Showing age, still fun | Philadelphia Inquirer | 2011-06-06

Two Into One is the 10th Ray Cooney farce produced by Hedgerow Theatre. It's also the 10th with longtime company members Zoran Kovcic and Susan Wefel. And it's the second Cooney work featuring Kovcic as the hapless George Pigden, personal secretary to extramaritally inclined member of Parliament - wait for it - Richard Willey (Shaun Yates) and his lusty wife Pamela (Rebecca Cureton).

The first was Out of Order , which premiered in 1981. The 30th anniversary seems an appropriate time to remind audiences why the company keeps turning to this particular Brit for its summer entertainment.

Cooney, kind of the Jerry Lewis of the form (they love him in France), has written something like 20 farces, with one, Run for Your Wife , breaking records as the longest-running comedy on London's West End.

The man is simply a wizard when it comes to this particular formula.

Wives bed secretaries, husbands bed other men's wives, identities are mistaken, and perhaps most important, the show's second act features six doors (set design also by Kovcic), slammed emphatically and often. However, the farce is definitely showing its age, creaking with comic punch lines that hinge, for example, on Willey's declaration that Pigden is a "pornographic poofter."

As directed by Jared Reed, the production has plenty of mayhem, but less zing.

Its pace stumbles behind its dialogue, and while Yates smirks with a sleazy politician's hubris, and Kovcic sags his shoulders in resignation early and often, Susan Wefel, as Lily Chatterton, a take-no-prisoners and wear-sensible-shoes-while-doing-so parliamentarian sponsoring a vice bill, makes you wish the rest of the cast could meet her more than halfway. Much like Pigden, this production suffers from a lack of confidence.

Even so, it is still plenty of fun. Kovcic brings a real sympathy to his beleaguered character, and if Cureton is far too young for hers - either to play a convincingly bored homemaker or an amorous partner for Kovcic - she at least has a good time racing around in a nightie, her voice dreamy, her eyes cast in perpetual bedroom mode.

Cooney, at least here, is no Ayckbourn, and in that sense, Two Into One is best enjoyed at face value. It's light and fizzy, suited to the season like Prosecco. Clearly, it has similar issues with aging, and goes down just as easy. That's why Hedgerow keeps bringing this playwright back summer after summer, and why its audiences keep returning to cool off with another sip of his bubbly product.

Blast Emails – 3 Tips On Blasting E-Mails « Rays Personal Info

One of the most important things you can do to improve the success of your online marketing efforts is to take the time to build an opt in email list. When customers come to your website you can encourage them to sign up to your email list by offering them an incentive. Once they’ve signed up to your list you can communicate with them as often as you want.  You have two options when it comes to communicating with them, an email series and blast emails.

A email series is simply a number of emails, you determine how many, that have already been written and loaded into an autoresponder and that will be sent out over a period of time, automatically. For example, if you have created a series of emails that consists of 10 emails and you schedule them to go out daily, every person who signs up to your email or newsletter will immediately get the first email and they will then receive one email a day for nine more days .  The emails will continue to go out in the order you set them up in.  That way everyone will receive your emails whether they’ve been signed up for a long time or whether they’ve just signed up.

When you do a blast you will send out the same email to everyone on your list at the same time.  Everyone will receive the same message whether they’ve been signed up to your list for years or days.  This type of email message is particularly effective if you have some new product or service you want to let your customers know about,  or if you’re having a sale.  This is a great way to offer your customers a coupon for an upcoming sale.

Remember though, no email will be effective if it isn’t read.  For that reason make sure to follow these tips to get the most out of all of your email campaigns:

1. Carefully consider who your target audience is and what they want.  If you’re not sure you can ask them.  Send out an email and ask them to let you know what questions they have or what products they may be interested in.

2. Make sure you use a title that will pique their curiosity.  No matter how well written an email is, it won’t do you any good if your customers don’t read it.  Make the headline something compelling.

3.  Make your message short and to the point.  While you will want to ‘sell’ your customers a little bit if your message drags on and on you will most likely lose them.  Just highlight the most important things: what’s in it for them.  They will make up their own mind from that point on.

Out of order, a new comedy

Out of order, a comedy

Plays by Ray Cooney, Funny Money, Ray Cooney, Not Now, Darling, Run for Your Wife, Out of Order, Two Into One

Funny money, a new comedy

It runs in the family, a new comedy