STAGE REVIEW : ‘Foreigner’ Keeps Overstuffed Upper Lip

Some playwrights feel that stuffing their plot with enough layers and goodies will satisfy. Others think that it’s the quality of the contents, not the volume of the plot sandwiched into the play, that matters.

Among playwrights, the late Larry Shue was very much into stuffing. A look at “The Foreigner,” his comedy of a Brit coping in the Georgia backwoods (at the La Mirada Civic Theatre), reveals that Shue believed in serving up the works. Pile it on, and nutritional value be damned.

Once into “The Foreigner,” though, you might wish somebody had told Shue to hold the mustard.

It’s a dubious concoction from the start. How does the Brit, named Charlie (Gary Sandy), find himself at a fishing lodge miles from civilization? His pal Froggy (Roderick Horn), a demolitions expert, takes him there-- from England , where Charlie’s wife is in a hospital near death. Then, Shue adds two elements: 1) Charlie is so shy with strangers that he can’t speak, and 2) Betty, the lodge owner (Jane Kean), adores foreigners, even though she’s never met any.

Froggy suggests to shy Charlie that he play-act a non-English-speaking foreigner-- and Charlie goes along with it . If you can swallow that, we have some swampland to sell you.

Every piece of information mentioned in the previous two paragraphs is used by Shue at some point in the play, usually for a joke. That may be why this long two-act has been mistaken for a piece of craftsmanship. But it’s taking Chekhov’s advisory--a gun brought out in the first act must go off by the last--to a meaningless extreme. Shue applies the information for laughs, for bits of business, but not for glimpses into character.

You wonder what the thinking behind the business is. Ellard (Steven Rogers), the slow-witted brother of ex-debutante Catherine (Charlene Tilton), risks losing an inherited fortune if he doesn’t gain all his wits (this ridiculous notion is a crucial plot ingredient). So how does he manage a nimble, very full-witted, Chaplin-esque routine with Charlie over breakfast? (This, by the way, leads to an even more crucial plot development.) Don’t know really, but it gets some laughs out of the crowd.

Indeed, when “The Foreigner” isn’t throwing on the plot condiments, it seems devised to get high numbers on a laugh-o-meter, as if that was all a comedy is about. Charlie does have chances to express his growing realization that he’s attaining a personality; he’s “coming out,” as Catherine might say, and helping others to come out as well. But the tidbits of wisdom seem grafted on rather than organic to events. And how can wisdom compete with events that climax with a raid by the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan? No bloody way, mate, as Froggy might say.

It’s surprising to hear the laughter this stuff gets, especially when you know where it’s all headed. Director Glenn Casale’s cast deserves most of the credit for this, since they do serve the play. Especially Sandy, who appears to relish a role that’s also a role within a role, and that ranges from moments of mousiness to near-Wagnerian bombast. Betty is a domestic businesswoman, and Kean mightily steers through it and past all the routines she’s forced to play. The stock roles--Tilton’s rich brat, Horn’s stiff-upper-lip Army man, Eric Kramer’s belligerent Georgia cracker--are in place, but without imagination. Jay Louden telegraphs the guilt in his corrupt pastor too early, too obviously.

The busy Casale (he also has “Jailbirds on Broadway” at the Tiffany) lets some details get past him. No problems with Joanne Trunick McMaster’s solid set or Garland Riddle’s satiric costumes, but did no one notice that Raun Yankovich’s light design has half the day sky sunlit, and the other half in darkness?

Performances are at 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada, on Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m., Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m., Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $15.50-$19.50; (213) 944-9801 or (714) 994-6310.