By Hannah Blackman

Hollywood, California — The stage is tiny. The theater is aptly called The Actor’s Playpen — a small set jammed with boxes, clothes, major stuff. Amy is packing to leave since she’s getting married tomorrow. One problem: should she wear her beautiful new Vera Wang gown, or her mother’s old wedding dress? Her sister warns against mom’s “signature dress,” since mother is a bitch on wheels.

Get ready for mayhem: The fiancé shows up. The wedding is off. His dead wife is still alive.  She was washed overboard and now she has suddenly “washed up.” (Shades of Cary Grant oldie, My Favorite Wife.)

Here begins the laugh-a-minute farce in which a desperate Amy first tries to kill herself, and then decides to use the gun (with bitch mother’s encouragement) to gather together every eligible man in her life to decide which one gets to marry her in the morning.

Four wonderful guys: One drunken bum, one stuttering therapist, one uptight guy who is running for city council, and one hunky stud (who’ll do any woman, even Mom.) The four of them — hands tied, mouths bound with feathered boas and whatever — have to prove to her that they would make the right husband.

One by one, they try to disprove their qualifications…only to be dissuaded by the gun. The four madmen are played by Bodhi Elfman (the hysterically funny stuttering therapist), Eric Woods (the drunk), Jason Williams (the would-be councilman), Brody Hutzler (the stud), and Luke Weber (the duckout husband).

Amy is wildly done by the author, Rene Ashton, her mother the bitch, Marcia Moran, and Angela Landis as the sister. Anthony Marquez is the pizza guy…(can’t explain and blow the plot).  The whole ensemble is deft and talented.  

Wonderful thing about really good farce is that you never get to stop to think. Reality is another country. You are busting a gut laughing as four mouth-stopped guys try to get out of that mess or get shot by a pistol-packin’ frustrated wannabe bride.

This short run deserves a longer run, but you can still catch it at the Actor’s Playpen in Hollywood. If you miss it, look for it showing up somewhere…on film…or at another venue.

Look for Amy Gets Her Man!