Broadway review by Adam Feldman
What’s that merry racket at the Helen Hayes Theater this summer? By George, it’s the sound of a lark! An English lark! Sandy Rustin’s The Cottage has no pretensions to seriousness: It’s a brazenly straightforward drawing-room farce, created for light amusement and delivered on a platter by a properly silly cast of six. The year is 1923, the setting is a country hideaway in the Cotswolds, and the subject is made clear on the drop curtain, which includes a rutting pair of squirrels and a brassiere suspended from the branch of a tree. “Romance, my dear, is for fairy tales,” says the suave Beau (Eric McCormack) to his mistress Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy), who is also his sister-in-law. “This is not a romance. This is sex.”
Sylvia, though, has other ideas. For some time, the couple has been conducting a steamy extramarital affair, meeting once a year at Beau’s family cottage. But Sylvia has now decided to go public with their relationship—and has rashly done so in telegrams to their respective spouses: Beau’s forbidding and very pregnant wife (Lilli Cooper) and his stuffy brother (Alex Moffat). This love rectangle is further complicated by the staggered arrivals of Beau’s doe-eyed auxiliary mistress (Dana Steingold) and her menacing ex-husband (Nehal Joshi).
The Cottage | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
The Cottage may look like a throwback to the tony sauciness of Noël Coward’s plays in the 1930s—in a nod to the Master, Beau’s secretary is named Mrs. Worthington—but it is broader in character and characters, and less sophisticated in language. Some of the play’s biggest laughs come from outright spoofery of its period and genre, like a running joke that finds cigarettes and lighters concealed in unexpected parts of Paul Tate dePoo III’s well-stuffed set. (These cigs rarely stay lit for long; they are alway being stubbed out in some dramatic gesture.) Amid the old-fashioned trappings, Rustin nestles a welcome modern sensibility to the plot’s skirmishes of the sexes; Sylvia’s dissatisfaction hints at the growing agency of post-Victorian Englishwomen.
While the architecture of the plot is solid, what really keeps The Cottage up is the comedic industry of its cast. Directed by Jason Alexander, a seasoned hand at classic timing, the actors leap gamely into their funny business. McCormack’s vain Beau is smoothly caddish and twittish; Moffat, leading with his chin, has some inspired physical horseplay, and Steingold packs a lot of power into her small frame. And Bundy, who looks smashing in Sydney Maresca’s costumes, holds the play’s center together with considerable appeal. It’s sex, sure, but more than that: It’s charm.
The Cottage. Helen Hayes Theater (Broadway). By Sandy Rustin. Directed by Jason Alexander. With Eric McCormack, Laura Bell Bundy, Lilli Cooper, Alex Moffat, Dana Steingold, Nehal Joshi. Running time: 2hrs. One intermission.
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The Cottage | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
