It’s a wonderful Laugh
“Moon Over Buffalo” is the backstage farce that brought Carol Burnett back to Broadway in 1995. Now, it brings local favorite Jean Hardie (the Mother Superior in various “Nunsense” productions) onto the Interplayers stage for the first time.
“I’ve never, ever done a show at Interplayers,” said Hardie, who has a day job teaching at St. George’s School. “They always had daytime rehearsals, so I said, ‘I’ll never be able to do that.’ “
But this show, directed by Paul Villabrille, has evening rehearsals to accommodate just that kind of situation, which made it possible for Hardie to audition and then accept the role.
The script, by Ken Ludwig (“Lend Me a Tenor”), is about a second-tier acting couple named George and Charlotte Hay who have been toiling in the provinces for decades. In the early 1950s, they are working a tour stop in Buffalo.
Suddenly, hope rears its head. They learn that the film director Frank Capra is looking for actors and is coming to Buffalo to catch their act. Could they be bound for Hollywood?
In time-honored farce fashion, misunderstandings begin to pile up. For instance, the man they think is Capra is actually a TV weatherman.
As Margo Jefferson of the New York Times wrote, it’s the kind of old-fashioned farce in which “storylines criss-cross with maniacal efficiency and cheerful superficiality.”
“As farcical as the play is, the depiction of actors and their concerns and obsessions is pretty well on the mark,” said Hardie. “There’s some reality there.”
The critics loved Burnett and Philip Bosco, who played George in the original. They weren’t quite so taken by Ludwig’s script.
“Will you have a good time? Yes,” wrote Jefferson. “Will you forget it all immediately? Yes again.”
The show closed after a respectable 309-performance run.
“Moon Over Buffalo” lived on in a fascinating 1997 movie documentary called “Moon Over Broadway,” directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker. The documentary chronicled the real-life trauma of bringing a big-budget comedy to Broadway, focusing on Ludwig’s frantic attempts to make last-minute revisions.
The Interplayers version also features Gary Pierce as George. Other cast members include Kari Mueller, Dan Anderson, Damon Mentzer, Robert Wamsley, Alba Jeanne MacConnell and Ryan Patterson.
Hardie said the cast particularly relates to the show’s humor, since so much of it involves the eccentricities and childish behavior of the actors.
“I hope the public finds it as funny as we do,” she said.