Moon Over Buffalo ReviewCivic's "Moon" looks familiar by Jenn McKee In Ken Ludwig's backstage farce, "Moon Over Buffalo" - now being staged by the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre - two actors lament the way that television, in 1953, was supplanting theater as mainstream entertainment. So perhaps it's only fitting that the television sit-com has also heavily contributed to making stage shows like "Moon" feel overly familiar. Like you've seen them before, even when you haven't. For it's not "Moon"'s references to Esther Williams and Mickey Rooney that make the 1995 play feel strangely dated; it's the humor-security-blanket shtick: a kick to the crotch; split pants; a mother manipulating her child with tales of long labor; exaggerated drunkenness; and a hard-of-hearing old woman who complicates the action. I don't mean to say there aren't a few genuinely funny moments in the show; I simply found myself laughing far, far less often than "Moon" intends. The story focuses on middle-aged, married thespians George (Thom Johnson) and Charlotte (Wendy Wright) Hay, who are traveling with a second-rate repertory company. While in Buffalo, the company's ingenue, Eileen (Maria Vermeulen), announces she's pregnant with George's child, causing Charlotte to leave George just as he gets news of the couple's potential big break. Miserable, George drinks himself into a stupor, so that everyone - Charlotte included - must sober him up for the matinee that could finally give the Hays the Hollywood career they've always dreamed of. Wright has some fine comic moments, particularly when Charlotte loses all control; yet on opening night, both she and Johnson looked noticeably tentative in their swordplay. Joy Rafferty, playing the Hays' daughter, Rosalind, is shown off to best advantage during the company's disastrous matinee performance of "Private Lives," while Brian Hilligoss, playing her awkward, weatherman fiancee, steals each scene in which he appears. |