Sunset Playhouse stages a classic late-20th-century comedy with Larry Shue’s The Foreigner. Phil Stepanski is tenderly vulnerable as displaced British introvert Charlie Baker who has come to a fishing lodge resort in rural Georgia to escape from stress. Introduced as a man from another country who speaks no English, Charlie is put in awkward social situations involving the owner of the resort (Joan End in a sweetly ingratiating performance). Rick Berggreen plays a secretly sinister reverend. There’s also a cruel bully of a thuggish bureaucrat played by Gene Schuldt. Deanna Strasse is charmingly vulnerable as a young woman set to inherit part of the property and is particularly endearing as a woman suffering in quiet rural desperation and isolation.
Matters get complicated for a man who no one thinks can understand a word any of them are saying. Stepanski builds on a sharply written interaction between Charlie and the rest of the ensemble. He is solidly heroic in the role, which finds him up against sinister forces at work in rural Georgia including predatory opportunists and the KKK. Stepanski has a comic charisma that lifts the ensemble’s sometimes bewildering energy into emotional warmth. The finer, cleverer intricacies of Shue’s script might not be brilliantly rendered here, but the engaging story of a man reluctantly breaking out of his shell in the interest of helping a few strangers comes vividly to life.
Through March 20 at Sunset Playhouse’s Furlan Auditorium, 800 Elm Grove Road. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
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