Ken Ludwig's new play puts a comedy spin on England's fight against the Germans in World War II.
Ken Ludwig is one of the most prolific, and most produced, playwrights around, including numerous mountings of his works in Sarasota. Audiences here have responded enthusiastically to his mostly comedic plays, and his latest, Asolo Rep's world premiere of Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, will most likely prove no exception to that response.
Inspired by (but not really based on) stories from the early 1900s by the Baroness Orczy of Scarlet Pimpernel fame, Lady Molly updates the action (and there's plenty of that) to 1940, when England was being besieged by German air raids. Prime Minister Winston Churchill faced assassination attempts; spies were infiltrating the staff of code breakers at top-secret Bletchley Park; and the survival of the free world was apparently hanging by a very slender thread.
Riding to the rescue (literally, in amusing scenes depicting both car and airplane transportation) are Lady Molly (Kate Loprest) and her trusty sidekick at Scotland Yard, Peg (Adelin Phelps). Somehow this pair seems uniquely qualified to suss out just what's going on at Bletchley, even as the bodies start piling up.
The first to go is a Cambridge prof named (wait for it) Earl Grey, like the tea. That murder leads our detective duo to his actress widow (Ellen Harvey), her Castilian maid (also Harvey), and eventually to Molly's friend Jock Colville (Jake Loewenthal), one of several real-life historical figures written into the play. Jock gets Molly and Peg to Bletchley, where the inhabitants include another character taken from real life, Professor Alan Turing (Loewenthal again), a brilliant eccentric who pedals around on his bicycle in his pajamas.
As I mentioned, there's lots of action in Lady Molly, and it's swiftly paced (under the direction of Asolo Rep producing artistic director Peter Rothenstein), with well-choreographed fight scenes and special stage effects that deliberately invite us to laugh at their implausibility. I might have liked just a little more backstory on how Molly and Peg came to their roles at the Yard and as friends, but there's no time for that here. Instead we're whisked along from one scene and character to the next, with most of the cast playing multiple roles. Among those definitely earning their pay: Harvey, Loewenthal, John Leggett, Christian Thompson and Chris Hoch, each switching quickly and easily from one part to the next.
It's all fun, if rather silly fun at times, and audiences will surely find themselves entertained. Lady Molly is lively and brisk, and there's even a preface of period musical numbers to cue up the nostalgia many of us seem to feel for the era. Maybe it will inspire some to head back to the history books to refresh what they know about the real story of Bletchley, the Enigma Machine, and the heroes who really saved the day.