Play «Trai Đẹp Lắm Chiêu» (Crafty Handsome Man)

   A London cab driver with two wives, two homes and a timetable planned to the minute — until a street mugging lands him in hospital and puts both addresses into two separate police files. What follows is the oldest engine in comedy: a lie propped up by another lie, and then by one more. In Ho Chi Minh City the story gets two evenings this September.

   The source is «Run for Your Wife», a 1983 comedy by the British playwright Ray Cooney. It held London's West End for nine years, moving through five theatres — the Shaftesbury, Criterion, Whitehall, Aldwych and Duchess. The Vietnamese version, «Trai Đẹp Lắm Chiêu», was adapted and directed by Hong Ngoc (Hồng Ngọc).

   Eight actors of Nhà hát Kịch Thanh Niên carry it: Hoang Phi (Hoàng Phi), Tran Kim Hai (Trần Kim Hải), Huynh Thi (Huỳnh Thi), Vuong Chi Nam (Vương Chí Nam), Tuan Tu (Tuấn Tú), Mai Bao Han (Mai Bảo Hân), Mong Huyen (Mộng Huyền) and Thien Luan (Thiện Luân), with Tram Thanh Thao (Trầm Thanh Thảo) running the production.

   If you like situation comedy — doors opening at the wrong second, explanations getting more tangled with every line — this is your evening. There are two performances, on 13 and 27 September, a fortnight apart, so missing one date still leaves you the other.

   The play is performed in Vietnamese, and it is an adaptation rather than a translation. Much of the comedy sits in the situations and in the entrances and exits, so the stage business carries a good deal of it on its own.

   Come for an evening that asks nothing of you but laughter.