MANSFIELD — Suzanne Allen and Lynne Rouzer are community theater veterans, as comfortable on stage as in their real lives.
But they had never met one another until a cold January evening during Mansfield Playhouse auditions for the comedic farce, “Said the Spider to the Spy.”
However, it didn’t take long for the duo to develop the on-stage chemistry crucial to the success of the play written by prolific comedic playwright Fred Carmichael in 1987.
“Said the Spider to the Spy” stages at the Mansfield Playhouse on Feb. 28, March 1, March 7 and March 8 at 8 p.m. and March 9 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors and $10 for students. Tickets can be purchased online at www.mansfieldplayhouse.com or by calling the box office at 419-522-2883. Tickets can also be purchased at the box office one hour prior to performances at the 95 E. Third St. theater.
The two occupy the stage alone for the first 10 minutes as August Waycross (Allen) and Ida Gormley (Rouzer), literally setting the stage for what is to come during the funny romp of mistaken and fake identities that opens Friday night for a two-weekend run.
Simply, if those two characters don’t jibe … what comes after would be challenging for the nine-member ensemble cast.
The plot
Augusta Waycross borrows the identity and the Florida beach home of her friend, a best selling romance author.
A cache of Colombian heroin is left in the house by missing guest, attracting various characters to the location.
A detective passes out after mistakenly overdosing on sleeping pills and drowsily awakes thinking he’s Adele’s husband, but so does a mysterious young man who keeps calling the Missing Persons Bureau to find out who he is.
Augusta and a friend, Ida Gormley, try to catch the drug king pin, but the real Adele arrives and finds herself surrounded by men claiming to be her husband.
Then, her husband shows up with and an odd couple from the women’s club.
Scene after hilarious scene culminate in revelations: who are these people and why are they pretending to be someone else.
Rouzer, who performed in the Columbus area for years before relocating to north central Ohio, credits Allen and other cast members for making her feel welcome in her Playhouse debut.
“Suzanne is a veteran of the stage here at the Playhouse. She’s been incredibly kind and gracious as everyone has been in welcoming me and making me feel as if I’m a part of the team,” Rouzer said before a dress rehearsal Monday night.
“Suzanne and I … we just sort of developed this little shtick together. We clown around backstage a little bit. There’s a sense of camaraderie that just was very, very natural with her,” said Rouzer, the senior vice president of student affairs and enrollment management at Franklin University in Columbus.
Allen has performed at the Playhouse for more than two decades, most recently in “Over the River and Through the Woods” in March 2024. She returns the compliment to Rouzer as quickly as the two characters interact on stage.
“It’s funny because we never had done anything together. I’ve never seen her do anything. She’s never seen me do anything and it just kind of clicked really easily,” said Allen, a retired school teacher.
“That’s happened with other actors, too, but I mean that it just seemed to come very naturally,” Allen said.
(Photos during a dress rehearsal this week for “Said the Spider to the Spy” at the Mansfield Playhouse. The story continues below the photos. Photos courtesy of Tim Lister.)
Doug Wertz, the artistic director at the Playhouse, credits both women for making it come together over just a few weeks of rehearsal.
“They have to have faith in one another to know which direction they’re going. I think both of them have the experience that they dedicate themselves to making sure that they’re feeding the other person,” he said.
The cast and crew
Suzanne Allen as Augusta Waycross
Lynne Rouzer as Ida Gormley
Kristofer Wood as Man
Amy Lister Sharp as Ruth St. Martin
Jill Cochran as Julia Sibley
David McWhorter as Manfred Sibley
Mary Ann Calhoun as Adele Addison
Jacob Hunsinger as Dexter Addison
Directed by Doug Wertz
Stage manager — DeeDee Welshans
“It’s easy to do the act/react if you have something to feed off of. To watch Lynn come in with that new energy and play opposite of Suzanne, and the way they really just hit it off, they’ve just done a fantastic job,” Wertz said.
The director credits cast member Mary Ann Calhoun for helping make the play happen.
Calhoun is a Playhouse veteran who has also served on the organization’s play-reading committee, picking shows for each season.
“Mary Ann suggested it many, many times. But for some reason or another, it never made the list on the final call. Something always bumped it,” Wertz said.
“So this time, she says, ‘I’d really like to see this happen. I’ve been trying for 15 or 20 years to get this on here.’
“So we all took a look at it again and said, “Gosh, this is fun. Let’s do it. Why not?'” Wertz said.
“Said the Spider to the Spy” is a comedy on steroids, rapidly moving to an unexpected (and unbelievable) solution.
“What’s funny is I think that just about any slapstick or quick-moving farce that involves doors, quick entrances and exits … a lot of comedies are farces,” Wertz said.
“They’re not necessarily based on reality. There are situation comedies and then there are farcical comedies where it’s just well and above what you would ever expect that could truly happen,” he said.
“So I think that’s really the definition of a farce. If it ever happened the way this show does … I think that’s taking coincidence to the ‘Twilight Zone.'”
