’s Italian commedia dell’arte farce Servant Of Two Masters from its 1746 time frame to 1963, playwright Richard Bean takes us to the English seaside resort of Brighton where Goldoni’s characters have become The Crays-style British gangsters and underscores the hilarity with an onstage early-’60s-style boy band, all the while maintaining one commedia trademark after another throughout.

 Goldoni’s Truffaldino has become Bean’s Francis Henshall (Kasey Mahaffy), who like his 1740s Italian counterpart wants just one thing at the moment—a meal—and will do anything to get it, even if it means working for two masters (or two “guvnors,” as ‘60s Brits would put it).

Guvnor Number One is tough guy Roscoe Crabbe, or rather Roscoe’s twin sister Rachel (Christie Coran) disguised as her recently offed sibling in hopes of collecting a debt still owed him by Charlie “The Duck” Clench (Henri Lubatti).

Meanwhile Charlie’s bubble-headed daughter Pauline (Cassandra Marie Murphy), who was Roscoe’s fiancée until his death two days ago, has announced her engagement to puffed-up aspiring actor Alan (Paul David Story), so named because so many “angry young men are writing plays about Alans.”

Imagine, then, Pauline’s dismay when who should show up like Lazarus from the grave but her supposedly bumped-off betrothed himself, or so everyone believes.

 As for Rachel, well she has her own boyfriend, posh twit Stanley Stubbers (Ty Aldridge), and so what if Stanley’s the one who murdered her twin sibling. Nobody’s perfect, are they?

Enter Francis, who before long has gotten himself hired by both “Roscoe” and Stanley, the better to secure that elusive meal he so hungers for—if only he can keep his two employers clueless to his not terribly ethical double duty.

Oh, and did I mention that Francis has fallen head-over-heels for Charlie’s curvaceous, raven-haired bookkeeper Dolly (Trisha Miller)?

 As is the case with any actual 18th-century commedia dell’arte, plot takes second place to execution in Two Men, Two Guvnors, which means an abundance of pratfalls and other assorted feats of commedia fisica (most especially a plethora of pratfalls performed to perfection by 30something Josey Montana McCoy as a hard of hearing, nearly blind, pacemaker-dependent octogenarian waiter named Alfie), plenty of fourth-wall breaking, quite a bit of audience participation, and improvisation galore.

 All of this adds up to as wildly entertaining an evening of theater as A Noise Within has offered since the 2018 return of Noises Off, and if that screwball classic had set the previous ANW record for number of laughs per minute, One Man, Two Guvnors may well break it.

Directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott mine comedic gold from some of A Noise Within’s most gifted farceurs beginning with redheaded dynamo Mahaffy, whose exchange of slaps and punches with himself no less is just one reason to cheer his outright brilliance as Francis (and Ken Merckx’s one-of-a-kind fight choreography as well).

There’s not a weak link in One Man, Two Guvnors’ sensational supporting cast, in particular ANW-debuting Coran (a dandy Roscoe if there ever was one), Miller (a particularly luscious Dolly), Aldridge (a lanky charmer as the boarding-school-bred Stanley), Story (proving that brawny and brainless can go breezily hand in hand), Murphy (bubble-headed blonde perfection as Pauline), and the aforementioned aged-up McCoy, who deserves bonus pay for nailing stunt after stunt after stunt.

Add to all of the above the stellar work being done by Lynn Robert Berg (Harry Dangle), Luis Kelly-Duarte (Lloyd Boateng), Henri Lubati (Charlie Clench), and Evan Lugo (Gareth) and you’ve got a cast to rival Broadway’s and the West End’s best, not to mention ensemble players Adriel J. Camarena, Cristian Venegas, and (for reasons I dare not even hint at), a game-for-anything Vic Crusaos.

 One Man, Two Guvnors looks groovy as all get-out thanks to the all-around smashing ‘60s-saluting gifts of Frederica Nascimento (sets), Garry Lennon (costumes), Ken Booth (lighting), Nick Santiago (projections), Tony Valdes) (wigs and makeup), and Stephen Taylor (properties).

And the show sounds as ab-fab as can be with music director Rod Bagheri joining bandmates Art Pacheco, Mike Selfridge, and Cody Volk to perform original songs by Grant Olding that take us from late-‘50s Skiffle to early-‘60s British Invasion and scoring bonus points for the three-part harmonies of girl-group harmonizers Murphy, Miller, and Coran.

Jeff Gardner, meanwhile, earns his own kudos for another impeccable sound design (including multiple effects performed by Bagheri, who can now add Foley artist to his resume) and so does 1960s dance consultant Indira Tyler for the cast’s Swinging Sixties moves.

Casting is by Alison Rodriguez. Francis C. Edemobi, Scott Harris, Lugo, Alistair Mckenzie, Nate Ritsema, Mac Rogers, Becca Savoy, and Lucy Parks Urbano are understudies.

Angela Sonner is stage manager and Hope Matthews is assistant stage manager. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is dramaturg. Andrea Allmond is associate sound designer, Taylor is technical coordinator, Sasha Smith is intimacy coordinator, and Lucy Pollak is publicist.

It’s been ten years since I fell head over heels for One Man, Two Guvnors down at South Coast Rep, and having now re-experienced its many delights at A Noise Within, I’ll bet my go-go boots that you too will have the grooviest of times.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.anoisewithin.org

–Steven Stanley
September 6, 2025
Photos: Craig Schwartz

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Tags: A Noise Within, Carlo Goldoni, Commedia Dell'Arte, David Ivers, Los Angeles Theater Review