Eastbayri.com

If laughing out loud is your idea of a good time, then stop the presses and head on out the door to catch Trinity Rep’s production of “His Girl Friday,” a show that’s a sheer delight from start to finish.

Curt Columbus’s clever direction and the bravura cast of Trinity stalwarts make this production a rib-tickling, door-slamming, quick-changing farce of epic proportions. But in true Trinity style it’s also a show that gives you something to think about, even as you’re laughing your posterior off.

Generally, all we require from a farce is that it be funny, which “His Girl Friday” undeniably is. But John Guare’s adaptation of a play that’s been updated many times, from play to movie and back again, adds a needed historical context and a social consciousness, providing an exciting new dimension to the side-splitting shenanigans.

We interrupt this review for a little historical context of our own. “His Girl Friday” started life as “The Front Page,” Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s riotously seedy 1920s comedy about Chicago newsmen (you may have seen Ed Shea’s swell production at 2nd Story). It was then adapted by film director Howard Hawks in 1940 as “His Girl Friday” with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, in one of the great screwball film comedies of all time. The 1988 movie “Switching Channels” is a remake of the same story. John Guare adapted the 1940 movie for the London stage in 2003.

In creating a synthesis of the original play and the classic movie, Guare did something supremely clever that makes this the best adaptation of the source material ever. The movie “His Girl Friday” was shot in the summer of 1939; Guare has set his adaptation during that same summer, precisely Aug. 31, the day before Hitler invaded Poland.

Without distracting from the zaniness, this maneuver allows for the presence of the news of the day — the Great Depression and the start of the war (exactly what moviegoers were seeking a respite from) — to enter the fray. As we hear the war news broadcast over the radio, a reporter exclaims, “Hey, turn off the news, I’m trying to write a story here!” More to the point, we witness a sense of the national mood at the time.

The production affords us a glimpse of the isolationist fervor that swept through many in the nation before the war. Here the character Holub, merely an anarchist in the original, is a Jewish Czech immigrant convicted quickly of killing a cop with pro-Nazi leanings, a situation that the corrupt mayor, running for re-election, will exploit for all it’s worth.

But, not to be outdone by a very clever adaptation, Trinity Rep Artistic Director Curt Columbus has added a wrinkle all his own and it is this that makes “His Girl Friday” a must-see. It’s his inspired idea to have almost all of the actors play two separate roles. This considerably ups the comedy ante when, for example, the excellent Brian McEleney leaves the stage as fusspot reporter Bensinger then returns seconds later through a different door completely transformed into wizened tough guy Diamond Louie.

These lightning-quick changes occur throughout the show and are enormously entertaining. The conceit allows the talented ensemble to show off their comedic chops and enables those seedy wise guy reporters to become a part of the story they’re covering. It’s a great idea and smartly executed throughout.

Two characters that simply can’t be doubled up, as they’re so essential to the show’s success, are editor Walter Burns and his ace reporter (and ex-wife) Hildy Johnson. They are played here by Fred Sullivan Jr. and Angela Brazil and they’re terrific together. Events conspire to throw this estranged couple together again and the chemistry betwixt the two is never more apparent or as much fun as when they’re fighting like cats and dogs.

There is, as the song says, “nothing like a dame” and Ms. Brazil makes for a swell one here, breezily cracking wise with her fellow hard-boiled reporters. But when she catches the scent of good story, watch out boys; she becomes downright feral, literally tackling her subject lest it get away. Ms. Brazil is, as always, a sheer delight to watch.

Mr. Sullivan is a marvel as Walter Burns, editor-in-chief and master manipulator. Described by Hildy as “both a prince and a rat,” Mr. Sullivan seems every inch of each — a crusading newspaperman with a heart of gold, who will nevertheless pull every trick in the book to get what he wants. The sheer glee this gifted actor brings to pulling the strings of every puppet he surveys is a delight, as is the utter sincerity he brings to lines like: “Honestly, honey, I really meant to go with you on our honeymoon.” It’s an inspired and masterful performance.

Double-cast and, with all those quick changes, seemingly double-jointed, the acting ensemble shines as a seamless ensemble. Of special note is Janice Duclos as both a humble minister and an imposing dowager, Stephen Thorne as a tough-talking reporter and an addlepated twit of a fiancé, Phyllis Kay’s nicely underplayed hooker and Stephen Berenson’s milquetoast sheriff.

Curt Columbus nimbly choreographs the proceedings all around the elaborately dilapidated courthouse newsroom set designed by Eugene Lee. The pace starts off as a waltz and speeds up to a fox-trot before finishing, as all good farces must, as a whirling crescendo.

Watching “His Girl Friday,” in which all sides of the political spectrum try to exploit a news story for their own ends, is to be reminded that there’s really nothing new under the sun when it comes to media sensationalism. Walter Burns sagely declares that everybody’s got an angle and there are those in the game who’d even “use the flag itself as a red, white and blue curtain to cover up the rot.”

You might view this nifty old play about political corruption and media collusion as a cautionary tale, but you’ll be laughing far too hard for such serious considerations. “His Girl Friday” is a sheer laugh riot and a truly joyous night out at the theater. Don’t miss it.

‘His Girl Friday’

WHERE: Trinity Repertory Co., 201 Washington St., Providence

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and select Wednesdays, through Oct. 9

COST: $66-$22; $15 for 12th-row bench seats

MORE INFO: 401/351-4242 or www.trinityrep.com