Playwright: Vincent Truman. At: Viable Theater Company at Charnel House, 3421 W. Fullerton Ave. Tickets: 773-871-9046 or thecharnelhousechicago.com; $15. Runs through Nov. 23
It's not a crime to be an Anglophile. If it were, playwright and actor Vincent Truman would be found guilty.
Just look at Truman's world-premiere comedy Featherstone for Viable Theater Company, in which he wrote and stars in as an insulting British marriage therapist. ( Catherine Dvorak plays the title role of Dr. Featherstone on Sundaysthe production is double-cast. )
But Truman's Anglophile status should be revoked, especially if Featherstone is an example of how he thinks that British comedy functions. Featherstone features characters whose behaviors veer into unbelievable and contrary territory, and it starts out with frustrating plot mechanics.
The action takes place on a Saturday morning in a very low-rent marriage counseling office ( patients sit on folding chairs ). Just as the married couple, Jayne Krazen ( Adrienne Gunn ) and Thomas Philpott ( Steve Carter Ruppel ), are signed in for their first counseling session, they're kept waiting offstage for an interminable time. The delay? The petulant Dr. Featherstone ( Truman ) argues with his resentful receptionist and adopted American son, Malcolm ( Philip DeVone ), in an extended scene about the financial difficulties they're facing.
When the couple finally makes it into Dr. Featherstone's office, he insults them immediately by asking which one is the "C-word" in the relationship and later deprecatingly addressing them generically as "wife" and "husband." Sure, this is comedy, but in order to believe the married couple as actual people, they should challenge Dr. Featherstone's crudeness with more conviction or just leave the office immediately.
But the fact that the couple stays and almost unflinchingly take in such verbal abuse gives a clue that Truman penned Featherstone largely to show off. Truman possesses a very credible British accent, and it becomes apparent that Featherstone is a vehicle for him to play a monstrous comic antihero along the lines of the BBC's David Brent in The Office or Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. ( Truman even modifies a John Cleese quote when Dr. Featherstone laments that marriage counseling would be a great profession if it wasn't for the patients. )
Featherstone would have worked more convincingly if Truman took more time to work up to the all-out insults and rude antisocial behavior his title character delivers rather than launching into them immediately. Gunn and Ruppel also need to be more convincing as an intimidated couple caught up with their marital problems. ( Ruppel also failed to sport a wedding ring on opening nightanother failing detail. )
With Featherstone, Truman has created a comedy that aims to celebrate British condescension and aggression. But the result is just to make you think of better-crafted and more dramatically convincing British TV comedies that you would rather be watching instead.