What: Between Friends

Where: Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Main and Market streets, Port Dover

When: Through Aug. 16

Tickets: 1-888-779-7703, ext. 226

The audience at Port Dover's Lighthouse Theatre roared their heads off. And why not? They came for a good time.

Trouble is, Between Friends, a light comedy without much substance, isn't much of a play.

It's essentially a TV sitcom stretched over a little more than two hours. Saddled with a forced ending, it limps along without benefit of commercial breaks.

It's little more than a string of jokes hurled with relentless enthusiasm.

A young couple, recently married, attempts to survive their essential differences by making emotional and political compromises.

Never mind Dunc, the browbeaten hubby, is the one making all the changes. He's munching tofu treats and gulping down cinnamon tea, while manipulative Sophie keeps forcing her man-eating agenda.

When a couple of Dunc's rough-hewn buddies show up for a weekend of laughs, things unravel.

The premise isn't bad. After all, Neil Simon has used this "compromise in marriage" theme to good advantage several times.

Fredericton playwright John Spurway hasn't anything like Simon's talent for integrating one-liners with dramatic moments of truth.

The first act of his comedy is simply a string of set-ups leading to coarse jokes. It's like watching five standup comics competing for rude laughs. Well, three actually, since neither female character is particularly funny.

After an hour of this aimless waffling, Spurway decides to get serious in the second act.

Sophie (played without warmth by Andrea Runge) gets thoroughly fed up with Dunc's boozing buddies. Nasty things get said and done.The marriage looks to be on the rocks.

But no, wait a minute, here comes Spurway to the rescue with an implausible, overly sentimental conclusion.

The final moments between Dunc (played with quiet understatement by Courtenay Stevens) and jealous Sophie are the stuff of fantasy.

If serious solutions were as simple as this, Spurway would've written a much better play.

We can't believe in Dunc and Sophie as real people. They're just like so many of those sitcom characters. They just say and do what the playwright says without a trace of truth.

Derek Ritschel and Cory Doran as Dunc's pals Bill and Wally are like something out of a grade B movie. Porkies comes instantly to mind.

Oh yes, I know, we're supposed to see that underneath the obnoxious exterior Wally and Bill are really scared little boys. And yes, we're supposed to understand that Sophie behaves so abominably because she loves Dunc so much.

Trouble is it doesn't matter. Nothing is developed enough to allow subtext to creep through.

Spurway says his play is about shared joys and disappointments of friendship, and how comrades are tested by change.

Perhaps.

If only we didn't see that on such a superficial level.

If only Spurway wasn't so concerned about lobbing over a laugh every 10 seconds.

Director Ron Gabriel keeps things moving at a brisk pace. What else can he do with a play like this?

The actors do what they can to distract us from the silliness of it all. I just wish they wouldn't shout so much while they're at it.

Hollering doesn't make a line any funnier, or a sentimental cliche any less silly.

Bill Chesney's set is a bit of a cartoon; not surprising for a play that goes out of its way to be funny at the expense of truth.

Gary Smith has written on theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for more than 25 years.