My Oh Yes

"Big D" both song and city, is earning big laughs at Lyric and the Wyly.

A A A Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Sep 13 2012

Couches, fat armchairs, café tables and in-theater bar give the boxy Wyly Theatre a cozy club atmo for the show. The evening ends with a rather ingenious series of digs at both the rise of hick Honey Boo Boo culture and the snooty attitudes of the very patrons who can afford the cushiest seats at this venue. First-rate stuff, Second City.

Heaving bosoms and breathy bouts of girl-on-girl kissing make Or, a comedy by Liz Duffy Adams at Echo Theatre at the Bath House, a bit of all right. Based on the life of 17th-century English playwright Aphra Behn (played by Jessica Cavanagh), this 2009 farce finds her bouncing in and out of the arms of King Charles II (John Venable, looking hubba to the second power in tight black trousers), actress-girlfriend Nell Gwynn (Morgan Garrett, a bombshell with crack comic timing) and former husband and probable spy William Scot (Venable again in looser pants). Aphra also has a deadline to meet for her latest script, which she can't finish with the bedroom hopping keeping her quill off the parchment.

Michael C. Foster

Bill Nolte, as the title role in Lyric Stage's The Most Happy Fella, spends most of the show trying to get a leg up on Rosabella, played by Amber Nicole Guest.

Details

Email the author at elaine.liner@dallasobserver.com.

The Most Happy Fella

Continues through September 16 at Lyric Stage, Irving. Call 972-252-2787.

The Second City Does Dallas

Continues through September 30 at the Wyly Theatre, ATTPAC. Call 214-880-0202.

Or,

Continues through September 22 at the Bath House Cultural Center. Call 214-904-0500 or visit echotheatre.org.

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Director Terri Ferguson keeps the action stirred to high froth as actors Venable and Garrett make split-second costume changes when they switch into different characters. As smart, sassy Behn, Cavanagh is part crumpet, part strumpet under a nimbus of curls.

The zingy language of Or, blends classical phrasing with crude contemporary slang in a stylized Restoration-era roister-doister, which is spiffily acted and funny enough to restore our faith in the talent at Echo Theatre.