New Comedy Developing Nicely at Bickford

It’s hard for couples to get away from it all when all they have is each other. Even in Paris.

The City of Lights is the setting for “The Last Days of Mickey and Jean,” a new and sometimes black comedy still in development, but already delighting audiences at the .

This unique coproduction combines the resources of three professional theaters and represents the first coproduction between the Bickford Theatre in Morris Township and in Madison. Playwrights Artistic Director John Pietrowski, who has helped playwright Richard Dresser develop past works, directs this 90-minute, no-intermission affair, which deftly mixes sharp humor with some touching and universal truths.

The version being presented here is slightly different from its beginning run last month at the coproducing Oldcastle Theatre in Vermont, and radically different from its 2010 world premiere at the Merrimac Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA.

Dresser, who attended the Bickford premiere on Friday night, said more changes may be made, as is typically the case when a play is still in development. But as it stands, theatergoers can count on a fascinating story (based in part on real-life characters), a few clever plot twists, a few moments of stirring drama and an extra-large helping of laughter.

Mickey and Jean are a longtime couple living as fugitives. It’s been seven years since Mickey (Duncan M. Rogers), a notorious Boston mobster, and his trophy gal pal, Jean (Bev Sheehan), skipped Beantown and a federal indictment.

Mickey and Jean are based on Boston wiseguy Whitey Bulger, who coincidentally , with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Grieg. It was Dresser’s imagining, however, of their unique relationship, that fueled this entertaining tale.

The aging lovers enjoy a fairly conventional active-adult lifestyle, with one important exception: They can’t go home, and can’t stay in one place too long without risking capture.

Jean sums it up with one early, painful realization. Grabbing her camera before a trip to the Louvre, she says, “I don’t have anyone who will look at my pictures.”

It’s one of several hard moments for Mickey and Jean, but Dresser has more fun framing them as a couple many of us can identify with. Living a claustrophobic existence, they drive each other crazy, yet neither could survive without the other.

When Jean asks Mickey if he took his pills, and he claims he did, she replies, “Are you sure? Take them again.”

When Mickey can’t take it anymore, he tells her, “Do that thing where you stop talking.”

The cast, completed by Oliver Wadsworth in three supporting roles, doesn’t nail every joke. Some priceless lines sailed over the opening-night audience, but with the rapid pace of the evening, some collateral damage is to be expected. Feel free to laugh even when others aren’t.

Rogers, a frequent visitor to this stage, delivers his usual mix of casual humor and dramatic intensity, and is convincingly menacing when he has to be. Sheehan also gets her share of laughs while juggling her character’s conflicting priorities: She has is driven to learn, grow and do something with her life, but has long since deferred her dreams to those of a charismatic man who sucks the oxygen of the air.

Of course, retirement usually alters the landscape of well-worn relationships. “He was a great man and now, well, he gets more average every day,” Jean realizes at a crossroad that is marked by the title.

Dresser is a master at creating unusual relationships that seem surprisingly familiar to the rest of us. The oil-and-water Little League coaches of his “Rounding Third” (which has been staged hundreds of times around the country) and the scheming cleaning ladies of “Augusta” are all unique characters, but their struggles to cope in a difficult world are not so different from our own.

To detail Wadsworth’s characters would give away a lot of the fun, but he generally goes over the top, to the delight of the audience, playing an annoying banker, a judgmental doctor and a frightening but sympathetic drag queen.

On a simple set, dominated by their Paris hotel room, Pietrowski sets a brisk pace, keeping the jokes and the story coming. Yet there are a few moments, including the opening scene, where silence and inaction play key roles.

All these positives overcome a few flaws and inconsistencies, including one crucial scene where both lovers deceive each other. The setup is awkward enough to threaten the entire evening, but fortunately, the payoff is so much fun that the errors are easily forgiven.

 “The Last Days of Mickey and Jean” runs through Oct. 9 at the Bickford Theatre, 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morris Township. Tickets are $20 to $40. For information, call 973-971-3706 or visit BickfordTheatre.org.