OnStage: Out of wedlock

Call it cosmic comic timing. When the Guthrie Theater chose the marriage comedy "When We Are Married" more than a year ago, theater officials could not have imagined that the show's subject would be so current.

Yet it is, thanks to South Carolina's governor and onetime presidential aspirant Mark Sanford, who has given new meaning to the expression "hiking the Appalachian Trail."

Another would-be president, Nevada Sen. John Ensign, also copped to having an extramarital affair.

And, let's not forget, gay marriage is a hot-button issue nationwide. In fact, the conundrum of many gays and lesbians who were legally wed in California before a ballot measure changed the law is similar to the quandary of the three heterosexual couples in "Married," the Guthrie production of the J.B. Priestley comedy that is set in 1908.

In "Married," the Parkers, Helliwells and Soppitts meet to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversaries. Instead, they discover that they may not have been properly joined. The person who married them was not yet qualified to do so.

The news causes some of the characters to feel liberated; they might not want to be in a marriage in the first place. Others are chagrined. This is Edwardian England, after all, and to live in unholy matrimony -- to shack up -- is scandalous.

"It's a total confection," said Peter Michael Goetz, who plays Herbert Soppitt, a solicitor. "And, oh, it's delicious."

A lot of history

Goetz and his fellow actors are close to being the embodiment of stage pillars at the Guthrie. The cast includes Linda Kelsey, a performer whom he lusted after when both started at the theater more than 40 years ago. Both are married to other people -- Goetz for more than 43 years, Kelsey for 30 years (to her second husband). Yet their longtime offstage history -- "he's just a flirt," Kelsey said -- now informs their onstage chemistry.

"I've been married for a good long while, but as soon as someone would tell me that all my papers are not in order, I go, 'Well, where's Trixie?'" he said with a laugh.

The performers include such veterans as Barbara Bryne, Patricia Conolly and Helen Carey, all of whom go back to the Guthrie's first decade. Bryne plays a housecleaner, while Conolly and Carey play the halves of couples.

Sally Wingert and Bob Davis, from the theater's middle history, are also part of the "Married" cast. They first trod the boards at the Guthrie in the 1980s. And relative newcomers Jonas Goslow and Christine Weber are graduates of the Guthrie's BFA program at the University of Minnesota.

All in all, the "Marriage" actors have about three centuries' worth of combined stage experience -- "but we don't look it," said Kelsey.

The play is directed by John Miller-Stephany, who has lent his light touch to musicals and plays, including "1776" and  Jane Eyre."

The production, which follows the Tony Kushner festival, is not exactly fluff but it's also not the meaty stuff that Kushner offered. "But there's value in the reprieve from the heaviness that inundates us in so many ways," said Weber, who plays Alderman Helliwell's courted niece.

Playing with accents

"Marriage" is set in Clecklewyke, a town in Yorkshire, England. Its characters all are strivers from the merchant class. "They have achieved a certain amount and so they are keen to put on airs," said Carey.

Those airs trap them. The actors, who hail from the United States as well as parts of the English Commonwealth, are using different English accents to tell the story, including Received Pronunciation.

"None of us are uppercrust by birth; we all work our way up," said Carey. "That makes it interesting that we're such snobs. Your accent told where you were born and where you went to school. We're really just one step away from our working-class roots."

Conolly said she is happy to be part of the Guthrie family.

"Theater is the passing on of culture from one generation to the next," she said, recalling that she acted with, among others, Dame Sybil Thorndike, the English performer for whom George Bernard Shaw wrote "Saint Joan." That makes her, and the Guthrie, part of a wider history and canon. "To young people, the Guthrie is ancient history," she said. "To me, it's just yesterday."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390