Moon Over Buffalo

Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Wasatch Theatrical Ventures at Grove Theatre Center (GTC)
Through Sept. 14.

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Photo by Ed Krieger

When the TV sitcom took over much of the space formerly occupied by traditional farce, there were fewer and fewer practitioners of this notoriously difficult genre. Michael Frayn’s Noises Off and Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy scored notable successes.

The most prolific of the current farceurs is Ken Ludwig (Lend Me A Tenor), whose Moon Over Buffalo scored a Broadway hit starring Carol Burnett.

The play centers on a down-at-heel theatre company, circa 1953, headed by married couple George and Charlotte Hay (Mark Belnick and Kimberly Lewis), who might best be described as a road-company version of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

They starred in a couple of forgettable movies and a couple of Broadway shows, but their career lacked staying power, and now they’re reduced to touring the hinterlands with two shows, played in alternation. One is a cut-down production of Edmond Rostand’s epic Cyrano de Bergerac, here reduced to five characters, and Noel Coward’s Private Lives.

The company also includes Charlotte’s acerbic mother, Ethel (Carol Herman), who is as deaf as the proverbial post but somehow always manages to hear what she wants to hear. Paul (Paul Galliano), the company manager,  doubles in brass as an actor, playing Elyot in the Coward play. Paul also carries a torch for the Hay’s daughter Rosalind (Keri Safran), who’s fed up with the chaotic life of the theatre and is determined to pursue a civilian (i.e., non-theatrical) career.

Meanwhile, blond sex-pot ingénue Eileen (Sarah Randall Hunt) has added to the company’s problems by turning up pregnant.

When the play begins, prodigal daughter Rosalind has just returned home to introduce her new fiancé Howard (Chuck Raucci) to her parents. He’s a befuddled TV weatherman, but through a mix-up, they mistake him for movie-director Frank Capra, who’s supposed to be seeing the matinee to consider hiring George to replace the injured Ronald Colman in a remake of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

When Charlotte learns that George is the father of Eileen’s unborn child, she’s both mortified and furious, and announces she’s leaving George and running off with her debonair agent, Richard (Paul Michael Nieman). This news sends George into a tailspin, and he goes on an alcoholic bender. The chaos finally comes to a head in a disastrous matinee performance during which — in the show’s funniest conceit – inebriated George is determinedly playing Cyrano while the rest of the company is doing Private Lives.

Ludwig’s play, like an old-fashioned steam locomotive, starts out slowly and a bit laboriously, but it soon builds up a head of comic steam, puffing along merrily and careening dizzily into the madcap finale. Director Kiff Scholl has assembled an expert cast, supplied them with a wonderful array of pratfalls, and pulled off a near-flawless production.

Belnick’s George is such a bumbler that it’s hard to imagine anyone even considering him as a replacement for Ronald Colman, but he scores his laughs and gets the job done. It would be an over-statement to say that Lewis is playing Carol Burnett, but it’s a skillful performance that certainly evokes the Burnett spirit. Herman is a comic stalwart as the oft-confused and hard-of-hearing Ethel, and Galliano contributes an appealing and athletic Paul. Hunt perfectly embodies the stereotypic blond ingénue, Raucci shines as the much-abused weatherman Howard, and Nieman makes the most of a thankless role as the love-lorn but philosophic agent.

Michael Mullen’s handsome costumes run the gamut from 1933 to 1953 to the 17^th Century Cyrano attire, and Adam Haas Hunter’s clever scenery transforms the stage with wonderful dispatch from a theater green-room to a set for Private Lives.

Grove Theatre Center (GTC), 1111-B West Olive Ave., Burbank; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m. (dark Labor Day weekend); through September 14. (323) 960-7721, plays411.com/moon