Рэй Куни «Смешные деньги», комедия
перевод с английского и редакция Михаила Мишина

Постановка Константина Райкина
Художник-постановщик Борис Валуев
Художник по костюмам Андрей Климов

Действующие лица и исполнители:
Джейн Перкинс - Народная артистка РФ Лика Нифонтова, Агриппина Стеклова
Генри Перкинс - Лауреат государственной премии РФ Денис Суханов
Билл - Тимофей Трибунцев, Игорь Гудеев
Дэвенпорт - Заслуженный артист РФ Алексей Якубов
Слейтон - Заслуженный артист РФ Владимир Большов, Сергей Климов
Бетти Джонсон - Заслуженная артистка РФ Марина Иванова, Заслуженная артистка РФ Елена Бутенко-Райкина
Виктор Джонсон - Максим Аверин, Лауреат государственной премии РФ Григорий Сиятвинда
Прохожий - Яков Ломкин, Андрей Оганян

Ray Cooney (born 1932) is an English playwright and actor, sometimes known as "the master of farce". His biggest success, Run For Your Wife, lasted nine years in London's West End and is its longest-running comedy.[1] He has had 17 of his plays performed there.

Biography
Cooney began acting in 1946, and appeared in many of Brian Rix's "Whitehall farces" throughout the fifties and sixties. It was during this time that he co-wrote his first play One For The Pot which was, according to Cooney, "immediately successful".

Other works by Cooney include Not Now Darling, Move Over Mrs Markham, Wife Begins at Forty, Two into One and its sequel Out of Order, It Runs in the Family, a sequel to Run For Your Wife entitled Caught in the Net and Funny Money. He recently co-wrote a farce with his son Michael, Tom, Dick and Harry. Cooney's farces combine a traditional British bawdiness with structural complication, as characters leap to assumptions, are forced to pretend to be things that they aren't, and often talk at cross-purposes to hilarious effect.

In 1983, Cooney created the Theatre of Comedy Company and became its artistic director. During his tenure it produced over twenty plays such as Pygmalion starring Peter O'Toole and John Thaw, Loot and Run For Your Wife.

Cooney has also appeared on TV and in several movies, including a movie adaptation of Not Now Darling, which he co-wrote with John Chapman.

In 2005, Cooney was awarded an O.B.E. in recognition of his services to drama.

If you want to learn more, visit http://www.writersguild.org.uk/public/0 … ooney.html

to find:

In the farce lane
Ray Cooney is one of Britain’s most successful playwrights. To date he has had 17 plays staged in the West End including Run For Your Wife and Funny Money.  His work has been translated into more than 40 languages and countless productions have been staged all around the world. He was recognised with an OBE in the New Years Honours (2005)....

Funny Money, now a movie starring Chevy Chase, was one of the many farces written by Ray Cooney. It premièred at The Churchill Theatre, Bromley, London, England, in 1994, followed by a successful two-year run in the West End. Cooney directed his own play and also played the part of Henry Perkins.

Dramatis personae
Henry Perkins, an insignificant middle-aged middle-class accountant
Jean Perkins, his pretty wife
Vic Johnson, a friend of the Perkinses'
Betty Johnson, Vic's wife, also pretty
Bill, a London taxi driver
Davenport, a bent copper
Slater, a straight copper
A passer-by

Here are some reviews.

The one below comes from The British Theatre Guide site.

Funny Money
By Ray Cooney
Ian Dickens Productions
Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and touring

Review by Sheila Connor (2007)

Farce demands split-second timing, numerous doors for endless exits and entrances, very high speed delivery giving the audience no time to dissect and examine the convoluted plot and, for me, it has to be at least half way believable.

In this play Henry Perkins (David Callister) finds he has picked up the wrong briefcase and, instead of his office papers and half a cheese and chutney sandwich, he discovers one million five hundred thousand pounds in used notes. (Inflation has hit the stage – the original was £735,000.) Well – it could happen to anyone, and what would anyone do? Count the notes several times in disbelief, have a few drinks to steady the nervous excitement and rush home in a slightly delirious, slightly drunken daze to tell the spouse that “we’re off to Barcelona – first class!” All right so far – I’ll believe that – especially as that amount of money in cash suggests it is already illicit gains and chances are the police won’t be informed. “But” says Henry’s wife Jean (a very young Harriet Usher), “what about Mr. Nasty who now has your briefcase? Besides I don’t want to go and we’re expecting our friends Betty and Vic for your birthday dinner”.

