The human instinct to regard persons of a different nationality or culture as cute, childlike, mysterious or threatening is effectively portrayed in Springfield Theater Center’s production of “The Foreigner.”
The Obie Award-winning comedy, written by Larry Shue and directed for STC by Patrick O’Brien, opened Friday at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. It combines physical and verbal comedy with a dash of serious social commentary on prejudice and cultural stereotypes.
The title character, Charlie (Rick Dunham) has come from England with his friend Froggy (Kevin Burke), a British military demolition expert who stays at a rural Georgia fishing lodge while training U.S. soldiers at a nearby Army base.
Charlie believes himself to be boring and without any personality, and when he arrives at the lodge, he dreads having to speak to anyone. Froggy explains Charlie’s silence to the lodge owner, Betty (Pat Pennington) by claiming that Charlie is from an “exotic” country and cannot speak English.
Betty and other lodge visitors assume that Charlie doesn’t understand what they are saying, and in his presence they openly discuss matters intended to be private.
The characters who unintentionally spill their most embarrassing secrets to Charlie include wealthy heiress Catherine (Heather Hubbs) and her fiance David (Eric Woods), a minister; Catherine’s slow-witted brother Ellard (Jonah Walker), who attempts to teach Charlie to speak English; and Owen (Larry Smith), a county property inspector scheming with the Ku Klux Klan to take the lodge away from Betty.
Dunham effectively uses his facial expressions and gestures in scenes where he does not speak at all, or speaks only gibberish to maintain the ruse that he is a non-English-speaking foreigner.
He and Walker — playing characters who are smarter and more aware than they let on — relied heavily on physical comedy and played especially well off one another in a scene where Charlie slavishly imitates Ellard’s every move while both are eating breakfast. Dunham also uses the performing skills honed through many years as an Elvis impersonator to “tell” a humorous story to Betty, Catherine, and Ellard in Charlie’s supposed “native” language.
Hubbs, over the course of the play, transforms Catherine from a thoroughly spoiled and grating Southern belle to one who sees through the deceptions being perpetrated upon her, Betty and Charlie, and acts to stop them.
Smith injects a serious note as Owen, the Klansman seething with menace whose loathing of the mysterious “foreigner” eventually proves to be his downfall. Burke’s bewildered Froggy, Woods’ not-so-holy clergyman and Pennington’s lodge owner, who initially treats Charlie as a curiosity but shows genuine warmth and hospitality to him, round out the cast.
The single-set play is presented in three-quarter round, with audience seating on three sides and the performers on the main floor instead of the stage. Those seated on the left or right side of the set have the best view and feel as if they are sitting in the lodge with the characters.
Although mostly lighthearted fun, “The Foreigner” does contain some adult themes, profanity and threatened violence which may make it unsuitable for young children.
Additional performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday and March 19-20, and 2 p.m. Sunday and March 21. Tickets: $13 adults, $12 senior citizens, available at the Hoogland Center box office, 523-2787.
Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.