Lighthearted ‘Moon Over Buffalo’

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Photo by George Katsekes Jr.

SummerStage continues its season of outdoor theater with Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo, a lighthearted farce about the family life of a theater couple. Sean Duncan and Alicia Rice are enjoyable as a husband and wife who have been aging on the stage over many years together. The play finds them doing Cyrano de Bergerac and Noel Coward’s Private Lives in rotating repertory in Buffalo, N.Y. Samantha Hoppe is charming as their daughter Rosalind, who has come to announce her intention to marry a weatherman played by Hugh Blewett in a remarkably fun addition to the ensemble. Blewett is a very distinctive, nebbishy, cleverly comic presence who simply doesn’t get enough stage time. Also notable in the cast is Liz Shipe in the role of Eileen, a native New Yorker with a classically comic squeaky New York accent. Shipe’s got a great sense of timing and delivery in both verbal and physical comedy. Thanks also to Shipe’s work as a costumer, the production looks authentic to the early ’50s in which the comedy is set.

A farce with a great amount of energy, Moon Over Buffalo needs a solid sense of speed and intensity. There is a delicate dynamic between the steady flow of punch lines and the need to develop characters emotionally to draw an audience into the action. Director Zach Thomas Woods has a firm grasp of this. The dynamic nature of the comedy might sometimes evaporate in the empty space around the action, but for the most part, everything comes together quite well. It’s a pleasant little storm of comic chaos in the peaceful silence of SummerStage’s outdoor space in Lapham Peak.

Moon Over Buffalo runs through Aug. 1 at Lapham Peak State Park, W329 N846 County Highway C, Delafield. For more information, visit summerstageofdelafield.org or call 262-337-1560.