Sex Please, We’re Sixty! can be seen at the DAPA Theatre, 145 Beaumont Street, Hamilton, from Friday, February 24, to Sunday, March 11, with 8pm performances on Friday, Saturday and Wednesday, and 2pm matinees each Saturday, plus 2pm Sunday matinees on March 4 and 11. Tickets: $25, concession $22. Bookings: 49623270 or 0416252446.WHILE most stage comedies about love have young and middle-aged people as their central characters, Sex Please, We’re Sixty! looks at the yearnings of an older generation.
There’s a self-assured superannuant who takes Viagra and calls himself Bud the Stud. And a shy retired chemist who has developed an untested blue pill, called Venusia, that is intended to increase the libido of post-menopausal women.
These two live on either side of the Rose Cottage bed and breakfast run by a sedate elderly widow. Each year she welcomes the return of a trio of 50-plus female guests: a renowned writer of romances, a Southern belle and a quiet former co-worker of the chemist.
Sex Please, We’re Sixty!, which opens at Hamilton’s DAPA Theatre on February 24, shows what happens when the trio of guests become annoyed by Bud’s two-timing and plot to turn him into Bud the Dud.
In the process, the libido pills become mixed up with Bud’s Viagra, leading to hilarious sexual complications.
Sex Please, We’re Sixty! is an American farce by English-born Michael Parker and his wife Susan whose previous joint work, Sin, Sex and the CIA, was a hit for DAPA in 2010.
The title of Sex Please, We’re Sixty! is a pun on that of one of the most successful English farces, No Sex Please, We’re British.
It was such a hit in London in the early 1970s that the producers took it to Broadway. But, as had happened with other English farces, American audiences stayed away.
After settling in the United States in the 1980s, then actor and director Michael Parker decided to write English-style farces with elements that would appeal to Americans. He has had hit after hit, looking at subjects such as a US president seeking sex on the side.
Margaret Spencer, who is directing Sex Please, We’re Sixty! after staging Sin, Sex and the CIA for DAPA, said the Parkers’ comedies were fast and funny.
Sex Please, We’re Sixty! also provides good roles for older actors, with a cast that includes Ian Barton as Bud ‘‘the Stud’’ Davis, Robert Williams as retired chemist Henry Mitchell, Pamela Whalan as Rose Cottage owner Mrs Stancliffe, Sue McEwen as romance writer Victoria Ambrose, Lesly Stevenson as Southern belle Charmaine Beauregard, and Lee Loudon as Henry’s former chemist co-worker Hillary Hudson.
Henry has visited Mrs Stancliffe to propose marriage each afternoon for 20 years but she always politely rejects him.
‘‘She likes her gentleman caller, but is not willing to commit herself,’’ Pamela Whalan said.
‘‘However, she gets jealous when he shows an interest in someone else.’’
Sue McEwen’s romance writer has booked into Rose Cottage for quiet reflection because she is having trouble in her latest novel in getting past the line ‘‘He placed his hand upon her silken thigh and sent tremors through her heaving bosom’’.
‘‘She’s not a vamp, but when a Venusia pill accidentally gets into her cup of tea she has an unusual reaction,’’ McEwen said.
Lesly Stevenson said that her Southern belle, on the other hand, is vivacious, flirtatious and very sure of herself. She uses her charm on Henry as well as Bud, but when she finds out that Bud has also been wooing the other female guests she is out for revenge, with very funny results.
Lee Loudon’s Hillary answers Henry’s call to help him with the Venusia pill development and trials out of respect for her former fellow worker and in the name of science. While she is reserved, she doesn’t hesitate to call Bud ‘‘a Casanova with a molasses tongue’’.
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