Run for Your Wife (play)


Run for Your Wife is a 1983 comedy play by Ray Cooney.

Plot

The story concerns bigamist John Smith, a London cab driver with two wives, two lives and a very precisely planned schedule for juggling them both, with one wife at a home in Streatham and another nearby at a home in Wimbledon.
Trouble brews when Smith is mugged and ends up in hospital, where both of his addresses surface, causing both the Streatham and Wimbledon police to investigate the case. His careful schedule upset, Smith becomes hopelessly entangled in his attempts to explain himself to his two wives and two suspicious police officers, with help from his lazy layabout neighbour upstairs in Wimbledon.

Productions

Cast members have a precise schedule as well with many entrances and exits that create pressure and humour through this adult comedy.

London

and Bernard Cribbins took the lead roles in the original West End theatre production. It had a highly successful nine-year run in various theatres: Shaftesbury Theatre, Criterion Theatre, Whitehall Theatre, Aldwych Theatre and Duchess Theatre.

Original West End cast

Run for Your Wife opened on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre on March 7, 1989, directed by and starring Ray Cooney himself as taxi driver John Smith, and featuring Kay Walbye as his Wimbledon wife, Hilary Labow as his Streatham wife, Gareth Hunt and Dennis Ramsden as the police sergeants, and Paxton Whitehead as Smith's friend and accomplice. The New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow called the play "burdened with blind alleys, limp jokes, forced puns and troubled entendres," the acting "as ordinary as John Smith is supposed to be" and the staging "mechanical, as characters watch one another watching." The production closed on April 9 after 14 previews and 52 regular performances.

Seoul

The South Korean production of Run for Your Wife, under the title Liar, has had an open run in Seoul since 1998, and is considered one of the most successful performances in Korean theater history. Its sequel, Caught in the Net, also has had an open run in Seoul since 2004, under the title Liar 2.

Lahore

On 26 and 27 November 2016, the play was directed by Faiz Rasool from Independent Theatre Pakistan at Ali Auditorium, Lahore, Pakistan.

Film

A film adaptation of Run for Your Wife, co-directed by Ray Cooney and John Luton, was released on 14 February 2013, with both Briers and Cribbins appearing in cameo roles. Upon release the film was savaged by critics and has been referred to as one of the worst films of all time, after it grossed just £602 in its opening weekend at the British box office to its £900,000 budget.