THE COTTAGE


Noel Coward meets Oscar Wilde meets Hollywood screwball masters Howard Hawks and Preston Surgis in the 1920s English countryside in Sandy Rustin’s The Cottage, a guaranteed laugh-getter from Torrance Theatre Company.

Meet married (but not to each other) Sylvia (Alyssa Berkowitz) and Beau (Allen Barstow), who like the protagonists of Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year have been conducting once-a-year overnight trysts these past seven years, annual bliss that has so convinced Sylvia that she and Beau are made for each other that she has dashed off a telegram to hubby Clarke (Charlie Lindberg) to inform him that:

“Clarke. Stop. In love with Beau. Stop. I’m leaving. Stop. Sorry, darling. Stop.”

 Talk about stopping a lover in his tracks, because not only are Beau and Clarke brothers, the former has informed the latter of his whereabouts this weekend and guess who’s about to come knocking on the trysting couple’s door.

 Before that can happen, however, who should show up but Clarke’s wife Marjorie (Maureen Lee Lenker), eight months pregnant with her lover’s child, and just guess who that lover turns out to be.

 And if that weren’t enough to shatter Sylvia’s illusions of future re-marital bliss with Beau, learning that it’s not she who’s her once-a-year lover’s real lover doesn’t help things a bit, nor does the arrival of recent divorcee Dierdre (Kat Kimball) or a pistol-packing gent named Richard (Theodore Coonradt) who end The Cottage’s first act with a bang.

 If I’ve been a bit cagey in keeping certain details deliberately vague, it’s to leave your curiosity piqued without spoiling the multitude of surprises playwright Rustin has in store for audience members who’ve managed to snag tickets to The Cottage’s already nearly sold-out four-weekend run.

And those who have can count themselves lucky indeed, because though not quite in the league of the plays and movies that have inspired it, The Cottage features sophisticated upper-class characters a la Coward, Wildean epigrams, the kind of zaniness that Hawkes and Sturgis brought to the silver screen, and all of this zips along at so lickety-split a pace, the whole thing comes in at under two hours including preshow remarks and intermission.

 Though The Cottage has a number of regional and community theater stagings since its star-studded 2023 Broadway debut (with Eric McCormack as Beau, Laura Bell Bundy as Sylvia, and SNL’s Alex Moffatt as Clarke), I believe this is L.A.-area theatergoers’ first chance to discover this screwball comedy gem, making it a real coup for TTC Artistic Director Gia Jordahl and her husband Cary, the latter of whom directs The Cottage with abundant zest and pizzazz, keeping thing moving at an appropriately breakneck pace while eliciting one sparkling performance after another from an all-around splendid cast.

Berkowitz’s madcap Sylvia, Barstow’s full-of-himself Beau, Lenker’s grande-damesque Marjorie, Lindberg’s impish Clarke, Kimball’s featherbrained Dierdre, and Coonradt’s sweetly endearing Richard not only snap, crackle, and pop, they prove themselves masters of physical comedy as they dart about the set, improvise the most absurd of weapons, and hide in the most unlikely of places.

Not only that, but you’d be hard pressed to find a classier production design in any of L.A. professional intimate theater than the charming, colorful English country cottage set designed by director Jordahl, Michael Mullen’s gorgeous upper-class 1920s costumes, Michael Aldapa’s matching wigs and hairstyles, and the Jordahls’ supremely clever props, all of the above enhanced by Steve Giltner’s vibrant lighting. (Indeed only Winter Hagstrom’s sound design needs adjusting in an early-Act One scene in which music drowns out dialog.)

 Bailey Walker-Seiter is assistant director and intimacy coordinator. Ryan Miller is dialect coach. Julia Bacon, Lenore Booth, and Hagstrom alternate as stage manager.

 Audiences longing to forget their troubles and just get happy owe it to themselves to check out Torrance Theatre Company’s The Cottage providing they can snag one or two of the production’s few remaining seats. As far as this reviewer is concerned, there’s no better way to chase all your blues away.

Torrance Theatre Company, 1316 Cabrillo Avenue, Torrance.
www.torrancetheatrecompany.com

–Steven Stanley
February 7, 2026
Photos: Miguel Elliot

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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