Loudonville father-daughter acting team stars in ‘Caught in the Net’

MANSFIELD — Scott Woodlee loves to engage in banter with Evelyn, his teenage daughter — just usually not in public.

The father/daughter from Loudonville make an exception in the comedy, “Caught in the Net,” which opens Friday night as the Mansfield Playhouse launches its 2024-2025 season.

“We like to banter back and forth in regular life and make fun … which if anybody saw that in public, they’d be like, it’s kind of weird,” said Scott Woodlee, pastor at Mohicanville Community Church

“So when we have it out on the stage, we’re in our element because we’re just happy, just picking on each other, like, ‘Go to your room or whatever.’

As if on cue, the 17-year-old Evelyn Wood, making her Playhouse debut, picked up where her dad left off during an interview Monday.

“Everybody else is probably thinking it’s like more serious. But in our heads we’re like, ‘It’s not,’ because we do that,” said Evelyn, a high school senior this fall who plans on becoming a pediatric nurse after college.

The two are part of a seven-member ensemble cast in this sequel to “Run for Your Wife,” both written by Ray Cooney, the now 92-year-old master of English farce comedies. He wrote “Run for Your Wife” in 1982 and the sequel 19 years later.

“People need to laugh. When people are in a deep depression, the thing that goes from them is the ability to laugh. Laughter is a wonderful fillip. And that’s why the theatre will never die – you put a group of kids in a room together and before long they’ll be larking around and trying to entertain each other.”

Playwright/actor Ray Cooney, 2014

The play finds bigamist taxi driver John Smith (Scott Woodlee) still keeping his two families in different parts of London, both happy and blissfully unaware of each other.

However, his teenage children, a girl (Evelyn Woodlee) from one family and a boy from the other, have met on the Internet and are anxious to meet in person since they have so much in common, including name, surname and taxi driving dad!

Trying to keep his children from other mothers apart — while also making sure those moms don’t meet — is the genius behind the show, a rapidly moving comedy in which disaster is literally waiting at the many doors on the Playhouse stage.

“Caught in the Net” will be performed at the Mansfield Playhouse, 95 E. Third St. on Sept. 6-7 and 13-14 at 8 p.m. and Sept. 15 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults, $13 for seniors and $10 for children 18 and under. For tickets, call the box office Wednesday through Friday from 1 to 6 p.m. and one hour prior to all performances at 419-522-2883. Tickets are also available on the Mansfield Playhouse website.

“It’s funny and it’s just constant chaos from the very beginning,” said Playhouse Artistic Director Doug Wertz, who also performs in the show as lodger Stanley Gardner. That character nearly loses his mind during the show trying to help his friend, John Smith, protect his secrets.

Wertz said it’s a great way to kick off the new season at the Playhouse, a busy theater that has nine offerings on its 2024-2025 schedule.

“It’s light and breezy. It’s good anytime we can do something that’s light and funny and invite the audience to come in and take their mind off things for a little while and just have a good laugh … don’t we all need that?” Wertz said.

A New York native, Scott Woodlee was most recently on the Playhouse stage in October 2023 in the psychological drama “Angel Street (Gaslight).”

He came to auditions for the new show with Evelyn, though he expected to be working in the crew.

“We saw the advertisement that they needed someone of her age. She has been in shows in other theaters, including her high school, and we thought it would be great for her to audition for this,” Scott Woodlee said.

“When they asked us both to be in the show, I thought it was a great opportunity, probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to be on stage with my daughter,” he said.

Evelyn Woodlee admitted “it’s a little weird” her real dad is also her stage dad.

“I feel like our dynamic is kind of the same,” she said with a laugh. “Our characters are different, obviously, but the whole father-daughter thing is sort of similar to what we would just do.”

Two local theater veterans from Mansfield play the bigamist’s wives in the production — Maureen Browning and Chevy Troxell Bond.

Both also have past experiences with the show’s characters and have shared the Playhouse stage together on many occasions.

Browning, who plays Barbara Smith in the show, performed the role of Mary Smith years ago when the Playhouse offered “Caught in the Net.”

“I am playing the different wife, which I am finding even harder,” she said. “She is on the phone quite a bit and she is constantly getting hung up on.

“She is confused half the time, pretty much right up until the end of the show,” said Browning, also a veteran of MTVarts and its Alcove Dinner Theater in Mount Vernon.

“I loved doing this show the first time. It was a blast and I looked forward to doing it again,” she said.

Bond played the role of Mary Smith at the Playhouse, also years ago, when the theater staged “Run for Your Wife.”

“It’s just a good show. It’s well written and I love British comedies,” she said.

(Mary) was the only role I wrote down when I auditioned. I knew I wanted Mary’s role because it was such a good show the last time,” Bond said.

“Mary is very accommodating. She loves her husband. It’s just the more I read into her as a character, I think she should just tell her husband to @#$% off,” she said with a laugh.

“Mary is just one of those great British characters,” she said.

(Photos from a dress rehearsal on Monday evening of “Caught in the Net” at the Mansfield Playhouse. The English comedy opens Friday evening.