Imagine for a moment that it's the year 2301. Some futuristic theater director has gotten a pretentious bug up his fanny to "revive worthy but forgotten" dramatic works. He has unearthed an ancient script--a compilation of, let's say, several episodes of a long-forgotten 20th-century television program called Married...With Children. Deeming it valuable based solely upon its antiquity, he produces it--luring unsuspecting theatergoers to sit through three hours of crotch grabs, misogynist humor, and cliché plot lines. This, in a nutshell, is The Provok'd Wife.

The first and biggest flaw in this production is, well, that it was produced at all. The entire plot revolves around the most irritating cliché ever hatched--the mythical "war of the sexes" (always billed pretentiously and falsely as "a study of 'human relationships'"). The characters, scenarios, and plot twists are the equivalent of a 300-year-old episode of Three's Company. Just being old doesn't make it any better. As a diversion, a sitcom-esque scenario might be distracting for 30 minutes, but this production dragged on forever, stretching to a mind-numbing three hours! I had to check the program to make sure it was 300 years old, not 300 years long.

I can't imagine what was going through Craig Bradshaw's head when he directed this show. The set was pitiful. The costumes were a schizophrenic car crash of times and styles (from Edwardian lords to modern streetwalkers). The blocking gave me a headache as characters crossed, twirled, and pranced around the stage with no discernible purpose. Actors with weaker voices were placed with their backs to the audience as they whispered their lines, while others were allowed to stand center stage and bellow. Halfway through, my mind was reeling at the sheer technical messiness of it all.

But one thing director Bradshaw did very well was cast. Brandon Whitehead, Amy Fleetwood, Charles Leggett--all very good actors who did their damnedest to make it all work. Unfortunately, The Provok'd Wife will not be the crowning achievement in any of their careers.