Run for Your Wife

By Ray Cooney

Directed by Jon Ciccarelli

Taking a break from the Bard in the indoor season, HSC decided to delve into the comic stylings from across the pond. John Smith is your ordinary London cab driver. He owns his own car, sets his own hours, is hard working, punctual and lives a very ordinary life...with the exception of his two wives, Mary and Barbara. One night John stops an old women from getting mugged and gets knocked unconscious. After being checked over at the hospital, he is taken to his home with Mary by a local police officer, Detective Troughton. However, that morning, he supposed to be with at his home with Barbara. After realizing his predicament, John tries to get home to Barbara while keeping both his first wife Mary and Detective Troughton from finding out about his second wife. Enlisting the help of his upstairs slacker neighbor, Stanley Gardener, John heaps one lie upon another to get back to Barbara and back on his very precise schedule. All appears to be well until another police officer, Detective Porterhouse, arrives from a neighboring district investigating the case of two cab drivers named John Smith, both mugged on the same night but having different addresses. Quick thinking Stanley exaggerates several more lies to create a new John Smith for Detective Porterhouse, while keeping the truth from Mary. As the lies pile up and craziness ensues, Stanley and John try valiantly to keep the nosy detectives busy, John's suspicious wives from running into each other, their sex lives straight and all of their stories together. In the grand tradition of Faulty Towers, Mr. Bean and The Benny Hill Show, Run for Your Wife is a fast paced, slapstick, laugh a minute romp that leaves you in stitches and begging for more. All photos taken Hackensack Cultural Arts Center