‘No Sex Please, We’re British’ opens Little Theatre’s season

Fun with porn.

Sorta.

Curiously, that delivers us to Las Vegas Little Theatre's season kickoff with the '70s-era Brit sex farce, "No Sex Please, We're British," premiering tonight on the main stage.

Porn? Propels the plot. Explanation forthcoming. First, though:

"It has the qualities of a Benny Hill episode," says director Walter Niejadlik. "There's lots of scantily clad girls running around, doors slamming, older gentlemen chasing them, and nary a foul word."

Seems familiar. British playwrights adore this genre. Frankly, if you're a Little Theatre attendee, you'd best cherish comedies in general, wherever their point of origin.

Point by point:

The play: A 1971 oldie (adapted as a 1973 film) in which Frances, the new bride of Peter, an assistant bank manager, sends for mail-order Scandinavian glassware, and instead receives -- and keeps receiving -- an obscene treasure trove of pornography. Complications? Certainly, when they're visited by Peter's mother, his boss and a police chief, risking a lot of tsk-tsking.

The theater: Responding to a recession-weary subscriber base not prone to appreciating the Sturm-und-Drang of dramas these days, Las Vegas Little Theatre has assembled an all-comedy season on its main stage. (The Black Box will still trade in drama.)

"We can't sell the dramas," Niejadlik says. "People see enough drama in their own lives and on TV, and they're coming to the theater to escape for a little while. That's what we're hearing from our patrons."

The creakiness: Porn as a shockeroo that lights the fuse on the story? Explicit sex in the media is -- love it or loathe it -- pretty mainstream in 21st-century America and seems a lame plot propellant now. However, Niejadlik still sees comic juice to be squeezed out of it.

"Prudishness is still very prevalent in our culture. There are always people pooh-poohing and 'protect the children,' " Niejadlik says.

"It's funny, but we had a discussion with the cast because the actors for the most part are in their 20s and they didn't understand that in the '70s, a picture of a topless girl was shocking. It was pretty scandalous to (go to a store) to get your copy of Juggs."

Anachronisms work in genuine "period pieces," given an audience's distance from the customs of the time. Yet in a play set in what passes for a contemporary world but one most theatergoers know as hopelessly outdated in the "America Pie"/"40-Year-Old Virgin" era, the oh-my-goodness-it's-smut! device feels quaintly silly.

Across-the-pond yuks: Allies in war? Tight as Lindsay Lohan and stolen jewelry. Humorwise, however, the cockneys and the colonies practice different forms of comedy that often go over the head or under the radar of each other.

Excepting affection for a few sophisticated auteurs such as Woody Allen in his prime, Americans aren't big on subtlety in their contemporary farces, in which sight gags dominate, Jason Biggs gets lucky with pastry in "American Pie" and Katherine Heigl enjoys vibrating panties under a restaurant table in "The Ugly Truth."

British humor, conversely -- excluding broad clowns such as Benny Hill -- can be very quippy rather than visual, dry as a 007 martini, laced with sarcasm and even bitterness, and peppered with native slang that can leave American audiences blank-faced.

And yet.

"It depends," Niejadlik says about Little Theatre regulars' response to imported English rib-ticklers.

"We've had great success with some British comedies. Things like 'How the Other Half Loves' did real well, and with 'Don't Dress for Dinner' (actually a French farce by Marc Camoletti but handled by British translators), we wound up adding a performance, and 'What the Butler Saw' did extremely well. If it's heavy, socially related humor, I don't think Americans key into it, but the sex farces are very relatable."

Grasping U.K. sensibilities will also be useful when the company stages two more of their theatrical babies -- the classic "Blithe Spirit" (April 6-22) and "The 39 Steps" (May 4-20) -- climaxing a comedy cavalcade season that will also feature "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (Nov. 4-20), "Sylvia" (Jan. 13-19) and "Jewtopia" (Feb. 24-March 11).

"We're really trying to do different styles of comedy so it's not six British sex farces," Niejadlik says. "We have a pretty varied array."

Think of it as a little fish and chips, a little pizza and beer.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.