SAXTONS RIVER — A cool summer comedy comes to Saxtons River when Main Street Arts presents The Foreigner, beginning a two-week run Friday, July 1.
Called “one of the funniest shows in American theater,” Larry Shue's award-winning comedy has grown into an audience favorite and a comic staple of regional theater companies across North America since its premier in the 1980s.
The plot is a classic situation-comedy material, featuring several goofballs who could have been the center of a Monty Python sketch. Poor Charlie Baker is one such character. He's a depressed, meek introvert who is so guilt-ridden over his family situation that he cannot enjoy his vacation at a rural Georgia fishing camp. In fact, he doesn't want to talk to anybody.
His fishing buddy, Sgt. “Froggy” LeSeur, is a dedicated Army man, an explosives expert who happens to be more than a little crazy. Froggy's solution for his friend is as brilliant as it demented. Why not tell everyone that Charlie is a foreigner who understands not a word of English? What could possibly go wrong with that idea?
The answer is that nearly everything could and does.
Complicating matters further, it turns out that this little part of Georgia hasn't quite gotten over the Civil War, even after a century and a half.
Although The Foreigner is designed to be a light evening's entertainment for a summer audience, it's not all froth. Amidst all the antic hijinks is an examination of how we respond to difference, whether the difference is racial, cognitive or linguistic.
Directed by David Stern, the cast includes a mix of newcomers and Main Street Arts regulars from across the region. It stars Libby McCawley and Dan Bennett of Putney, Fred Bennett of Westminster, Albert Bupp of Saxtons River, Allie McGahie of Manchester, Mark Tullgren of Keene, N.H., and Miles Cota of Bellows Falls.
MSA Managing Director Margo Ghia said, “The Foreigner is our first summer show performed in the tradition of the old Saxtons River Playhouse. It's a cool, clever comedy made so much cooler by the fact that our Heptebo Theater is (finally) air-conditioned!"
The newly-renovated MSA building is also fully handicapped accessible.