Wild Oats

This hilarious, rip-snorting send-up of the Old West is based on the famous 18th-century Restoration comedy of John O’Keefe. Switching the locale of the action from the drawing room of Restoration England to the saloons and prairies of the Old West, and transforming the characters from scheming servants and lustful gentry to music hall girls and stalwart cavalrymen, the playwright holds onto the hilariously convoluted structure which has made the original play a timeless delight. The plot elements include standard mistaken identities, a long lost son reunited with parents, long estranged parents finding each other, evil landlord foreclosing at the drop of a tumbleweed, an “F” Troop type of cavalry, an Indian guide who speaks with an Irish brogue, a crusty colonel who’s planted progeny all over the wild west. A hero who stops a speeding train with one hand, a lustful and slithery preacher, a foppish son who’s been kicked out of more military schools than he can count, and histrionicum. And so it goes – resulting happily enough, in a slambang, wildly funny farce which provides both a field day for performers, and an experience of sheer delight for audiences.