– By Cate Marquis –
Stray Dog Theater’s “3 Sheets to the Wind” is a breathless farce-like comedy about Oliver Morton (Joseph Garner), a gay man in a New York City rent-controlled three-bedroom apartment who has run into financial troubles. An ex-lover in California, Aaron Addison (Jeffrey M. Wright) makes an offer to pay all Oliver’s bills in exchange for letting him stay in the apartment with him for a few months, while he works on a project there. It is seems like the answer Oliver needs but there are risks in being roommates with an ex, and there secrets involved too. Throw in some big surprises, and soon chaos ensues.
As the play opens, Oliver’s theater career is at a low ebb and he is uncertain where he is going in life now, on his own romantically and struggling financially. The one thing he does have is his three-bedroom rent-controlled apartment, which he never wants to give up. He also has the support of his best friend, Maddie (Sarajane Clark) and her Scottish husband Callum O’Connor (Jason Meyers).
Maddie and Cal have come over to cheer him up, as the play gets underway. Oliver is desperate to hang on to his apartment, desperate enough to take a chance on that offer from ex-lover-turned-friend Aaron. Aaron has established a good career as a celebrity psychotherapist and author, and is coming to New York for a new project in New York. Aaron has offered to pay all Oliver’s bills for an extended period of time, in exchange for Oliver letting him live there while he works on the NYC project. The offer will give Oliver some breathing room and a chance to catch up financially.
However, Maddie worries that being roommates might re-spark Oliver’s old romance with Aaron, although Oliver assures her that won’t happen. Maddie loves Oliver but she is also a bit bossy and too nosy about Oliver’s personal life, which requires her easy-going Scottish husband Cal to sometimes have to rein her in. She is a fun person with an outgoing personality but she is a big drinker who becomes more impulsive as she drinks. Cal likes to drink too but no one matches Maddie.
His relationship with Aaron did not end well for sweet, soft-hearted Oliver, but on the other hand, it wasn’t the biggest romantic mistake Oliver ever made. That would be Danny, who broke both Oliver’s heart and his bank account, and whose crazy schemes are part of the reason for Oliver’s financial woes.
Any play named “3 Sheets to the Wind” has to have some drunken moments, boozing likely leads to shenanigans. Alcohol is involved in some of what happens, but the secrets, showbiz ambitions, clashing personalities, big egos and calculating characters probably do more. “3 Sheets to the Wind” was written by Gary F. Bell, the Artistic Director of Stray Dog Theater, and Robert L. White, and directed by Bell. Built aroung theater people, one can assume that personal experiences were part of the source material for this comedy.
The 2-act comedy has six scenes in the first act, and after a short intermission, returns for a shorter second act of three scenes. After the brief first two scenes, pretty much all heck breaks loose, and the comedy goes full speed until the intermission.
Of course, that third scene is when the foreshadowed Danny (Mike Wells) arrives, unexpected and unannounced. At 3 am and with three members of the cast of the show he’s planning to put on. The whole bunch camp out Oliver’s and Danny has plans to bring him into the production too, for re-writes of one of Oliver’s old plays.
Danny’s cast includes two young hunky but dim atheletic would-be dancers, Abe (Zack Huels) and Jake (Brady Stiff), who contribute the kind of dim-bulb one-liner humor you’d expect. But the biggest agent of chaos is Danny’s leading lady, the unpredictable, somewhat-confused diva Larina Delagostino (a marvleous Sarah Polizzi), who is convinced they are in a hotel – and don’t try to tell her otherwise.
Oliver and Aaron are appalled at first by the suddent invasion of Danny and cast, but both of them find themselves drawn into the chaos in one way or another. On top of that, there are secrets too. Aaron is hiding details about what is he doing in NYC. Aaron’s finances are good now but things are not as rosy as he has painted them. Danny is also spinning things a certain way for Oliver’s ears, and Oliver is a bit too willing to listen.
Starting with Danny’s arrival in scene 3, the play’s energy immediately goes from zero to sixty, and stays there. Everything is loud and fast, with absurdity piled on absurdity, with rising emotions, until the slamming doors that end the first act.
Thankfully, things calm down in the second act, giving the audience and the players a much needed rest. The whole thing is resolved in the end by the appearance of a magical character who helps put everything right.
Yes, it is classical farce but “3 Sheets to the Wind” isn’t purely farce but a combination of classic comedy that also includes sit-com style humor reminicent of Lucille Ball, silliness, absurdity and even maybe a little vaudeville. Loud and fast, there isn’t much time to think, as characters top each other with humorous cracks that are sometimes too familiar. The humor runs the gamut of the low comedy, including a little bathroom joking, so that “3 Sheets to the Wind” offers a virtual sampler of low humor, along with what looks like moments drawn from personal experiences in the theater, particularly with challending diva-like leading ladies.
The cast is the primary strength of this breathless comedy. But the standout is the play’s sort-of “villianess,” the wild Larina, played with pitch-perfect crazy by the wonderful Sarah Polizzi, who is full-out funny and fun all the whole time.
Polizzi’s Larina plays faux aristocratic and sports a Mid-Atlantic accent, although she is from the Midwest and hints at world travel, that turns out to again be mostly in the Midwest. Occasionally someone takes a verbal swipe at her high-class pretense by impunging her morals, to which she invariably replies “I don’t do that…anymore.” She is the most colorful character in the whole color-filled comedy. She gets the best lines and the best comedy bits, which Polizzi seizes with relish, like when she bounds and sails across the room, a roll of trailing toilet paper in each hand, headed for the bathroom, in a brilliantly silly move.
The rest of the cast is very good, particularly Liz Mischel’s late appearence in the second act. Joseph Garner is good as Oliver, although I wished the play took a little more time for us to get to know him before it plunged into non-stop mode. Jeffrey M. Wright was very good as Aaron and the made the most of the time he was given in this packed-to-the-rafters comedy. Likewise Sarajane Clark and Jason Meyers were good as the likable straight couple who are Oliver’s pals, but a little more of them could have given the audience a bit of a breather in that long frenetic first act. Mike Wells’ Danny is a mix of dreamer, charmer and con-man, who takes any cracked-open door as a full invitation, but also revives lost hopes in Oliver, who sorely needs that.
Stray Dog Theatre’s “3 Sheets to the Wind” is so breathless it is kind of exhausting to watch, and its sampler of classic low humor won’t appeal to all (although it is a kind fo impressive feat to fit all those references in), but the performers go a long way to make things enjoyable.
Stray Dog Theatre’s “3 Sheets to the Wind” is on stage at the Tower Grove Abbey theater, 2336 Tennessee Ave., through June 20, 2026.
© Cate Marquis
