STAGE REVIEW : The Wedding Bell Blues in Pasadena

Please say it isn’t so. The Pasadena Playhouse which brought us “Breaking the Silence,” “Love Letters,” “Mail,” for heaven’s sake, can’t now be bringing us this indigestible bit of wedding cake called “The Big Day.” And on its main stage yet.

This does not compute. Did the play read better on the page? Did someone think it was a topical comedy? Does anyone think it’s funny ? Did anybody read this play? Whatever the agenda, hidden or not, that landed Douglas McGrath’s “Big Day” on the Big Stage, it is one colossal mistake.

The scenario will probably sound better than it is. Everything goes wrong at the rehearsal for Moey and Fletcher’s wedding. This includes her parents having an accident, the chairs and flowers not arriving and Fletcher and his best man Smith not taking the requisite number of steps to end up at the requisite spot for the ceremony. Doesn’t this suspense kill you?

Act II is the wedding, which goes considerably worse than the rehearsal. In McGrath’s desperate attempts to make things hilarious, the bride’s heel falls off, the organist has a problem with her bells, the minister plots with the best man to scuttle the wedding and, out of past regard for Playhouse productions and perpetual regard for the audience, we won’t detail the rest.

The play is as big a disaster as the wedding. McGrath, who, it seems, has written comedy for “Saturday Night Live,” hasn’t many clues about what it takes to make comedy or farce or slapstick or vaudeville work on stage. And director Don Amendolia hasn’t been of particular help with any suggestions. At least not on the evidence. That a line about staying single and having sex “for free” could be so blithely delivered at a time when AIDS is exacting its pounds of flesh all around should give you some idea of the thickness of this play’s skin. Is anybody listening ?

Pity the bamboozled actors, trapped into doing their best against such odds. For the record, they are Helen Slater as bride Moey, Lou Felder as her father, Ralph Bruneau as the groom, Doug McKeon as the best man, Ruth Manning as the organist and Warren Frost as the minister. McKeon and Frost are to be congratulated for managing to hold up the center for as long as they do, considering the nonsense they have to spout. But it’s unfortunate to praise good actors for mounting a successful counterattack on the material.

Deborah Raymond and Dorian Vernacchio have done their usual good work in creating a garden setting for this wedding. But if it’s a wedding you want, get your own--or travel across town to the Park Plaza Hotel where Tony and Tina are getting married every day in “Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding.” They, at least, have figured out how to have fun with it.

At 39 S. El Molino Ave. , Pasadena , Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m., until May 27. $28.50; (818) 356-PLAY.