Arts&Living Madcap Marriage Bliss in “Wife”

How many wives does one man want or need?

By Thom deMartino Orange County Tribune

It’s all fun and games until your presumed dead first wife shows up.

Along with ringing in the new year, the Westminister Community Playhouse is coming out swinging with a brand-new comedy, the Jim Katapodisdirected “One Wife Too Many”.

Television actor James Holden (Jeremy Krasovic) has returned home with his newest wife,

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Alicia (L. Ariana Rubio), but besides trying to celebrate his honeymoon with his new bride, secretly he’s trying to get the newest show put together with the help of his friend Hank (Dante Velez), including casting the actress who will play his TV wife.

Unfortunately, it seems that his newest beloved has had ulterior motives for marriage in the first place ... as she’s more enthusiastic about trying to land the role on the show then she is about being his wife in reality.

But as Alicia and her best friend Mitzi (a wonderfully goofy Stacy Castiglione) are fumbling with their own plans, they could never suspect that their newest obstacle is James’s presumed-dead first wife, the actress Velvet Taylor (Adriana Catanzarite), whose friend and agent Sally Fox (Spenser Woolard) has accompanied her to speak with her unknowing husband.

To add fuel to the fire, his assertive second wife Phoebe (Miki Gonzales) has shown up with her own befuddled husband Lance (Ervin Bolisay): it seems the paperwork was never properly finalized on their divorce, so therefore her current marriage is arguably fraudulent.

Compounding all of this, there’s Holden’s agent Lane Lawson (Eduardo Mora) trying to run the auditions in the adjacent apartment next door, without the knowledge of his current wife (or of her intentions.)

And as if this wasn’t all enough, there’s his forgotten third marriage, resulting from a crazy night in Vegas: and his ex Rita (Lisa Caperton) has arrived to add to the honeymoon festivities. This, coupled with her hot headed Vegas mobster boyfriend Max Malone (Leo Avila) is a recipe for disaster once he shows up with his two goons to ... eliminate the competition, shall we say?

It’s a potential powder keg