Theatre Burlington - Caught In The Net

Caught in the Net

A comedy by Ray Cooney

Directed by Brian Morton
Produced by Sondra Learn

If you think your life is stressful, imagine the life of John Leonard Smith, a taxi driver who keeps two separate families in different parts of London . He has a sixteen-year old son, Gavin, by Barbara in
Streatham, and a fifteen-year old daughter, Vicki, by Mary in Wimbledon.

When his teenaged children accidentally meet in an Internet chatroom and plan to see each other in person, John's already complicated life becomes absolutely hectic.

John realizes that if Vicki and Gavin meet, the results could be incest or the exposure of his bigamy, so he struggles to keep the unwitting relatives apart.

While John rushes back and forth between the two households, he drafts his Wimbledon lodger Stanley to keep the young people and their mothers from meeting, which only leads to hilarious lies, mistaken identities and mysterious phone calls.

Stanley only wants to take his doddering dad on holiday, but he unexpectedly becomes the butt of most of Cooney's jokes. With John offstage for long stretches, Stanley must maintain inane deceptions, including the false impression that young Gavin is his rent-boy. Chaos ensues as he tries to keep the teens apart...

Can John Smith manage to keep his double life a secret from the kids and his two wives?

In CAUGHT IN THE NET, modern technology is about to lead two families into a head-on collision. Playwright Ray Cooney specializes in stage farces and constructs episodes of escalating absurdity with clockwork efficiency.

"Caught in the Net is a sequel to Ray Cooney's huge Eighties hit, Run for Your Wife, and it is even funnier than its predecessor. Unlike most farces, Cooney doesn't have to spend the first act in laborious exposition. We already know that the hero, John Smith, is a bigamous taxi driver with one wife in Wimbledon and another in Streatham. And the farcical action goes into overdrive from the start, as his teenage daughter by one marriage and his teenage son by the other discover each other on the internet and seem intent on starting a fine romance, little suspecting that they share the same dad... The show is also heroically politically incorrect, with jokes about blindness, disability, senility, sudden death,funny foreigners and homosexuals piled one on top of the other with breathtaking disregard to the pieties of our age. It's sheer joy from beginning to end." - The Daily Telegraph

Cast:

John Smith … David B. Fraser

Mary Smith … Amanda Lee

Barbara Smith … Sally Takacs

Gavin Smith … Greg Hanta

Vicki Smith … Julia Porter

Stanley Gardiner … Andy Capener

Dad … Tom Mackan

April 16-17, 22-24, 29-30 May 1 2010

Drama Centre - Central Park (beside Central Library)
2311 New Street
Curtain time: 8:00 p.m.

Tickets

Anyone interested in joining the crew of this show, in any capacity, is also invited to call the box office number.

Please note that Theatre Burlington is a CommunityTheatre.

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If you think your life is stressful, imagine the life of John Leonard Smith, a taxi driver who keeps two separate families in different parts of London . He has a sixteen-year old son, Gavin, by Barbara in Streatham, and a fifteen-year old daughter, Vicki, by Mary in Wimbledon.