THEATER REVIEWS : More Is Less in Sharkey’s ‘This Man’ at Garden Grove

On the level of sheer output, the late Orange County playwright Jack Sharkey made even the prolific Alan Ayckbourn look like a slacker. Ayckbourn continues to astonish world theater by consistently delivering one play per year. It helps, of course, that Ayckbourn has his own resident theater to write for.

Sharkey, though, managed to top that: How about nearly three plays per year (82 in three decades, to be exact)? It helped, of course, that Sharkey had a vast network of community and amateur theaters to write for.

Sharkey was not unlike the American Primitivist painters who prided themselves on being productive, fast and to the point--and completely uninterested in being shown in the major galleries. A Sharkey mystery, comedy or musical is not likely to find its way to South Coast Repertory anytime soon.

Instead, he wrote for such modest community houses as the Garden Grove Community Theater, whose production of Sharkey’s “I Take This Man” is as light on its feet--and as perfunctory--as the play.

Indeed, had Sharkey developed his farce to its fullest, it would be a natural for a Hollywood Pictures-type comedy film. We could see Meg Ryan as the gal taking her man, who could be played by Tom Hanks.

But only about half of the tale is told, from the moment Gideon (Riley Evans) has the man she spotted sprawled out in the middle of Boston’s Copley Square brought into her apartment by a nice cop (Jason W. Green), to the moment the cop stays for dinner with Gideon’s roomie (Linda Checkman) and her fiance (Eric A. Wood).

In between, “Giddy,” as she is known, thinks her way into and out of a big hole explaining why she has a handsome male stranger, in his underwear, lying on her sofa.

It’s a natural farce setup, and someone like Joe Orton would have taken it to scatological extremes. Sharkey’s target audience is mom, dad and the kids at the local theater in town, so we’re not talking about black comedy or anything very nasty.

The raciest it gets is Lindsay Irvine, as the stranger, dressed in one of Giddy’s mother’s pantsuits--the only thing in the place suitable to wear outside.

The laughs come from sources alternately dumb and sweet.

It’s pretty dumb, for instance, to have us believe that there’s absolutely no place in town for Charlene and beau Dex to go for a bite to eat, even if it is on Boston’s popular Patriot’s Day. (Whatever happened to McDonald’s?)

Even with the extremely iffy plotting, it’s pretty sweet to have the tables turned on Giddy, and have the stranger come on to her at last. It injects a romantic turn on the old notion of being careful of what you wish for--it may come true.

The next logical step in the farce is what happens when Giddy and her man actually go out on the town. She may take this man, but does she actually keep him?

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Sharkey leaves it unanswered, because he cuts things off before that point. Not counting the 15-minute intermission, this is a mere 70 minutes running time--ideal for a first act, with a payoff second to follow.

This could be the price of Sharkey being too prolific a writer, desiring to get on to the next project.

“I Take This Man” has all of the indications of a veteran farce scribe, without the crafting of details and completion of strategies that a farce master would insist upon.

* “I Take This Man,” Garden Grove Community Theater, 12001 St. Mark St., Garden Grove. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.. Ends May 22. $8. (714) 897-5122. Running time: 1 hours, 25 minutes.

Riley Evans: Gideon

Jason W. Green: Officer Jud Keegan

Lindsay Irvine: “Antonio”

Linda Checkman: Charlene

Eric A. Wood: Dex

A Garden Grove Community Theater production. Written by Jack Sharkey. Directed by Philip Weitzman. Lights: Lee Schulman. Production stage manager: Marc Munoz.