‘The Seven-Year Itch’ leaves room for the imagination to roam

“The Seven-Year Itch,” Thibodaux Playhouse’s newest production, was a provocative comedy first written as a successful Broadway play, then made into a popular movie best remembered for Marilyn Monroe in a white dress savoring the updraft rising from a sidewalk grate.

Director Bert Boquet said the Thibodaux production of the George Axelrod play does not vary much from the 1955 movie directed by Billy Wilder, who famously had to cut a bedroom scene from the film at the urging of the censors.

Boquet is under no such pressure. In the play, book editor Richard (Troy Plaisance) and the nameless woman who is the object of his fantasies (Addie Ryman), go into a bedroom where “the Girl” is seen in a negligee.

“It was risqué for the time it was written,” Boquet said.

The lasciviousness would not shock anyone today, but Boquet does not know how Axelrod got away with it back then.

“Some of these things are suggestive,” he said. “For ‘the Girl,’ the lines are suggestive, but not that much. If you’re old enough to understand the subtle lines, it’s OK to see.”

Boquet said two women walked out on Thibodaux Playhouse’s last production, “Lucky Stiff,” when a couple were shown getting out of bed.

Around one quarter of “Itch” is occupied with Richard’s fantasies about “the Girl,” who lives in the same building, and his anxiety about his wife (Sheryl Harrison) possibly having an affair with another man (“Lucky Stiff” cast member John Griffin) while away on a trip.

According to the script, the audience is signaled that a fantasy sequence is beginning when the lights on the stage go out. Boquet will use only two blackouts, although the script calls for six or so. The director will shift the focus to allow the actors to go onstage for the other dream sequences.

Mostly, Boquet is impressed with his cast.

“Addie Ryman is new to the stage, but it’s hard to believe it to see her,” he said. “You’d have a hard time telling Addie Ryman from Marilyn Monroe.”

Plaisance has plenty of stage experience. The cast also features Hugh Caffery (the corpse in “Lucky Stiff”) as a psychiatrist consulted by Richard, Paul Cook as the radio announcer, and Shawn Cook.

“The Seven-Year Itch” will play at the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center (314 St. Mary St.) in Thibodaux, Friday, Oct. 5, and Saturday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 p.m., and Thursday, Oct. 11, to Saturday, Oct. 13, at 7:30 p.m. The run will close with a matinee on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 2 p.m.

For more information, call (985) 446-1896.

‘The Seven-Year Itch’ leaves room for the imagination to roam