Theater loves to cannibalize itself.
At the Curtis Theatre in Brea, the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble has mounted a passable version. It's all about tempo. Farce, perhaps theater's toughest challenge, needs deliveries of different speeds every now and then to give us pause and let the momentum begin again. There's a lot of running around and face-making, with the performers never asked to do much more than be confused or offer degrees of exasperation. The first act gives us rehearsing actors falling over lines and themselves.