Deftly Played Nuances And Comic Zingers Make ‘The Foreigner’ A Riot

“The Foreigner,” Spokane Civic Theatre, Friday night, continues through Feb. 4, call 325-2507.

The laughter just kept rolling and rolling through the theater. I was afraid people in the audience would rip tendons, they were laughing so hard.

This response was gratifying, because the performers in “The Foreigner” weren’t simply handed these laughs; they earned them. There comes a point early in a play like this in which the audience has to decide: Are these people lovable, human, quirky goofballs? Or are they simply annoying quirky goofballs? In this play, it was obvious that the audience was voting heavily for the former. Once that vote was in, everything these characters did seemed funnier. The laughs began to compound.

The key lies in the nuances established by the director and the performer. Make the characters too hammy, too desperate, too broad, and the audience just becomes irritated. Make the characters quirkily human and the audience delights in them. Director Pat Owens deserves plenty of credit for the fact that all but one or two of these characters hit that note dead-on.

Scott Dunckley, as Charlie Baker, is easily the key to the play’s success. Charlie Baker (“the foreigner”) is a desperately shy British man who is spending a week at a backwoods Georgia hunting camp. He pretends that he doesn’t speak English for most of the first act. Then he pretends to be learning it, pidginstyle, for most of the second act.

So Dunckley has to master two distinct methods of performing: Silent comedy in the first act, and Mork-style alien nuttiness in the second act. Dunckley proves equally adept at both.

In the first act, he gets huge laughs just by adopting a certain puppy-dog expression, or just by turning his head, or just by placing a water glass on his noggin.

In the second act, he nearly brings down the house with an antic story he tells, complete with acted out characterizations, in some gibberish language he just invented. I could see elements of Charlie Chaplin, Robin Williams and Bronson Pinchot in his performance.

However, a bushel of excellent supporting performances were nearly as important to this play. Best of all, I think, was Sara Edlin-Marlowe, who brought exactly the right tone to her role as the good-hearted hunting lodge owner, Betty Meeks. EdlinMarlowe has an excellent command of the Georgia accent, as well as a perfect feel for the character’s lovable eccentricities. She was a little like Grandma Clampett, except much more genuine. And she has excellent comic timing.

Samuel Pettit was also nearly perfect as Ellard, a boy who’s just a bit slow. Pettit got laughs out of his character’s confusions, but he never condescends to the character. His performance makes us believe that Ellard is far smarter than anyone gives him credit for.

The other three right-on performances belong to Gretchen Oyster, who brings a touching solicitude to the character of Catherine Simms; Jack Lippard, who brings a cunning intelligence to the role of the Rev. David Lee; and Brian Kitt, who is the very embodiment of a big, dumb, ignorant bully as Owen Musser.

The only character I had my reservations about was Staff Sergeant Froggy LeSueur, played by Doug Kropff. That’s not because of any serious problems with the characterization, but only because I don’t think he has that working-class British accent quite nailed down.

The excellent set by Nik Adams is warm and rustic, complete with a huge moose head. I might point out, however, that you wouldn’t find a moose within 1,000 miles of Georgia hunting lodge.

After having seen about four different versions of “The Foreigner” now, I also have a couple of reservations about the play itself, written by the late Larry Shue. First, it plays like a sit-com for most of its length. It is not until deep into the second act that the anti-racist themes begin to emerge, and then the climax is rushed. Also, Shue relies possibly a bit too much on Charlie’s Mork-style cuteness for laughs.

However, I can only admire Shue’s nimbleness with the one-liners and with word-play (“Hominy grits?” “A zillion”). And I especially admire his ability to construct what amounts to a sure-fire laugh machine, and still sneak some worthwhile themes into the mix.

Don’t be expecting a thoughtful treatise on racism. But who knows? Maybe pure, humorous ridicule is actually more effective than a thoughtful treatise any day.