Caught in the Net teaches how-to lesson in necessary farce

In Theatre in the Square’s British comedy Caught in the Net, high schoolers Vicki Smith (Kate M. Dorrough) and Gavin Smith (Nick Arapoglou) hit it off when they meet online. The flirtatious teens can’t wait to meet in person, but have no idea that Gavin is, as the expression goes, a brother of another mother. Cab driver John Leonard Smith (Allan Edwards) is father to both of them, having maintained two separate families in the London boroughs of Wimbledon and Streatham for nearly two decades.

John realizes that if Vicki and Gavin meet, the results could be incest or the exposure of his bigamy, so he struggles to keep the unwitting relatives apart. Playwright Ray Cooney specializes in stage farces and constructs episodes of escalating absurdity with clockwork efficiency. Co-directors Alan Kilpatrick and Jessica Phelps West rev up the material until it rockets along, even though Caught in the Net doesn’t transcend the genre’s inherent silliness.

Caught in the Net

Through Feb. 21. $18-$33. Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369. www.theatreinthesquare.com.

While John rushes back and forth between the two households, he drafts his Wimbledon lodger Stanley (Christopher Ekholm) to keep the young people and their mothers (Wendy Fulton-Adams and Holly Stevenson) from meeting. Stanley only wants to take his doddering dad on holiday, but he unexpectedly becomes the butt of most of Cooney’s jokes. With John offstage for long stretches, Stanley must maintain inane deceptions, including the false impression that young Gavin is his rent-boy.

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(Photo by MJ Conboy)