The Foreigner at Woodinville Rep

The playing space at Woodinville Rep is unusual. It’s maybe sixty or eighty feet from stage right to stage left. Early in the first act of The Foreigner, Melanie Workhoven as Betty Meeks crosses nearly all of that distance to speak to Jared Hernandez as Charlie Baker. Betty is old, so she goes at a slow pace. With all that time, if you didn’t know when she started, you figure out by the time she gets there exactly what joke is coming. And it pays off anyway with a huge laugh. It’s terrific timing.
It’s the timing of the actor and it’s also the innocence of Betty that makes the joke and the show work. Pretty soon, Bjorn Whitney as Owen Musser creeps into the space with such malevolence and menace that you’d think you were suddenly somehow watching a Sam Shepard play, maybe. The audience booed the actor at the curtain call, just to make sure Owen got the message! It took all of the humor, charm and goodness that Betty and Charlie and some of the others could generate to balance and finally overcome Owen.
Betty is the owner of an old bed and breakfast in Georgia that has seen better days. Mari Cannon and George Sayah as siblings Catherine and Ellard Simms spend a lot of time there. Owen is a Klansman who wants to buy the place through subterfuge involving Catherine’s fiancé, the Rev. David Lee (Mark Fox) and turn it into Klan headquarters. That’s the malevolent part again.
Charlie and his pal, Staff Sgt. Froggy LeSueur (Tony Leininger) arrive from England as guests. Through a couple of sit-com-ish twists, Froggy convinces everyone that Charlie is a “foreigner” who understands no English, then Froggy leaves the place for other business. This leads to antics as Betty shouts loudly to help Charlie understand. Ellard teaches him English. Pointing at the window, in his southern accent he asks Charlie to repeat after him, “win-der” and so on. That’s the comical part again.
In time, Charlie’s outsider status gives the others a new perspective on themselves and they scare off Owen, reveal Rev. Lee as a fraud and all live happily ever after, really. You see that ending coming from a long way away too. And you love it all the more for it.
The Foreigner ends it’s run Sunday, October 28. I understand it may be close to selling out, so act now.

Photo by me of the space.

Originally published on my Facebook page on October 27, 2018. 

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