Gaslight Dinner Theatre presents hilarious farce Run for Your Wife

Release Date: 1/13/2005. Expired: 3/5/2005

Taxi driver John Smith has a problem - in fact, two of them. Their names are Mary and Barbara and he is married to both of them.

The Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center in Dickson presents the hilarious British farce Run for Your Wife Feb. 11-March 5.

Shows are Fridays and Saturdays with dinner beginning at 6:30 p.m. and the show at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $27 per person and include dinner, drink, dessert and the play. Tickets go on sale Jan. 11 and reservations are required by noon the day of the show.

Senior Matinees are on Fridays with lunch served at noon and the show at 1 p.m. Tickets are $17 for patrons 55 and older and include a buffet lunch, drink, dessert and the play. Tickets go on sale Jan. 11 and reservations must be made by noon the day before each show. Most matinees sell out well in advance.

Run for Your Wife was written by Ray Cooney, recognized as the “master of farce.” It is probably one of his funniest plays, and certainly his most popular. It enjoyed a nine-year run at various theatres in London’s West End.

The hilarity starts when John’s (played by Ryan Hunt) two lives begin to unravel. For three years he has successfully kept his two marriages separate and secret from each other, spending mornings with Barbara (Katherine Jett) and evenings with Mary (Anna Hammonds). But when he is injured intervening in a mugging, his life of lies is complicated when the police return him to the wrong home at the wrong time.

Things only get worse for John when his picture appears in the local paper and another police officer shows up to investigate how two men named John Smith with different addresses were both mugged on the same day.

With the help of neighbor Stanley (Pacer Harp), John heaps lies upon lies to cover up his secret and the result is a mixture of slapstick and misdirection reminiscent of a mixture of Monty Python and Benny Hill.

The rest of the cast includes Hal Partlow as Bobby and the Reporter, Daniel Bissell as Officer Porterhouse and Greg Frey as Officer Troughton. The show is directed by Amy Scott, managing director of the Renaissance Players who is directing her first production in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre.

Evansville, Ind., native Hunt is in his second season as a member of the Renaissance Repertory Theatre Company. He has appeared in Gaslight Dinner Theatre productions of A Christmas Survival Guide, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Dining Room, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, 8 Track - Sounds of the 70s, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol and Barefoot in the Park. He made his directorial debut with the Renaissance Players production of The Miracle Worker.

Jett is making her Gaslight Dinner Theatre debut after internships with The Renaissance Center’s Young Actors Studio and the Rep Co. With the Renaissance Players, Jett appeared in community productions of Annie Get Your Gun, Cinderella, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Wizard of Oz. During her internships, the Nashville resident appeared in Romeo and Juliet, The King of Ice Cream Mountain, Young Cherokee and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Hammonds also is appearing in her first production in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre. An Evansville, Ind., native, she made her Renaissance Players debut as Belle in last season’s Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and followed that with a role in A Christmas Carol.

Harp is managing director of the Gaslight Dinner Theatre and has appeared in or directed more than a dozen shows, including memorable turns in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, Forever Plaid, The Star Spangled Girl and I Hate Hamlet.

Partlow is managing director of the Renaissance Repertory Theatre Company and has appeared in dinner theatre productions such as Forever Plaid, The Boys Next Door and The Star Spangled Girl, while also directing several shows. He has adapted, directed or appeared in more than 25 Rep Co. shows including portraying Willy Loman in last season’s Death of a Salesman.

Bissell is making his first appearance in a Gaslight Dinner Theatre production. A Pegram resident, his Renaissance Players credits include LeFou in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz and Christopher Wren in The Mousetrap, for which he won a Jimmy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Frey returns to the Gaslight where he previously has had roles in I Do! I Do! and The Boys Next Door. The Dickson resident also appeared in the Renaissance Players productions of The Miracle Worker and The Fantasticks as well as one season of shows with the Rep Co.

After making her Renaissance Players directorial debut with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Scott is now helming her first show in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre. A member of the Rep Co. for four years before becoming manager of the community theatre program, the Cedar Hill, Tenn., native has appeared in 16 Rep Co. shows, community productions of Godspell, A Christmas Carol and The Odd Couple, and more than a dozen dinner theatre shows, including Nunsense, I Do! I Do!, The Dining Room, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Barefoot in the Park and I Hate Hamlet.

A prolific writer of stage farces and comedies for more than 40 years, Cooney’s works have been translated in 40 foreign languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Russian. He has directed and produced most of his plays in London and Broadway with wide success. Cooney himself acts in each of his new plays during the tryout stage.

Cooney’s play Whose Life Is It Anyway? was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1979. Other Cooney titles include Move Over Mrs. Markham, The Mating Game, Two and Two Make Sex, Why Not Stay for Breakfast?, Duet for One and Not Now, Darling.

Run for Your Wife debuted in the Virginia Theatre on Broadway in March 1989.

For more information on the Gaslight Dinner Theatre production of Run for Your Wife, call The Renaissance Center at (615)740-5600. To purchase tickets for a show, call the box office at (615)740-5570.

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Theatre page for more about community and professional theatre.

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