They see London, they see France: Adobe Theater presents Steve Martin's 'Underpants'

The Adobe Theater is ready to drop their drawers.

“‘The Underpants,’ as probably evidenced by the name, is a very silly, goofy bedroom farce,” said director Tanner Sroufe.

The play is comedian Steve Martin’s loose adaptation of German playwright Carl Sternheim’s 1910 farce of the same name (“Die Hose” in German).

“I think the bulk of the dialogue is Steve Martin,” Sroufe said, “but the basic story comes from Carl Sternheim.”

That story centers on Louise Maske, the wife of a government clerk, who loses her underpants while watching a royal parade. Zaniness ensues.

From his early “Saturday Night Live” performances to his New Yorker humor columns, Martin is known for mixing lowbrow comedic elements with cerebral wit.

“I would say this play tends toward the silly and zany, but it has — especially with certain characters — that sophistication, as well,” Sroufe said. “It’s typical Steve Martin fare. Very goofy, very over-the-top. There’s a lot of physical comedy. And, like I said, it’s a bedroom farce, so it centers around the romantic relationships between the characters.”

“The Underpants” is Sroufe’s second directorial effort.

“The first one was ‘Clue’ at Hold the Applause Productions — another farce, a little bit more well-known than ‘The Underpants,’” Sroufe said. “I loved it, and I fell in love with directing.”

Sroufe said he’s “more confident” the second time around, and he plans to do “a lot more directing in the future.”

He also said the talented actors he’s working with make his job easy.

“It’s a small cast of five, and it’s been an absolute dream to work with each and every one of them,” Sroufe said. “Sarah Kesselring is the primary actor. She plays Louise, and she’s so good.”

“In most of the scenes, she’s kind of the ‘straight man,’ and the goofiness happens around her. She does such a good job of keeping those scenes grounded,” he said. “I think people don’t realize that comedy has all the same requirements of drama. You still have to go to those emotionally vulnerable places. You still have to play the role realistically and earnestly.”

Certain comedic elements in Sroufe’s production were happy accidents. For instance, he said he had originally planned to make a large sofa the centerpiece of the set, but they began rehearsing with a much smaller piece of furniture as a stand-in, which ended up being much funnier.

“It’s a chaise lounge, and it’s about two sizes too small for everybody. It’s not child size, but it’s almost child size. And there’s a lot of action. There’s people laying on that couch, there’s people sitting next to each other on that couch who barely fit. There’s people falling off of that couch,” Sroufe said. “So, I decided to keep it for the show, because it made me laugh so much during rehearsal, I couldn’t imagine doing it without it.”

He also said that, due to budgetary and space constraints, he had to limit the play’s action to a single room. Doing so, he said, created the feeling of a “door farce,” where the characters’ many entrances and exits add extra humor in the scenes.

Sroufe cautioned that “The Underpants” may not be appropriate for all audiences.

“The show is PG-13, so I wouldn’t recommend it for little kids,” he said. “It’s a bedroom comedy, a sex comedy, and the whole show is slathered in innuendo from top to bottom.”