From here the situation becomes more and more fraught as the arrival of a policeman sends the couple into a spin and they begin the lies which escalate as one situation follows another and soon the stage is awash with friends, policemen and cab driver, constantly coming and going and all of whom are given a different story, which they try desperately to fit into some sort of sense.

I have to admire the cast (led by John Altman of Eastenders fame) for their amazing memories as they swap names, identities and relationships so frequently and swiftly that it is a miracle they remember who they really are at the end of the show, and the set construction has to be complimented too for the very solid doors which withstand any amount of slamming – until a handle accidentally falls off a door, is fixed back on, and falls off again when a door on the other side of the stage is opened. This is true farce and extra funny being totally unintentional. The more a situation is contrived and played for laughs the less amusing it becomes, and it is almost a ‘trademark’ of British farce that people have to be discovered in comprising situations (rather overdone and held too long in my opinion) and then have to talk their way out of them – or in this case accept the mistaken conclusions.

So what happens to the money and does Henry manage to keep it? Well, it begins to fritter away in pay-offs to almost everyone, beginning with £25,000 for the first policeman (played splendidly deadpan and almost seriously by Robert Duncan). Vic (Peter Blake of the expressive eyebrows) takes a cut before being included in the escape plan and Betty (Caroline Lister who seems to have most of the best lines) becomes over-dramatically graphic when describing a murder and is told “Jean, you’re not the Daily Mail”.

There are plenty of very funny one-liners with some topical references to bring the dialogue up to date. A pleasant evening’s entertainment, and cab driver (Patric Kearns) sorts it all out in the end.

Curtain Call Theatre Review:
Ray Cooney play a romp through 'average Joe' tale

By Carol King

When you see Ray Cooney's name on a script you can be fairly certain of what you will be experiencing. He is called by some the "master of British farce." He characterizes the average working-class Brit as selfish, stupid and -- because of his selfishness and stupidity -- befuddled. His sets require many doors so that the cast members, in their befuddlement, can race in and out of them, mindlessly attempting to avoid the result of their selfishness and stupidity. Among his canon you will find "Run for Your Wife" and its sequel "Caught in the Net." "Funny Money," now being presented by Curtain Call Theatre, is a perfect example of Cooney's apparent world view.

The premise is that an average Joe, Henry Perkins, ably played by Ted Zeltner, finds a fortune in a briefcase that he mistakenly brings home. He decides that he and his wife Jean (Linda Mizeur) must take the money and go to Barcelona to live.

The trouble is, it's his birthday and they have guests coming for dinner. Henry calls for a taxi to take them to the airport and Jean begins a night of slugging back brandy after brandy. Vic Johnson (Dan Kelly) and his wife Betty (Monica Cangero) arrive to find the couple in a stew.

It isn't long before the taxi driver (David Edward Campbell) comes in for the first time to announce that he is waiting for the Perkinses and that the meter is running. Finally, an inspector from Scotland Yard (Howie Schaffer) makes an appearance carrying Henry's real briefcase that contains not a fortune but half a cheese and chutney sandwich. He has alarming news.

In and Out
During the course of this 82-minute play, with a 15-minute intermission, the audience is treated to lots and lots of running in and out of doors, briefcases being switched and then switched back, and necessarily mistaken identities.

The cast plays the chaos deftly. Zeltner is remarkable for his quick memory and handles any glitches about who ends up being who with humorous equanimity. The audience was with him all the way. Mizeur, as his ultimately sloshed wife, never overplays her inebriation. She displays a subtlety of timing as she progresses from a silent stupor to a rollicking drunkenness. Cangero is arch and bright as Betty, making a certain sense out of every crazy situation, and Kelly, always a reliable actor, gives a solid performance. Schaffer and Campbell round out the cast capably with their multiple entrances and exits.

Director Steve Fletcher moves the actors wisely and with fluid confidence about the set that is, by the way, mercifully free of shudders as the doors open and slam shut. Bless the talented scenic designer William E. Fritz for that. Lori Barringer, sound designer and stage manager, makes an onstage telephone ring -- joyously -- on stage.

If you love farce, this show is for you.