'The Underpants' Brings the Crowds Out to the Beck Center

The Underpants — a hilarious send-up of middle-class snobbery and conformity based on a controversial early 20th-century German expressionist satire by Carl Sternheim — opened this weekend at the .

All three shows were well-attended.

The Steve Martin adaption is billed as an uproarious romp about a puritanical bureaucrat and his pretty, young wife who creates quite the scandal when her bloomers accidentally fall down in public.

New York City-based director Matthew Earnest recruited a local cast and crew for the performance set to run through April 23.

Earnest said the show — a “wild, door-slamming high-jinks satire” — is right up Lakewood’s alley.

 “I love Lakewood, I love coming to Cleveland,” he said. “I think people here will have a fabulous time. They will howl with laughter, then they’ll leave and tell all their friends that it’s a very fun night.”

In The Underpants, Martin brings his comic genius and sophisticated literary style to Sternheim’s classic 1910 farce. His hilarious version opened Off-Broadway in 2002 to critical acclaim. The New York Times called the show “laugh-out-loud funny” and the Village Voice said it was “hilarious and bawdy.”   

“I saw it Friday night, it was very funny,” said Beck Center spokeswoman Fran Storch, adding the seats will fill up once word spreads. “The crowd really responded. It’s a very fun show. Personally, I loved the set and the costume design.”

Tickets for The Underpants are $28 for adults, $25 for seniors (65 and older), $17 for students (with valid ID), and $10 for children (12 and under). An additional $3 service fee per ticket is applied at the time of purchase. Preview night on Thursday, March 31 is $10 with general admission seating. Group discounts are available for parties of 13 or more.

 For tickets, call the Beck Center box office at 216-521-2540, ext. 10, or purchase seats online at www.beckcenter.org. 

Beck Center’s production of The Underpants is presented through special arrangement with Samuel French Inc. and is sponsored by FIT Technologies, Cox Communications, Ohio Arts Council, and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.