Such is the wild and witty comedic premise behind Bernard Slade’s Return Engagements, which is full of fun and surprising humor. Scripps Ranch Theatre continues their string of impressive productions with this show that sounds a bit preposterous but proves to be extremely engaging.

Each of the three scenes in the first act begins in bed, beginning in 1954 with rising young actress Daisy (Molly Lovell) and rising young bellboy Raymond (Frank Remiatte). Daisy wakes feeling a bit stressed that it’s only three hours before her wedding, and that she has just woken up with the bellboy instead of her fiancé. An analytical actress, she desperately searches for the motivation behind her fling. A romantic bellboy, Raymond tries to convince her that it’s the chemistry of love that brought them together. Daisy finds him charming, but she’s got big dreams that don’t include marrying bellboys, and leaves never to return. At least for another twenty years. Molly Lovell and Scripps favorite Frank Remiatte kick the show off to a sparkling start.

Scene Two sets up the most heartwarming relationship, wonderfully portrayed by E. Duane Weekly and Annie Katica. The former stars as Joe, a handyman working on set construction at the theatre next door. He gets introduced to love in more ways than one when a beautiful young Polish woman named Miranda pays him to sleep with her. She just wants his genes to have a good, healthy child, but Joe loses both his virginity and his heart in the process. She leaves him with a secret family recipe for Polish sausage copied from a most unusual cookbook, taking the seeds of their child with her, but their stories are not quite done. E. Duane Weekly is endearing as nice guy Joe and Annie Katica offers an outstanding performance both as the straightforward Miranda who is touched by Joe’s sincerity, and as Miranda’s warm and intelligent daughter twenty-five years later who has a lot of her mother inside her (and who can mimic her mother’s thick Polish accent remarkably well).

Scene Three features that quartet of strange lovers. They include former married couple Oliver and Fern who room together just days before they are both set to marry much younger lovers who couldn’t be more different than themselves. It turns out that there’s a lot of love flowing between the four of them, turning that quartet into an amusingly confused love triangle – or love square. Jill Drexler and Ed Hollingsworth are cleverly diverting as the intelligent, cultured, mature, middle-aged couple who maybe aren’t as mature as they pretend to be. Jerry Young is the meek, unimaginative, nerdy dentist named Henry who Jill plans on marrying. Cristyn Chandler is the fresh, young, alluring but hilariously ditzy Dawn whose brain aches when Ed gets too intellectual or when she has to sit through a Bee-thoven concert.

Act Two brings with it the entertaining sequels to each of those three scenes, in the end resulting in preparations for a wedding that will bring all the characters together to this most bewitching bedroom.

Performs through May 29, 2005.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill