Good actors can only help so much

This comedy-drama about a retired couple’s marital problems got a lot of laughs and a standing ovation from the opening night crowd at Interplayers – so I’m reluctant to say that you won’t enjoy it.

All I can say is, it received no standing ovation from me.

Actually, I understand what people liked. Ellen Crawford and Michael Genovese, L.A. actors familiar from “E.R.,” delivered totally professional, fast-paced performances as the old married couple. They earned plenty of genuine laughs with their Bickersons-like quibbling and sniping.

But the play itself? Come on.

The first act was mostly a sitcom of a genre I can only describe as: “Cute Animated Oldsters Insulting Each Other.” The humor is almost entirely sarcastic, and playwright Craig Volk is not above stooping to a defecation joke, and I do mean stooping.

The second act turned into a semi-drama about the wife’s extramarital affair that lacked any semblance of sense or credibility.

Volk’s script reminded me way too much of “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,” which was, until this play entered the competition, the worst play in the Interplayers season. That, too, was a comedy-drama in the same mold: Two people spend almost two hours being unrelentingly mean to each other and the last five minutes discovering how much they need each other.

I don’t know if any production could ever salvage this script – and I say that because this production actually provided as much entertainment value as possible, considering the material. Director Ann Russell Whiteman moves this play along exceedingly briskly and fills the stage with considerable comic energy. Her use of Chet Baker torch songs as interludes helped establish a sense of pensive, sentimental longing – emotions these two characters were surely feeling, even if Volk doesn’t allow the characters to express them.

Crawford and Genovese, seasoned theatrical troupers, perform a virtual seminar in brisk comic pacing. They delivered their lines in a rat-a-tat rhythm that allowed no energy to leak away in hesitation or awkward pauses. They picked up their cues instantly, listening to each other’s lines and reacting immediately.

Crawford, as Fitz, used her whole body – arms flying in the air – to convey a sense of Fitz as a dynamo, a go-getter, a real spark plug. Maybe she should have been nicknamed Sparky.

Genovese, as Sparky, adopted an almost Groucho-like comic shuffle as he raced around the living room, an old codger on the warpath against cockroaches, interlopers and, finally, against Fitz.

Chris LeBlanc, as Rudy the UPS man, tries valiantly to create a character, but Rudy is written as nothing more than a comic foil and straw man. Rudy spends a lot of time bound and gagged, which is just as well.

Whiteman may have encouraged her actors to play these characters a little too broadly – but that’s an almost inevitable impulse when trying to punch up a script that is, let’s face it, not exactly Pulitzer material.

Volk wrote this play with his friends Crawford and Genovese in mind, but it took them 20 years to age into the roles. The fact is, they’re still not old enough. Sparky is supposed to be in adult diapers, for goodness’ sake.

The last straw for me came in the finale, when Fitz forgives Sparky and returns to his loving arms in a turnabout that is so sudden as to be laughable. That’s the payoff we get for all of the preceding meanness and sarcasm?

I know there’s a market out there for comedies that are nothing but long arguments and insult-fests. You see this brand of humor on TV sitcoms all the time. I just have higher expectations when it comes to live theater.