Chris Champlin expects to entertain audiences with his latest directorial effort, an adaptation of Ken Ludwig's “Leading Ladies.”

He just doesn't expect to enlighten them.

“This is really just a farce,” Champlin said. “It's just humor, and we're just doing it to be funny. There's really no social content to speak of. It's all about having a good time, and sometimes, that's what an audience needs.”

“Leading Ladies,” which begins on Wednesday, Oct. 17, and runs Wednesdays-Saturdays through Nov. 10 at the Harlequin Dinner Theatre, tells the story of Jack and Leo, a pair of 1950s British Shakespearean performers whose work of late hasn't exactly been well received.

“They're beginning to feel like it's the end,” Champlin said. “They've hit rock bottom, and they're in the deepest, darkest cellar.”

When the two read a newspaper story about a rich woman on the verge of death and who wants to leave her fortune to her two long-lost nephews — whom no one has seen since childhood — Jack and Leo decide to pose as the nephews with the hopes of cashing in.

There is but one problem.

Jack and Leo read the story wrong, and the nephews in question are not nephews, but rather, nieces. That does not deter the pair, who elect to pose as “Maxine” and “Stephanie” to try their luck at securing the inheritance.
The hysterics only increase from there.

“That's the idea with a farce, in that it's exaggerated comedy,” Champlin said. “Those humorous situations are intended only for comedy and to be funny, thinking more along the lines of Monty Python. With big men in dresses, it's OK to go over the top.”

Once he and the “Leading Ladies” cast get to that point of over-the-top comedy, they don't plan on stopping.
“The situations get more and more absurd as we go,” Champlin said. “Just when you think we've gone as far as we can go — no, no, no. We've still got a ways to go.”

CLINT HALE | 210SA