David Smith, on the table, is the bizarre Charlie Baker in "The Foreigner" onstage at Brigham Young University. The setting is elaborate.
Mark A. Philbrick, BYU
PROVO — The late Larry Shue's "The Foreigner" may have received poor reviews when it opened in 1984 as "preposterous" and "convoluted," but it's that kind of craziness that gives this comedy its charm.
Despite those reviews, it emerged as one of the most popular off-Broadway plays of the season.
Set in an early 1980s lodge in the woods of Georgia (elaborately tricked out for this production), the play examines the Deep South emerging from the tumultuous segregation period. The Ku Klux Klan is reinventing itself from sheets to suits but hanging on to some of its terrorist trappings.
Enter Englishmen Charlie Baker, played by David Smith, and Froggy LeSueur, played by Joseph Reidhead. Froggy is doing military maneuvers in Georgia and brings Charlie along to get away from an ill, cheating wife. Why a Brit is doing military maneuvers in the United States isn't really explained, but Charlie doesn't want to engage in conversation with anyone, so Froggy tells the lodge owner, played by BreAnne Folkman, that Charlie doesn't understand English.
That innocent white lie results in hilarity as Charlie begins to learn the secrets of others at the lodge. Self-described as boring, Charlie proves that he's quite the opposite as his personality emerges. In fact, Smith must be quite comfortable with himself to play such a bizarre character in such a believable fashion.
Folkman, too, has her role mastered as she putters around the lodge as only an old woman would. Meanwhile, Catherine Simms, played by Brittni Bills, finds she is pregnant by her boyfriend, a Southern preacher, Rev. David Marshall Lee, played by David Bunnell. His hypocrisy doesn't end there; he's also engaged in a plot with co-conspirator Owen Musser, a county official played by Ben Phalen, to grab his girlfriend's inheritance and the lodge.
Finally, the Southern stereotypical dimwit, Ellerd Simms, Catherine Simms brother, aptly played by Mitchell Glass, rounds out the cast. Glass portrays his character with true charm, while Phalen's character is downright scary. However, Phalen goes a little over the top when he throws the furniture around in one scene.
His role becomes even more chilling when he appears as a Klansman and rips his hood off to show his true identity. To see the Klansmen at the door of the lodge and peering in through the windows, torches in hand, reveals the terror of the political power the KKK held over the South for so many years.
Despite its political intensity, under the direction of Eric Samuelsen Smith's character, coupled with the Southern charm of lodge owner Betty and dimwit Ellerd, keeps audiences laughing. Reidhead is the weakest link. His English accent is muffled and difficult to understand. Unlike the other actors, he's the only one of the cast not officially studying the performing arts. Still, "The Foreigner" is a play audiences may want to see again.
Sensitivity rating: May be too intense for young children. Contains mild profanity, sex and abortion discussion, simulated alcohol and tea drinking.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com
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