Wonder of the World

The Titanic Theatre Company's production of David Lindsay-Abaire's "Wonder of the World" is suitably (sometimes sublimely) zany, but fails to convince.

Lindsay-Abaire's play follows the adventures of a young woman named Cass (Meredith Saran) who, after seven years of marriage to a fellow named Kip (Johnny McQuarley), suddenly discovers her husband's unusual (and, to her, shocking) sexual fetish. Finding out that he's an "odious monster," as she puts it, Cass packs a suitcase and, despite an offering of trout-infused aspic, heads off on a quest to fulfill a long list of ambitions she's assembled during what she now sees was an unsatisfactory marriage.

Cass is optimistic and more than a little ditzy - the latter being the result, she claims, of the trauma her husband's fetish has visited upon her. Whatever its cause, this tendency to air-headedness is, like the blonde wig she purchases right off the head of a fellow tourist, one more signpost on her strange journey - the geographical manifestation of which is a trip to Niagara Falls inspired by a Marilyn Monroe film.

Wisely, director Adam Zahler declines to have the actress playing Cass attempt a Marilyn imitation; her cracked musings are less sexy cooings than bright, sometimes brassy, declarations that carry a ring of conviction despite their obvious absurdity.

Then again, the world around Cass is also absurd. No sooner has she embarked on her new life than she encounters a fellow traveler who is also caught in the backwash of a failed marriage and all the disappointment it entails. Lois (Alisha Jansky) is her new friend's name, and she, too, is headed to Niagara Falls -- not to start over again, but rather to hurl herself over the falls in a wooden barrel, assuming she can sober up long enough.

But first, there are some tourist attractions to take in; Cass and Lois board a boat piloted by "Captain Mike" (Matthew Zahnzinger), whom Cass decides would be a fun sexual partner. (This point makes more sense than much of the play; after all, who doesn't like a man in uniform?) Captain Mike's own marriage ended tragically when his wife was killed by a giant falling jar of peanut butter. Something about Cass -- about her refusal to acknowledge the mistake of her marriage, and her hard-headed determination to be happy if it's the last thing she does -- touches him; Captain Mike becomes more than a swain. He becomes a protector, and the closest thing this play offers to a voice of reason.

And a reasoned voice is something "Wonder of the World" needs to keep it on course. When a pair of bumbling novice detectives (Damon Singletary and Laurie Singletary) stumble into the action -- they a married couple, of course, providing yet another jaundiced view of wedded bliss -- it feels like the final cog has slipped into place and the machinery of farce can proceed full steam. That's exactly what the play proceeds to do for most of its two hour and ten minute running time, with zingers crackling, outrageous set pieces unfolding in themed restaurants and tour helicopters, and carefully laid plot threads winding around each other, usually at the most unexpected moments. But by the final scenes, as all of the carefully lined up dominoes start to crash into each other, the play has started to feel too long and too labored, excessively wrought and over-wrought in an effort to get the punchlines to pay off.

One such punch line: A group marriage counseling session that blasts into the play like a hurricane. When the marriage counselor, dressed as a clown (Alissa Cordeiro), enters the fray, what started as galloping farce turns into gonzo silliness, complete with gunplay and a therapeutic rendition of "The Newlywed Game."

There's no faulting Cordeiro; she delivers one of the funniest lines in the play just after a climactic moment. (Matthew Zahnziger also has a standout line right around this time, which he delivers with dry understatement worthy of Woody Allen.) Cordeiro also does heavy duty multiple role management throughout as a shipboard tourist and as three different servers at the above-mentioned themed restaurants, creating (and hopping back and forth between) separate, distinct characters in a virtuoso display.

The fact that the play seems to leap right off the rails just as her "marriage clown" character enters the picture isn't coincidental, but it's not due to her choices. Rather, the writing -- perched on a slicing edge of wit that located and traces the fine line between mundanity and madness -- abandons its surgical precision at that point, and opts for outright slash-and-burn. It's a deliberate authorial decision, but it's not necessarily user-friendly; the finely calibrated direction that serves the production so well to that moment doesn't make the transition along with the script, and the notes start sounding false.

It all gallops to one last sour gibe. In a valedictory scene that sees the play turn its back on the kaleidoscopic satire on marriage it's mostly been, "Wonder of the World" makes one ultimate observation about the broader issue of life itself: It's a ride we can't control, careening ever closer to disaster -- and, as the old witticism has it, no one gets out alive. This should be the biggest, bitterest laugh of all, but somehow we never quite arrive.

"Wonder of the World" continues through Aug. 9 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. For tickets and more information, please visit titanictheatre.com/upnext.html