From the title, it promises to be one of those comedies that used to
open on Broadway on Thursday and close on Saturday.
But ho-ho-ho, who’s had the last laugh here? Playwright Michelle
Riml, that’s who, for her SEXY LAUNDRY has played London, Paris,
Zagreb, Budapest, and Waipukurau (that’s in New Zealand).
As for Warsaw, SEXY LAUNDRY opened there in 2012 and is still
running. Granted, it’s in rep with other shows, but that’s nevertheless
no small achievement.
Now it’s at Cape May Stage in New Jersey, where artistic director Roy
Steinberg has given it a deft production that explains its worldwide
success. Yes, Riml has written slam-bang funny dialogue that the title
suggests, but she’s made room for a truthful and on-target look at a
long-term marriage.
Still, Steinberg wouldn’t have got very far with this two-hander if he
didn’t have the right duo. He made it easier for himself by casting Bill
Timoney and Georgette Reilly Timoney, who have been wed for 23
years. That’s only two years shy of the marriage that Riml’s Henry
and Alice have had.
However, those characters didn’t quite celebrate their 25 th
anniversary; they merely marked it after experiencing the highs and
lows of wedlock (with an emphasis on the second syllable).
It’s a play in which people who know each other don’t really know
each other. So, after all these years, do they now have nothing in
common?
No, they both have the same vision. Would that it were vision for the
future, but here vision means that their eyes are farsighted. Alice
puts on her glasses and reads an article to Henry, who, after deciding

to check it out, borrows those glasses and, without a hitch, reads the
page.
It’s about the only way in which they’re on the same page and the
only way they’re farsighted. Some of this has to do with sex, or the
lack of it. Riml reminds us that men reach their sexual peak in their
20s, while women take two decades or more to reach theirs.
So, for some time now, Alice has found eroticism in short supply.
She’ll now take her non-bull by the hands and bring Henry to a $750-
a-night room in “the hottest hotel in the city” in hopes that some
heat will find its way into him.
As much as Alice wants to spice things up, the spice that Henry
wants is space. “We’re busy people” he says, which is both a fact and
an excuse of why they’re not doing what used to come naturally.
Will a massage be an acceptable substitute? Should they just settle
for cuddling? He says the situation has made her mad, but she claims
that she’s sad. “Mad” here means angry, not crazy, although Alice
does drive Henry crazy for most of the 90 minutes that we’re in their
company.
And fantasies? Alice is frank about hers, which turn out to be at least
R-rated. They unnerve Henry – although he’s far more ruffled when
she asks him to tell her his. Is the silence you know better than the
revelations you don’t want to know?
No. For all the talk about how men only think with their genitals,
Henry’s fantasies are decidedly romantic in nature. One of them is for
his grown children to think that he’s “funny and wise.”
(Yeah, that’s a fantasy, all right …)
After hair loss and weight gain enter the conversation, Alice starts
shooting with both barrels, which spurs Henry to bring out the heavy
artillery, too. If any proof is needed that the script and the Timoneys
were succeeding in gaining the audience’s sympathy, it came when

Alice brought up divorce. How the crowd moaned! They had come to
genuinely care about this couple.
Henry is equally aghast, for that would mean that they’d “throw away
25 years.” Yeah, that’s the problem with marriages, isn’t it? If a
husband and wife lasts a quarter-century but then split, it implies
that the whole relationship was a failure.
Mr. Timoney, most recently seen in the Broadway revivals of PURLIE
VICTORIOUS and OUR TOWN, has Johnny Carson looks worthy of a
biopic. Throughout the play, watch how he’s able to furrow his brows
in slightly different ways to punctuate what he just said. He’s very
funny in a scene where, to take his mind off his problems, he turns
to the television but can’t remotely deal with the remote.
He’s more, though, than just a fine comic. When he tells Alice
“Nothing ever measures up to what’s in your mind” he says it with
the requisite sadness and doesn’t sound as if he’s didactically
lecturing her. Even when she accuses him of preferring to give
attention to television rather than to her, his response, “Must I
relinquish one pleasure to have another?” could be offensive if a less
gifted actor were to say it. Not with Mr. Timoney.
Best of all, what Mr. Timoney does with his mouth on the simple
statement “I’m a man” turns a perfunctory remark into a one filled
with honesty, humility, and regret.
Meanwhile, Ms. Timoney has a nice side-of-the-mouth delivery when
her teeth aren’t clenched as well as the occasional delicious giggle. In
a many minutes-long scene that’s one of the most demanding
physical assignments that has ever been asked of any performer, she
proves that she can exercise her stage talents while simultaneously
exercising her body when miming running on a treadmill.
When Ms. Timoney says with truth permeating her voice, “We’ve lost
something and we don’t know how to find it,” more than one couple
in the Cape May audience nodded. That happened again when she
sadly reminisced, “Remember when we didn’t care if we got enough
sleep?”

That sincerity is what keeps Riml’s play from becoming something
akin to such forgettable farces as PAJAMA TOPS. Alice isn’t there just
to provide low comic relief to her more serious partner. She comes
up with penetrating statements and touches us when she says, “I
don’t want to go along because we’ve been going along.”
As the show goes along, matters do get kinky. Lord knows how many
theatergoers were laughing because they had tried such sexual
maneuvers at home … or would as soon after they did get home.
But the truth, direction and performances will remain in their minds
for some time as well. Certainly, one of the five theaters at New
World Stages would be the next nice step for this production in the
ever-burgeoning reach of SEXY LAUNDRY.