The Farce is with them: Comedians bring zany Brit play to LV

David Renzi

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

John Smith is a cabdriver with a problem above and beyond the bump on his head.

John's a hero, and the local morning rag wants to put his picture on the front page.

The problem is that John is an inveterate liar. And his lies are the spoon that stirs "Run for Your Wife," Murray Langston's new farce at the Holiday Inn Casino Boardwalk.

Lie No. 1, origin of bump: Smith (Langston) claims he received it foiling a mugging.

Truth: He was mugged.

The crime sets in motion a whirlwind of confusion that intensifies with each new lie and each new character.

The play was written by British playwright Ray Cooney and was the longest running play in England (nine years), Langston says.

But it bombed on Broadway, supposedly for being too British. After receiving Cooney's permission and "sending him X number of dollars," Langston purchased the rights to the play and rewrote it for an American audience in general and a Las Vegas one specifically.

It is peppered with references -- streets, shopping centers, etc. -- only locals would know. Langston was introduced to the play a few years ago by Pat Paulsen, who asked him to appear in it with him and Linda Blair in San Francisco.

"I said, 'Well, I'll do it if I can direct it.' I didn't know how it would work as an English play."

One month became three months; the play closed when Paulsen and Blair left to fulfill other commitments, Langston says. For the Las Vegas version, which opened Nov. 14, the man sometimes known as the Unknown Comic remained true to Cooney's concept despite his alterations.

John Smith is still married to two women and living on different sides of town, in this case North Las Vegas and downtown Las Vegas. But his double life catches up with him after the mugging and he doesn't come home -- to either one.

This spurs the two Mrs. Smiths (Joan Fagan and Flame Harris-Metter) to call two different police stations and file a missing person report. At the hospital, still suffering from the effects of his head injury, Smith mistakenly tells the Metro detective (Ralph Mulliger) his North Las Vegas address, setting off a series of lies and misunderstandings that eventually involve the entire cast.

It includes Sandy Hackett as Porterhouse, a North Las Vegas detective; Robbie Flynn, a newspaper reporter who wants Smith's story for the morning paper (Smith doesn't want his North Las Vegas wife to see his name attached to the downtown address); Carl Edwards, his twinkle-toes North Las Vegas neighbor; and G. David Howard.

"I play his upstairs neighbor at his downtown apartment," says Howard, who describes Stanley Gardner, his character, as an Ed Norton type and Smith's best buddy.

"He comes in and out all the time, gets coffee. He's kind of a pain-in-the-ass guy," Howard says.

When the wives and the cops begin to squeeze him from both sides, Smith breaks down and tells Stanley about his double life to help him cover his lies, which only serves to create more mayhem.

"It's a typical English farce. By the end of the play, you've got people running back and forth on the stage -- and on this stage it's not easy," says Langston, referring to its diminutive dimensions, which he puts at 20 by 8 feet.

Langston says that's a small space for so many comedians vying for attention. With the exception of Flynn, a Canadian responsible for the audio and lighting in addition to saying "five words" as the newspaper reporter, the cast is chock full of stand-up comics.

Says Howard: "Sandy said the other night, 'If somebody had told me we could put seven stand-up comics on the same stage and come up with a smooth production, I never would have believed it.'"

In addition to her role in "Run for Your Wife," Fagan recently secured a recurring role on "The Drew Carey Show" as Faith.

"She's president of the Optimists Club," Fagan says. "Everybody hates her."

Her other credits include stand-up appearances in Las Vegas and on A&E's "Evening at the Improv," MTV's "Half-Hour Comedy Hour," Lifetime's "Girls Night Out" and the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

Harris-Metter is a singer-dancer-actress and has performed in stage productions internationally and appeared in "Stayin' Alive," "The Witching" and "Sunburn."

Mulliger has appeared on "Evening at the Improv," Showtime's Comedy Club, Comedy Central and in the feature film "Cop and a Half" with Burt Reynolds.

Hackett, son of Buddy Hackett, has appeared in the films "Ex-Cop," "Hamburger" and "Cannonball Run II" and in comedy clubs from coast to coast.

Edwards has traveled with Peter Marshall's nightclub act and appeared in "The Four Heartbeats" with Robert Townsend.

Langston broke into the business on the "Sonny & Cher" show 25 years ago.

"Before that I was selling shoes," he says. "It was a good period to be selling shoes. It was the miniskirt era."

Langston has appeared on more than 800 television shows, including 150 "Gong Shows" as the Unknown Comic. He says he created the character as an antidote to the humiliation he felt at not being able to get work other than "The Gong Show" after "Sonny & Cher" went off the air.

"I was embarrassed, but I was broke. I didn't want my friends to see me, so I put a bag on my head and told a lot of stupid jokes."

Howard has this dubious distinction: the Guinness record for consecutive hours performing stand-up comedy without taking a leak (16). He did it four times.

He says it's a record that will never be broken, since Guinness deemed 16 hours too long to go without going. It has since implemented a mandatory five-minute potty break every hour, Howard says.

How did he do it?

"Mind over bladder."