STUPID & STUPIDER

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Stupid and stupider

Neil Simon comedy `Fools' opens Friday at River City Yacht Club

REVIEW

By Sam Blackwell

Welcome to the Ukrainian village of Kulyenchikov, where the men are strong, the women are good looking and the children are below average.

Not just the children. Thanks to a 200-year-old curse, "We're all stupid in Kulyenchikov," says Snetsky the Shepherd.

So begins "Fools," a Neil Simon "comic fable" about a Ukrainian village where people are so dim-witted they can't tell flowers from flounder.

The River City Players dinner theater production "Fools" opens Friday at Port Cape's River City Yacht Club. The comedy continues Saturday and Aug. 20 and 21 in the dinner theater format. A show-only performance will be presented Wednesday.

Snetsky the Shepherd (David Koeller), Slovitch the Butcher (Nick Ryan), Yenchna the Vendor (Terri Tate), Mishkin the Mailman (Joe Gibbs) and Magistrate Kupchik (Mike Manning) are all quite stupid.

Even Dr. Zubritsky (Jeff Statler) is stupid, and you don't have to be a genius to see that his wife Lenya (LeAnne Statler) and their daughter Sophia (Sarah Semmler) are just as stupid.

It's hard to tell how stupid the villainous Count Gregor (Champ Friend) is. Maybe he just seems stupid.

The only person in Kulyenchikov who isn't stupid is Leon Tolchinsky (David Hopper), the new school teacher. On arriving, Tolchinsky is smitten with Sophia and decides he must find a way to lift the curse.

The comedy is not one of Simon's well-known works but played on Broadway in the early 1980s.

"Fools" requires that you bring your sense of the ridiculous to the theater. Leave your goofy side at home and you could be sitting on your hands for an hour and a half.

This is a play in which characters say stupidly funny things most 10-year-olds would be too sophisticated to laugh at. Some of the best moments get the audience in on the joke through asides by Tolchinsky and Count Gregor.

"Fools" has some endearing characterizations. As Count Gregor, Champ Friend is an enthusiastic villain, a kind of Russian Snidely Whiplash.

Semmler and Hopper are engaging in the first lead roles of their lives. Hopper actually looks like a Russian school teacher, and Semmler moves about the tiny Yacht Club stage with the bearing of the dancer she is.

As the teacher who risks losing his own intelligence and the pure-hearted girl he loves, they bring moments of tenderness to the evening.

Jeff and LeAnne Statler as Dr. and Mrs. Zubristksy also are entertaining, their exchanges providing some of the show's best-timed humor.

Nick Ryan, who stole just about every Central High School play he appeared in, is good in the small role of the butcher. He was a last-minute replacement for someone who dropped out of the show.

Ryan is in town after finishing his freshman year at the University of Missouri. Next month, he's off to London to study theater for three months in a program run by the University of Missouri and the University of Wisconsin.

Director Ann Swanson tape recorded the voices of two Russian-speaking area residents so her actors and actresses could hear what their accents should sound like. That extra effort paid off.

The play was co-cirected by Marty Koeller. The stage manager is Emily Johnson, with Lori Prewitt providing sound and light direction.

The lighting design is by Dennis Seyer. Charlie Kent and Swanson designed and built the set, which has to serve for three different locations and does so well.