The Marriage Dance "An Evening of Farce" consisting of Georges Feydeau's "The Purging" and Bertolt Brecht's The Wedding." Directed by Andre Ernotte.

"The Marriage Dance," on the other hand, adds no luster to the BAM Theater Company's otherwise promising first season. The twin bill at the Lepercq is subtitled "An Evening of Farce," a designation that turns out to be only half accurate. The first half, Bertolt Brecht's "The Wedding" (1919), must be one of the unfunniest farces ever written. At least it is in this adaptation. The labored lampoon of a wedding party proves as ramshackle as the bridgeroom's homemade furniture and as boring as his father-in-law's anecdotes. The players deserve sympathy.

Georges Feydeau's "The Purging" (1910), which concludes the two-farce entertainment, concerns a porcelain manufacturer's efforts to sell chamber pots to the French Army. Feydeau divides his attention between marital strife and bathroom humor. As an exercise in farcical histrionics the production benefits from Brian Murray's mounting desperation as the manufacturer and Roxanne Hart's comic deftness as his nitwit wife.