Theater Reviews

Mar 1, 2009 - Larry Shue's "The Foreigner" gets a light once over by Reno's Nevada Rep Company

By Jack Neal

Do you take your moonshine with one lump or two? Whether you like your moonshine on the rocks or straight-up, playwright Larry Shue’s nut-cake play, “The Foreigner,” is your cup of tea.

The Nevada Repertory Company is presenting a two-week run of Shue’s zany farce that ran on Broadway in the mid-1980s, and then again – with Matthew Broderick – in 2004. This is a feel-good play about Charlie Baker, a crashing bore, who needs to feel good about himself. And so the play and its characters set out to pump him up.

The shy, shy Charlie, whose wife is dying from an overdose of sex with men other than her husband, has been downloaded to a fishing lodge in rural Georgia by army buddy Sgt. “Froggy” LeSueur. In order to free Charlie from the social niceties of speaking to others, Froggy admonishes Betty, who owns and runs the lodge, that Charlie – a British subject – neither speaks nor understands English. Faster than a speeding bullet, Betty spreads the word about Charlie’s lack of verbal skills to the lodge’s other inhabitants.

And so the fun begins.

The play is loaded with characters who like to talk, and talk they do. Betty is a ditsy-bitsy older lady who doesn’t just talk to Charlie - she shouts at him. Betty is thrilled to have a foreign guest because it’s prestigious and good for business.

The plot thickens considerably, when Catherine Simms - a pregnant, unwed heiress - stays at the lodge to be near her boyfriend, the Rev. David Marshall Lee. Since the Rev. Lee is a known troublemaker, what Catherine sees in him is anyone’s guess. With help from the local Ku Klux Klan, Reverend Lee is plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. Enter bully and bigot Owen Musser, who provides the added muscle for the Reverend’s overthrow ambitions. With two such loveable gents on board one no longer has to ponder what it takes to puff light comedy into full-blown farce.

Pushing the plot further off center, Catherine’s mentally-challenged brother, Ellard, joins in the fun by teaching Charlie to speak English. The play’s thin script is as patronizing to its Southern characters as those characters initially are to Charlie.

The hapless Charlie mugs his way through the daffiness with astonishing ease. “How does one acquire personality?” asks Charlie. “What must it be like to be able to tell a funny story?” Zachary L.J. Bortot embellishes Charlie with a doltish grin and a whirl of action. As he cuts loose from stodginess to giddy delight, Bortot is lighter than air. By socializing with others, Charlie finds his much, much happier self. Trying to understand the Baltic-sounding language Charlie feigns on his way to his happier self, the play’s other sweet characters learn to understand themselves.

Patrick Lafoon is too much a leading man to be the eccentric buddy Froggy needs to be, but he lends the production an easy presence and adroitly sets the plot in motion. As Catherine, Melissa Ortiz finds enough core to her paper character to make her involvement with her fiancé, cad that he is, somewhat believable. The cad, of course, is the Reverend Lee and Brad D. Martin marinates the bigot with the sleaze the Reverend deserves. As Ellard the simpleton, Drew Emhout is warm and pleasing. Aukai Almeida is a menacing and unpleasant Owen.

Kathy Welch is Betty. Welch is reminiscent of a fretful, quivering ZaSu Pitts when Miss Pitts starred in the mystery-comedy “Ramshackle Inn” over a half century ago. What a delight she was, as is Miss Welch. But even delights can wear thin and Miss Welch, as charming as she is, at times becomes too much of an act unto herself (“More of an act,” someone once said of Tallulah Bankhead, “than an actress.”). But when all else fails, as it often does in Shue’s soufflé of a play, Miss Welch can be counted on to save the day.

As directed by Sue Klemp, “The Foreigner” is slickly presented and does allow joyous interludes of goofiness. Larry Walters’ cozy scenic design evokes a hunting lodge that is itself joyful and warm.

The Nevada Repertory Company’s “The Foreigner” can be seen at the Redfield Proscenium Theatre, 1664 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada, February 27 (the performance reviewed), 28, March 4, 5, 6, 7 (2009) at 7:30 p.m., and March 8 at 1:30 p.m. For information call 775-784-4278.