By David Ryan Palmer
Assistant Editor
If you base the success of a comedy on how much the audience laughs — and especially on how much the reviewer in the audience laughs — then “The Nerd,” written by playwright Larry Shue in 1981 and staged this spring by Benicia Old Town Theatre Group, is a rousing, smash hit.
BOTTG’s latest production, directed by alum Clinton Vidal, had a few missteps on opening night Friday. But none were enough to mar an evening of wit and hilarity. Simply put, if you like to laugh, this is a must-see show.
The play is so funny, in fact, you forget yourself while watching it. It helps that the characters manage to be familiar archetypes without becoming cliches — a fact for which all credit must be given the talented cast.
Take Willum Cubbert, played by Actors Equity member Leon Goertzen in his first BOTTG production. Willum is an architect in Terre Haute, Ind., in 1979. He’s not a very exciting guy — in fact he’s kind of a doormat, confident enough in his abilities but easily pushed around by his client, hotel owner Warnock Waldgrave, played by Chuck Schilling; by his friend Axel Hammon, played delightfully by Peter DelFiorentino; and by his girlfriend, Tansy McGuiness, played by Natalie Rapp. With friends like these …
Willum also gets pushed around by the titular Nerd himself, Rick Steadman, played to absolute perfection by Sean Beecroft.
Beecroft’s shiny bald head, nasally voice, horrible laugh and horrible personal habits don’t really jibe with the modern understanding of a “nerd.” He’s not the kind of socially withdrawn math whiz people often think of as a nerd today. Instead, Steadman is a social boor, a man who feels confident that he’s loved and respected even as he openly insults the guests in Willum’s home.
The Nerd thinks of himself as the pinnacle of social grace even as his shirt sticks prominently out of his zipper. What do you do with someone like this?
Thus we see Willum’s dilemma.
The story begins when Willum is set to have his latest client, Waldgrave, his wife Clelia (played by Karyn Knowles in her first comedy role) and son Thor (played by 10-year-old Nathaniel Correll) over for a dinner party. Waldgrave’s got his own problems, particularly the fact that his son is a spoiled brat — partly because Clelia is too permissive and partly because Waldgrave would rather give the kid money to behave than resort to any kind of discipline. Clelia, a harried school teacher, herself has rather strange stress-relieving habits: Never have I heard a broken cup elicit quite that kind of audible reaction.
Then Rick arrives. Oh, does he arrive. The man has a special quality: He instantly takes everyone out of their comfort zone. His social awkwardness and lack of perception heightens everyone else’s character traits: Willum gets walked on even more, Alex becomes even snarkier, Thor is even more of a brat, Clelia is stressed to the max, Waldgrave gets angrier and angrier, and Tansy is pushed into a traditional role into which she does not fit very well, to say the least. Rick’s presence subverts expectations, and that’s the point: The play’s chief goal is to take the audience’s expectations and put them on their head.
That includes an ending that is such a delightful surprise, you’ll be caught completely off guard.
The main reason for the ending having the impact it does: the play’s shining star, Peter DelFiorentino. Where Goertzen’s Willum is the straight man protagonist and Rapp’s Tansy is the 80s-fashionionable heroine (BOTTG’s costuming really hits the mark), it’s DelFiorentino’s wild-card portrayal of Axel Hammond, a drama critic after my own heart, that makes everything work.
DelFiorentino gets some of the best lines in the play: Whenever Axel makes an aside or a snide remark to one of the other players, you can’t help but chuckle. He has so many tricks up his sleeve it would take an over-the-top performance to really capture the character — and congrats to us, that’s what we get.
DelFiorentino’s bio in the playbill mentions his previous role in a production of Mel Brooks’s “The Producers,” and it’s easy to see some of Max Bialystock in Axel, a shrewd, inventive, absolutely adorable liar and cheat. He may not be as ruthlessly self-interested as Bialystock, but he’s just as entertaining. I’d love to see a version of Brooks’s masterpiece with DelFiorentino as Bialystock and Goertzen as Leo Bloom.
There were, of course, a few missteps in BOTTG’s opening night performance. Portions of the show where characters listen in on Willum’s home phone — a scene involving an ’80s-style answering machine — were difficult to hear: The audience had trouble understanding what someone was saying through the playback. In other places a few players dropped lines and missed cues, resulting in a bit of hurried improvisation.
But you only notice these things because of how good the rest of the show is. Long after I’d left the theater I was thinking back to the show and chuckling at some antic of the Nerd, some aside by DelFiorentino or Goertzen’s funniest moment, involving a silver platter and an apple core.
“The Nerd” came together nicely and after a slightly shaky opening night can only improve. It is showing through mid-May. See it. You will not be disappointed.
If You Go
Benicia Old Town Theatre Group’s “The Nerd” will be performed Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. at the B.D.E.S. Hall, 140 West J St., through May 14. Visit beniciaoldtowntheatregroup.com or call 707-746-1269 for tickets and other information.
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