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| Norman Wisdom, Roni Dengel, Rex Garner, Joan Bassie. |
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| Roni Dengel, Norman Wisdom. |
If you’ve ever wondered what kinds of plays George
Steinbrenner, who bought the New York Yankees in 1973, dabbled in during his
days as Broadway producer, look no further than Not Now, Darling, a mindless British farce filled with endless
running around (especially by half-clothed young women), hiding in closets, and
doing the expected madcap things with ferocious energy.
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| M'el Dowd, Rex Garner, Norman Wisdom. |
The plot is about a furrier shop run by two men, one of whom,
Arnold Crouch (Norman Wisdom), hopes to seduce a woman by allowing her to pay
only 500 pounds for a mink, rather than 5,000. The complications arising from
this premise constitute the essence of a puerile comedy that ran in London for
699 performances but couldn’t make it through two weeks in New York, even
though helmed by Broadway’s master farce director, George Abbott, then 87.
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| Ardyth Kaiser, Ed Zimmerman. |
Not Now, Darling suffered the kinds of critical slings and arrows reserved
for only the most egregious clunkers. Richard Watts was being polite when he
wrote that “it seemed flat, lugubrious, and lacking in humor.” It was “a
maggotry sepulcher of a farce,” sniped Brendan Gill, who also said “the play is
terrible, the set is terrible, the acting is terrible, and the direction is
terrible.” John Simon put in his snarkily clever two cents with this classic dig: “about
its unappetizing star all I can say is that if this is Norman Wisdom, I’ll take
Saxon folly.”
The 11-member company included Joan Bassie, Ardyth Kaiser,
Ed Zimmerman, Roni Dengel, Rex Garner, and M’el Dowd.