.jpg)
What does it take to see Jay Bingham and Jack Kennedy perform? Photo by John Johnson.Beneath the hoods, this comedy has some serious things to say
By Ed Rampell
I usually don’t review theaters per se, however the premiere of Larry Shue’s The Foreigner was not only my first time in the Sierra Madre Playhouse, but my first visit to the eponymous town itself. Although it was dark,. from what I could see of Sierra Madre and its main drag, it was like stepping out of Los Angeles and into small town Americana, like something Norman Rockwell might have painted for a Saturday Evening Post cover.
As things turn out, this is a perfect setting for The Foreigner, which takes place in the Deep South (no, not San Diego -- in Dixie, and I don’t mean the cup). A British demolitions expert named Froggy (the amiable, understated Mark Rainey) arrives at a lodge in the backwoods of Georgia with his socially awkward and much-cuckolded -- 23 times, we’re told -- friend Charlie (the versatile Jon Powell). Somehow, through a plot contrivance and for reasons I’ll let you find out for yourself, Charlie, who is apparently also a Brit, is fobbed off as a non-English speaking foreigner. (I hate reviewers/critics who reveal plot spoilers without warnings. In an August Village Voice interview with Quentin Tarantino, in her very first question, without any warning, an interviewer blew a huge plot point in Inglourious Basterds before its release, depriving thousands of the joy of discovery for themselves.)
Innkeeper Betty Meeks (scene stealing Joanie Marx, who appears in Judd Apatow’s Funny People with Adam Sandler, proves that the “meeks” shall inherit the play) takes a shining to the foreigner, who becomes ensnared in the lives of the lodge’s inhabitants. They include J.R. Mangels (who manages not to mangle his role as dullard Ellard Simms, the not-so-village-idiot), the knocked-up Catherine (the comely Southern belle Lindsay Ballew, who reminded me of Cat Ballou, Jane Fonda’s kittenish cowgirl in the 1965 Western spoof of the same name) and her beau, Reverend David Lee (Jay Bingham), a Tartuffe-like phony preacher man with an insidious hidden agenda.
This not-so-holy man is the tip off playwright Shue has something more than mere tomfoolery in mind in The Foreigner. Cut from the same mold as religious right hypocrites such as Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Haggard, Lee is acting in league with the rather sinister Owen Musser (appropriately played by ex-Army officer-turned-thespian Jack Kennedy), who looks like a skinhead. It turns out that this is apropos, as Owen and Lee belong to a secret neo-fascist group plotting a “white power” takeover of America. (Reverend Lee is a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who helped crush abolitionist John Brown’s heroic attempt at a slave revolt in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, exactly 150 years ago on Oct. 16, 1859. Brown’s son – also ironically named Owen – managed to escape and lived out the rest of his life as a shepherd in the mountains near Sierra Madre.)
Unlike the others at the lodge who bask in Charlie’s exoticness as a foreigner, Owen is deeply suspicious of him, as he is of Jews, Blacks, the foreign-born in general, etc., who he fears are impinging on white male privilege and patriarchy. The two groups are pitted against one another, as the humor of the farce is joined by a dramatic struggle between good and evil. Along the way, and even in the final dialogue, are lots of laughs, as well as fine ensemble acting deftly directed by Stan Kelly, plus mood-enhancing sound effects designed by Barry Schwam.
Shue, a Vietnam vet who died in a plane crash, apparently wrote The Foreigner in the 1980s (its off-Broadway premiere was in 1984), when the play is set. My only quibble with this enjoyable and meaningful drama is that it could have benefited from being updated to 2009. Owen would have made an excellent “teabagger”; alas, the neo-fascists, with their inglorious dreams of white power and ever fearful of the “other,” are still among us. In any case, how fitting that during the sesquicentennial of John Brown’s Harpers Ferry uprising, an anti-fascist, anti-Southern bigotry play is being performed beneath the mountains where Owen Brown lived.
Now, back to the Sierra Madre Playhouse itself: David Calhoun’s cozy set of the lodge’s interior complements the quaint theater itself. The Playhouse served both a filling buffet before the curtain lifted and a champagne reception during intermission at The Foreigner’s Oct. 9 debut – at no extra ticket price, I might add. The idea of a neighborhood stage for live theatre is quite appealing. Nevertheless, I regret to say that this premiere was not sold out in a space with probably less than 99 seats. What does it take to bring out theatergoers? The Foreigner deserves better, and a bigger audience. And those who enjoy a good laugh coupled with food for thought owe it to themselves to see this recommended dramedy.
The Foreigner runs through Nov. 14 at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024, on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. For more info: call 626/355-4318 or visit www.sierramadreplayhouse.org.
