The play must not stop while an actor is sitting down or getting up or walking off the stage. Never have a moment of silence on the stage, except as an intentional stage effect. No less an authority on comedy than George Bernard Shaw gives this most practical advice: The actors need to raise their characters’ stakes, and make their moment-to-moment objectives more urgent. Judy Burke’s Betty does what she can, when she can, to get the show on track, but she can’t seem to find anyone willing to reciprocate. The production had all the dynamics of a 78-rpm phonograph record played at 45 rpm. Roberts’ exciting pre-show banjo music, I assumed the production would emulate the rollicking madcap pace of the music. The same director responsible for the production’s great assets is also, alas, responsible, for the production’s greatest flaw – the pace and tempo/rhythm. His scenes teaching Charlie resemble the classic comedic routines of Laurel and Hardy. Plank, barely seen in Arsenic and Old Lace, and sort of seen in Death of a Salesman, presents a fresh interpretation of a role too often played as a mental defective. Finally, George Plank is given a role in which to shine – Ellard Simms. Mike Dunavan creates a frightening Owen Muster, so real he could have crawled out of James Dickey’s Deliverance. David Marshall Lee, played by Marshall Mulkey as if he were a staff member of Jim Bakkers’ late PTL Club. Ginakay Howell ‘s Catherine Simms, the ditzy debutante, is simply perfect, as is her fiancée the Rev. His sidekick Froggy LeSueur (Does the name suggest any Frenchness in his character?) is played leisurely, (perhaps too leisurely) and quietly, by Tom Coffey, whose British accent fortunately doesn’t fall into cliché. Jim Dwyer plays Charlie with great skill and success, beginning softly and innocently, only to build to a comic tour-de-force as he tells bizarre tales in his oddball pseudo-language. Burke displays equal facility with the trickiness of comedy. Burke’s Linda Loman in last season’s Death of a Salesman was so wonderful that she was nominated for a 2018 Broadway World Central Virginia Best Actress Award. The cast is most ably led by the Betty Meeks of Judy Burke. Terry Flint’s dominating set supports Ms. The Foreigner happily demonstrates this scientific truth )Ĭredit for the production’s success must first go to director Louise Casini who has cast the play impeccably and has helped to lead the actors into compelling characterizations. Only through repeated and harmless cooperative encounters, does the fear eventually subside and disappear. Science – namely evolutionary biology and human ethology – has demonstrated that the fear is universal among human beings, a necessity to help insure our species’ survival. (Contrary to popular progressive belief, xenophobia – the fear of strangers – is innate and hard-wired into our species. Charlie learns all the scandals and secrets of the guests, who have no difficulty revealing themselves in front of him. Catherine’s dim-witted brother Ellard joins them, as does the obligatory racist/xenophobic “redneck”, Owen Muser. David Marshall Lee enter discussing the news that she is pregnant and that their wedding is still months away. She has never traveled out of her tiny town and is excited at having a “foreigner” in her midst. The owner of the lodge, Betty Meeks, welcomes Charlie. So, Froggy creates a story that Charlie is from some unnamed far away exotic country, and that he can’t speak or understand a word of English. Charlie just wants to be left alone so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone. He begs Froggy to find a way to keep people from talking to him. Nevertheless, Charlie is depressed over being separated from her. Charlie is a man stricken with an almost terminal shyness, and haunted by a death bedded wife who has had many lovers. Shue’s play is a perennial favorite, telling the tale of the Englishman Charlie Baker who travels to a lodge in Georgia with his friend, Sergeant Froggy LeSueur, who is on a military assignment.

The air in and around Norfolk’s Little Theatre on Claremont Avenue is definitely fresh courtesy of a satisfying production of Larry Shue’s 1983 farce, The Foreigner, featuring the fine acting of a dedicated group of performers. Terry Lindvall, Virginia Wesleyan University In the midst of perplexity, doubt, fear, anger, and uncertainty, laughter may be the fragrance that freshens the air.

Norfolk little theatre