The corniness of Love Rides the Rails yields plenty of belly laughs. Dazzlingly clever and hugely funny, it succeeds both as a homage to silent-movie melodrama and as a play in its own right.
The production is made with obvious affection for slapstick, pantomime and farce, and Blackwood Players have turned Morland Cary’s classic into a riotously silly play featuring lively performances from an enthused ensemble.
Even at its weakest, the show is still a charmer. The performers will cheerfully go for a laugh wherever one is even remotely likely to be found and thus serve up a veritable smorgasbord of comic moments. In fact, the actors and crew presenting it seem to enjoy it even more than the audience.
With tongues planted firmly in cheeks, the players deliver clichés so foolish as to seem almost dreamlike, and also throw out a smattering of cultural references and some fine witty conceits. Basically, it’s just good family fun that by its nature is designed to be witnessed – and participated in – rather than reviewed.
The comedy involves plenty of audience participation, including booing and hissing the villain, cheering the hero, sighing for the heroine and singing along to gay old songs such as “Daisy”, “Clementine”, and “Moonlight Bay”.
The plot revolves around the villainous Simon Darkway (Damien White) and his attempts to gain control of the Blackwood, Belair and Bridgewater Railroad. He’s also scheming to get his hands on the innocent and beautiful Prudence Hopewell (Rosie Williams) by foreclosing on her widowed mother (Kay Kelly Lindbergs). Darkway is aided by the sultry Carlotta Cortez (Anita Canala) and henchman Dirk Sneath (James Barbary), and it seems nothing and no one can stop the trio from accomplishing his master-plan. But they have not bargained on the clean-living, upstanding and heroic Truman Pendennis (Jarred Chave).
All the players are solid, but White and Barbary excel as the baddies while somehow reminding one of Dastardly and Muttley; Williams is delightfully charming as Prudence and Annie Gladdis is a scene-stealer as Carlotta’s maid, Fifi.
Overall, Love Rides the Rails transports its audience to a bygone age of theatre, yet remains contemporaneously modern and always funny. Produced for laughs, played for laughs, it’s difficult not to laugh. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Blackwood Players are presenting Love Rides the Rails at the Blackwood Memorial Hall again on November 22-24 and 29-30.
