PHIL IN THE BLANK: Not so serious

The Clarkston Village Players’ late summer production is excellent. They’re staging the comedy satire “Underpants,” written by Carl Sternheim and adapted for the U.S. stage by Steve Martin.
I wondered going in whether Martin’s humor from Saturday Night Live, “Three Amigos,” and his other stuff would come through.
Yes, it does. The ending, in particular.
It’s helped by the play’s hilarious and ridiculous premise, which is probably why Martin decided to work on it in the first place.
Sternheim wrote the play “Die Hosen” in 1910 as a drama, but its synopsis is about the same as Martin’s version – “In a German small town at the time of the imperial era, the bourgeois, loyal couple lives an inconspicuous, thoroughly bourgeois life without ups and downs. Suddenly, the still young Luise has a great mishap. Just at the moment when the prince on the central square passes by on a Sunday, Luise loses her trousers before the eyes of the sovereign. While the person concerned is profoundly embarrassed by this misfortune, the liberated view of the young woman’s legs immediately arouses covetousness with two other gentlemen, a hairdresser and an elegant man of the world.”
In both versions, her underwear falls down as a parade goes by. How the German playwright made a drama out of that is something I’d like to see.
It probably has something to do with scandalizing the social norms of the day, and the fact they could be jailed by the king, or worse, for making fun of the royalty of the day. The days just before World War I were not the time to make panty jokes at the prince, probably, or indulge in the “double-debauchery of bourgeois morality,” as stated in the Hosen synopsis.
Maybe it just sounds like a drama in its original German.
Anyway, CVP actors Wendy Hedstrom, Steve Sanger, Dwaine Estes, Scott Talas, Brian Taylor, Carol Taylor, and Jim Pike, directed by Sara Sanger, all put on spirited performances.
Check them out this weekend, Sept. 14-16. Tickets are $13 Thursday at 7:30 p.m., and $15 at the Friday and Saturday shows, at 8 p.m.
Call 248-425-5842 for tickets.

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