Farce

You'd think that if they could get Bibles in every hotel room, somebody could figure out how to get dictionaries in all of them, too. Consider your itinerant writer in Toronto, synapses clogged by a surfeit of films competing for his attention at that city's annual film festival last month. Among these items is I (heart) Huckabees, David O. Russell's first feature in five years, which was set loose last week in some cities and opens here tomorrow. Trying to describe the movie to readers, your traveling reporter struggles for the right word.

"This is a complete farce," says a character in Terry Johnson's "Hysteria." "If I saw it in the theater, I wouldn't believe it." You might feel the same if you catch the stylish Rep Stage production of this 1993 play at Howard Community College, but you're likely to find yourself absorbed, amused, even a little astonished, as well. "Hysteria" has a historical starting point, the 1938 meeting in London between the fatally ill Sigmund Freud and the fanatically self-absorbed Salvador Dali.

Anne Arundel Community College's Moonlight Troupers present their spring production - Tom Stoppard's adult farce "On the Razzle" - in a two-weekend run beginning tomorrow at Pascal Center for the Performing Arts. Set in 19th-century Vienna, the comedy centers on men looking for adventure and women seeking romance. Based on Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy's 19th-century farce "Einen Jux will er sich machen" - the source of Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker," which later became "Hello, Dolly!"

Ray Cooney's fast-paced British farce Run for Your Wife first appeared in 1982 on London's West End, where it ran for nine years. Today, 2nd Star Productions demonstrates why this show has been so successful. Cooney's improbable plot focuses on a London cabdriver with a double life. John Smith spends his days with one wife in one apartment and his nights with a second wife in another. His precarious balance falls apart when he ends up in the emergency room. In a confused state, he gives both his addresses to hospital attendants.

When a character in a farce proclaims: "Absolutely nothing can go wrong," you can be dead certain there's trouble ahead.But just about everything goes right in Totem Pole Playhouse's production of "Lend Me a Tenor," the Ken Ludwig farce in which those fated words are spoken by the producer of the fictitious Cleveland Grand Opera Company.The things that go right begin with Baltimore actor Wil Love's portrayal of the producer, whose name is Saunders and who is having a Murphy's Law kind of day.The time is September 1934, and Saunders has engaged a world-famous Italian tenor, Tito Merelli, to make his American debut that night in Verdi's "Otello."

In their current production of Out of Order, the Bowie Community Theatre folks have moved British playwright Ray Cooney's 1990 comic farce about Parliament member Richard Willey's arranging a weekend tryst with secretary Jane Worthington from the British Parliament to today's U.S. Congress, where Richard now is a Republican senator and Jane a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's secretarial pool. Cooney's familiar formula of exaggerated characters dealing with mounting confusion, mistaken identities, and interruptions of slamming doors and windows and misdirected phone calls travels well.

With this production of Allen Boretz's and John Murray's zany comic farce Room Service, the folks at 2nd Star chase away any lingering winter blahs. Often dismissed as the Marx Brothers' not-so-funny movie, Room Service began life in 1937 as a Broadway show about the indomitable spirit of theater people who could mount a show back then for a mere $15,000. Charles Maloney, the 2nd Star director, met the challenges of enabling his 14-member cast to bring life to these struggling theater people who employ various strategies to remain hotel-housed and fed while bringing their show to production.

If laughter really is the best medicine, then the British comic playwright Ray Cooney could be called Dr. Farce.Cooney's hospital farce, "It Runs in the Family," opens tomorrow at the Spotlighters Theatre. Directed by Mike Moran, the production stars Rodney Atkins as a doctor who suddenly discovers he has an 18-year-old "love child" from a former romance with a nurse.Show times at the Spotlighters, 817 St. Paul St., are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, through June 9. Tickets are $10. Call (410)

Spreading `Rumors' The Vagabond Players continues its 85th anniversary season with Neil Simon's "Rumors," opening tomorrow. A farce set at the home of the deputy mayor of New York, the play begins with guests arriving for an anniversary party, only to find that their host has been shot. "Rumors" is directed by John Ford, whose experience with farce includes this past summer's rollicking "Noises Off" for Towson University's Maryland Arts Festival. The cast of "Rumors," which includes some holdovers from the Towson show, features Annmarie Amlick, Steve Antonsen, Barbara Gehring, Patrick Martyn, Paris Obligin, Holly Pasciullo, Bryon Predika and Tom Wyatt.