Review: Vagabonds' MOON OVER BUFFALO Keeps the Audience in Stitches

The Vagabond Players' revival of Ken Ludwig's 1995 play Moon Over Buffalo is always at least amusing, and features a second act that provides near-constant hysterical fun. And that is the important thing to know; the rest is just details.

A few of the details: This is another one of those plays (like The Man Who Came to Dinner or A Little Night Music or Hay Fever) whose approach to theater people is the pleasing myth that they live their lives immune to tragedy because the terrible things they say or do are all for effect and not seriously meant. An infidelity, a drunken episode that wrecks a performance, insults - in the end it's all a performance and if you fall for it you may not get the joke. This particular crew, a theatrical troupe led by paterfamilias George Hay (Greg Guyton) and materfamilias Charlotte Hay (Michele Guyton) (they are also married in real life), do terrible things to each other in the declining world of touring companies playing repertory in 1953: cheat, say the unforgiveable, threaten or try to leave each other - but they and their crew, including their exasperated daughter Rosalind (Caroline C. Kiebach) and their faithful young factotum/stage manager Paul (Jim Baxter) are bound together by unbreakable ties. Their mutual love for each other and for the theater surpasses all transgression and all understanding. Those who don't get this fantastic reality - that would be Rosalind's fiancé Howard (Henry Reisinger, Jr.) or George's passing fancy Eileen the ingénue (Jessica Kim) -- had better wise up and realize they aren't meant for this kind of life. Kids shouldn't try this at home.

But because we know full well from the outset that George, Charlotte, Rosalind and Paul are grownups and pros, and hence safe notwithstanding all appearances, we are free to enjoy the mayhem they inflict upon each other, themselves, and their audiences along the way. All will ultimately be well, but in the meantime ...

Driven to a frenzy by the thought that director film director Frank Capra is in the audience, the Hay family and their retinue get completely confused about the identity of their daughter's suitor and about the name of the play to be performed for Capra. Is it Private Lives or Cyrano de Bergerac? It kinda matters which, since the two plays aren't interchangeable, as Moon Over Buffalo will in due course illustrate. Grandma Ethel (Carol Conley Evans) being hard of hearing and getting everything wrong doesn't help matters, either, particularly when it comes to the handling of the emergency coffee intended to sober up George when he's on a bender ten minutes to curtain time.

As I've had occasion to say before, Vagabonds is (quite proudly) community theater (celebrating its 100th season, in fact). Professionals might look and sound a bit more like, well, professionals. Professionals might knock out of the park punch lines that this cast hits for doubles. But doubles are also fun to watch, and the proof of this is that the auditorium was resounding with laughter, especially through the second act, where all of the situations heated to a simmer in the first act come to full boil.

Moon Over Buffalo is, therefore, perfect entertainment for early summer, when you probably don't want your shows or your performers too highfallutin' anyway. Go ahead, soak up the Fells Point ambiance, get dinner nearby, and then repair to the Vagabonds Theatre. You'll have a perfect evening.

Moon Over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig, directed by John Desmone, through June 26, 2016 at Vagabond Theatre, 806 South Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21231. Tickets $10-$20, at http://www.vagabondplayers.com/tickets.html. Some comic violence, a gunshot, some adult situations, intoxication. May not be suitable for smallest theatergoers.

Pictured above: Henry Reisinger, Jr., Greg Guyton, and Michele Guyton. Photo credit: Tom Lauer.

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