‘Are you having a good time?” an actor asked me during the intermission of “Restoration Comedy,” the new party — sorry, production — at the Flea Theater.
It was a fair question, considering the immersive nature of the proceedings. From the start, earnest members of the youthful ensemble the Bats ply you with drinks while chatting you up, both in character and out. It’s enough to make you want to build your own fourth wall.
That party-like atmosphere is exactly the point of Ed Sylvanus Iskandar’s staging of this pastiche by Amy Freed (“The Beard of Avon,” “Freedomland”), who has adapted two 17th-century works, Colley Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift” and John Vanbrugh’s better-known “The Relapse.” The director used the gimmicky techniques with last season’s hit, “These Seven Sicknesses,” a freewheeling adaptation of several Greek tragedies.
Freed’s 2 1/2 -hour play is transformed into a roughly four-hour experience that, depending on your age and fitness level, can leave you as exhausted as a hard night out on the town. An extended intermission features hors d’oeuvres, more drinks — containing “a hint” of alcohol, but it seemed more like a rumor — and a singalong to classic pop and rock songs. The whole shebang concludes with a raucous dance party.
Oh, yes, there’s also the play. Set in London, it depicts the efforts of proper lady Amanda (Allison Buck) to woo back Loveless (James Fouhey), the playboy husband who left her a decade earlier, by masquerading as a woman of loose morals. The plot is hatched by their mutual friend Worthy (Seth Moore), who’s secretly in love with Amanda himself.
The more convoluted second act features a dizzying array of subplots involving such characters as the aptly named Foppington (a very funny Stephen Stout), who wears a wig housing a small birdcage, his intended fiancée (Bonnie Milligan) and Amanda’s beautiful cousin (Rosa Gilmore) upon whom Loveless sets his amorous sights.
The nubile performers frequently strip to their underwear to perform sexy, burlesque-style dance interludes to disco songs by the Scissor Sisters, and the action often extends into the audience. Occasionally, you may find a half-naked performer sitting on your lap, admittedly not an unpleasant experience.
But all this slap-shtick eventually wears thin, with Freed’s stylistically savvy but ultimately hollow exercise feeling more like an afterthought. The performers vary wildly in their hardworking efforts to put over the material, although their boundless enthusiasm proves engaging. And costume designer Loren Shaw has outdone herself, coming up with seemingly hundreds of hilariously outrageous outfits that manage to bare buttocks and still make room for chastity belts.
The theatergoers I saw it with certainly seemed to be having fun, although my stone-faced countenance is probably what prompted the actor to ask me if I was enjoying myself.
I told him I was. It seemed the polite thing to do.