Johnny on a Spot

Charles MacArthur’s political-centered 1942 farce Johnny on a Spot, now being revived by the Peccadillo Theatre Company at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, should be the perfect comedy for an election year, but in Dan Wackerman’s overly frenetic staging, this seemingly timeless satire becomes merely tired and tiring.

The play centers on what happens when a popular Southern governor stumping for a seat in Congress dies drunk and in the arms of a prostitute on the eve of election day. Unprepared for the loss (of both the man and potentially the election), his campaign manager Nickey Allen (a hardworking, but never completely winning, Carter Roy) conspires to hide the governor’s death from his rivals and the voters.

As if Allen’s attempts to keep the governor’s death secret were not enough, Judge Webster (played with comedic flair by Mark Manley) and the Commissioner of Public Works “Booter” Kusick (a stiltedly animated Robert O’Gorman), have to make sure that Allen and Colonel Wigmore (Raymond Thorne), the owner of a local newspaper that’s out to destroy the governor’s reputation and career, don’t figure out that they’ve used a municipal bond act to line their own pockets. Both Webster and Kusick, whose nickname “Booter” comes from his willingness to kick his allies when they’re down, abet and hinder Allen’s increasingly frantic plans.

So does Julie (a sweet, yet hard-nosed, Ellen Zolezzi), the governor’s secretary and Allen’s fiancé. She doesn’t want to see her betrothed end up in prison, and she wants to make sure that she gets to the altar up North — from whence both she and Allen hail. She’s even willing to go to the mat with Webster’s perniciously determined Southern belle niece Barbara (whom Laura Daniels imbues with qualities that bring to mind both a pit-bull and Pekinese).

As tensions mount in the Governor’s outer office (a fine scenic design from Joseph Spirito), so too should the laughs. Instead, Wackerman’s staging starts out at full-throttle and only gets louder and faster, and ultimately, the sure-fire zingers get lost in the actors’ overly rapid-fire and surprisingly imprecise delivery.

Moreover, performances that range from amateurish to proficient in secondary roles only further undermine the comedy, with Dale Carman as the milquetoast doctor who has been hand-picked to succeed the philandering governor once he’s moved to Washington and Jerry Coyle as the fussbudget mayor who is also running for Congess the most proficient of the lot.