Comic vaudeville coming up: Valley Players welcomes spring with ‘Romantic Fools’
Napa Valley Register Preview by Register Staff, Mar 2, 2022
Valley Players, the award-winning local theater group, presents a raucous comedy, “Romantic Fools,” opening March 11 in Yountville.
Produced in conjunction with the town of Yountville “to bring some much-needed laughs to the wine country,” director June Alane Reif described Rich Orloff’s work as a series of skits that take on the perils and pitfalls of romance and relationship. With nods to classic humor in the vein of Abbott and Costello, Monty Python, Nichols and May, and even Groucho Marx, Reif said it promises a “night of silly unpretentious hilarity.”
Called a “comic vaudeville” by author Rich Orloff, “Romantic Fools” includes such enticing titles as “Find Me a Primitive Man,” “Vegetarians in Lust,” “The Stepford Guy,” “The Sheep (Or Much Ado About Mutton)” and “Bride and Gloom.”
It is definitely “definitely adult-themed humor,” Reif said. “I read this a while back when I was looking for two-person shows to perform. It is one of very few scripts that made me laugh out loud while reading it… really irreverent and silly humor.”
“Romantic Fools” is not your normal Valley Players fare, Reif said. Valley Players is a community-based group whose focus is producing quality, affordable live theater from classic and contemporary genres that provide roles for women over 40. In “Romantic Fools,” she said, “The characters are split 50/50 male and female and it is written for a much younger group of actors.”
But aside from “the practical — simple sets, minimal lighting — this play does, indeed, speak directly to our mission,” Reif noted in a letter to supporters.
“Firstly, age: Why is it assumed that only the young are romantic? That only the young might be searching for that special someone? That only the young struggle with dating issues when doing so? We all know that isn’t the case, so we see no reason why an older group of actors can’t play these scenes with an equal (if not greater) depth and truthfulness to reality — well, with as much depth and reality as a comic vaudeville has, anyway.”
And it touches on the gender issue, she added. “Milton Berle played a woman for laughs. Flip Wilson played a woman for laughs. Tyler Perry played a woman for laughs. And they certainly are not the only men who have done so. Isn’t it about time some women played men for laughs? ‘Nuff said.”
The final point that sold her on the play was the comedy. “Sometimes, we just want to laugh. Period. The last two years have been, at the very least, stressful for us all.”
When she presented the play to the group’s board, she said, “They were hooked about three lines into the first sketch … We are having a blast producing this show and we want to share that fun with everyone”
The cast, in order of appearance, includes Patte Quinn, Richard Pallaziol, Robert Silva, Georgia Taylor, Debbie Baumann, Christina Julian, Krisi Pilkington, Barbara Nemko, Daryl Roberts, Randi Storm, James Adams, Bridget Folan, and Rhonda Bowen.
One powerful incentive, too, was an offer from the town of Yountville to perform at the Community Center.
The troupe had been performing at the Lincoln Theatre on the grounds of the Veterans Home of California. That venue, however, remains closed due to the pandemic.
“We did one show in 2021 at Lucky Penny in October/November, “Ladies’ Briefs,” she said. “That was our first show since ‘The Tin Woman’ closed in March of 2020.”
With the loss of the Lincoln Theatre as their home, Valley Players became yet another performance company looking for a theater space in Napa Valley, Reif said.
“The Lincoln Theater is a great unknown. We would sure love to go back there. The folks at the Napa Valley Performing Arts Center at Lincoln Theater were a fabulous group. They were so very good to us and we will be forever in their debt for the opportunities they gave us. We miss them all.”