‘Funny Money’: Silly Exchange of Farce

It’s no wonder that British playwright Ray Cooney is so popular on the dinner theater circuit. Cooney’s self-consciously naughty farces are probably best appreciated by those well fortified with grub and grog.

Whatever the venue, Cooney’s fluff requires an authoritative waggishness to rise above its own vapidity. “Funny Money,” Cooney’s romp about a mild-mannered accountant who serendipitously blunders onto a fortune in untraceable bank notes, receives a checkered staging at International City Theatre. Director Claudia Jaffee too frequently mistakes the artificial for the mannered in her overly emphatic approach, probing for laughs with a sharp poke instead of a sly nudge.

A laborious opening sequence is a case in point. Jean Perkins (Tracy Pulliam), who is waiting for her accountant husband Henry (Time Winters) to get home from work, signals her anxiety over his lateness with a twitching neuroticism that exhausts her character’s resources--and our patience--before the play has fairly commenced. It’s a throwaway scene delivered with a catapult--an indication of trouble ahead.

However, resolutely silly performances prevail over directorial missteps. Winters is well cast as Henry, a hard-working drone maddened by a whiff of freedom; Tom Paliferro’s hilariously smarmy copper keeps a keen eye on the main chance; and Brenan Baird brings down the house as a clean-cut and likable police inspector reduced to gibbering malevolence by Henry’s machinations.

* “Funny Money,” International City Theatre, Long Beach City College, Clark Street and Harvey Way, Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 7. $20. (562) 938-4128. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.