THEATER REVIEW : Acting Falls Short in Lamb’s Otherwise Likable ‘Foreigner’

Ah, to roll in the aisle, helplessly gripping your aching ribs, totally undone with laughter.

“The Foreigner,” a masterwork of comic lunacy by the late Larry Shue, has that magical power to dissolve an audience to tears of hysteria.

A modern-day spin on the stock characters and plots of 16th-Century commedia dell’arte , Shue’s play is a logical choice for National City’s Lamb’s Players Theatre, a company with an impressive tradition of street theater and strong physical comedy. Alas, Lamb’s staging has shorn the play of much, although not all, of its natural mirth. Here, the jokes in the script provoke the laughter more often than does a belief in the characters.

Shue deftly twisted commedia’s ancient roles, its tales of love and greed, so they fit into Betty Meeks’ homely “resort” community in rural Georgia. The plot evolves from the responses of the owner, guests and locals to Charlie, an exotic “foreign” visitor who they believe does not understand English.

Most of the actors support the play’s spontaneity, its larky delight, if not their characters.

Ken Wagner is memorable as the sweet, scattered, molasses-paced boy, Ellard. Stacey Allen’s gruff and guttural performance as an evil-minded redneck bent on major mayhem makes a superb foil for Tom Stephenson’s Charlie.

Stephenson, in one of the critical roles, however, doesn’t elicit belief as a terminally boring Englishman who is something of a Chaplinesque figure. And he doesn’t clarify Charlie’s transformation from stuttering shyness to outrageous heroism.

David Cochran Heath displays the requisite dash as Froggy LeSueur, Charlie’s blow-hard, English soldier pal. Rick Meads makes an upright-acting, sly southern snake, David.

Darlene Trent gets Betty Meeks’ bumptious, milk-of-human-kindness character down pat but misses her southern drawl by a Georgia mile. Trent’s performance is more like a comedienne on overdrive than the proprietor of a guest lodge.

As David’s fiancee, Catherine, Deborah Gilmour Smith relies more on her considerable natural stage presence rather than creating what actually is a complex role. We miss the sense of a rich, spoiled, former debutante who apparently is giving up her high-flying life style to be with the self-righteous David.

Though the acting doesn’t jell often enough, director Kerry Cederberg has put together a production that remains likable. Veronica Murphy Smith has costumed everyone aptly.

Mike Buckley’s scenic design for the fishing lodge is a monument to middle-class bad taste and Betty’s personality. Hideous knickknacks of glass and plastic fruit decorate the living room. The mustard couch is set off by a garish afghan in day-glow green, lavender and orange.

If only the performances were as finely honed as this set.