'Moon Over Buffalo' at Towne Centre Theatre

It's impossible to find fault with Patrick Kramer's practically flawless direction or with his excellent cast members' interpretations of their roles, but something's amiss with Moon Over Buffalo, now onstage at Brentwood's Towne Centre Theatre. It's filled with one-liners, pratfalls, mistaken identities and slamming doors - all the necessary elements one hopes to find in a truly top-flight farce.

So what's the problem with Moon Over Buffalo? Oh yeah, despite all the good stuff, Ken Ludwig's script is also leaden, filled with cliches and one-dimensional characters, with enough convoluted situations to render the play stupefying. With the Towne Centre Theatre production, this is clearly a case of eight fine actors and one competent director in search of a much-better script. No matter how hard they work and how thoughtfully they approach the material, if that material is inferior there's not a lot they can do to save it from mediocrity.

To be honest, the best part of the show - that is, the best-written part - comes during the pre-show announcements when the disembodied, offstage voice of the inimitable Layne Sasser brings the audience up-to-speed on exit doors, season tickets, intermission concessions and the fine art on display in the gallery. Sasser's unmistakable voice is irrepressibly welcoming and she delivers her lines with panache, thus setting the tone for the play that is to follow. It's just too bad that Ludwig's script can't hold up to the comparison.

Here's the set-up for Moon Over Buffalo: George and Charlotte Hay, along with the other members of their rag-tag repertory troupe are holding forth at a second-, maybe even third-rate, Buffalo playhouse, performing Cyrano de Bergerac and Private Lives. Despite earlier successes on Broadway and in B-, C- or D-list movies, the Hays have never quite achieved the ascendancy their stars once offered. Then, one day while all hell breaks loose both onstage and off-, legendary film director Frank Capra wings his way to Buffalo to see the Hays in action and, in all probability, offer George the lead in the now-lensing in Hollywood spectacle The Twilight of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Granted, it's an inspired set-up: actors with big egos and bigger debts see their chance at stardom and all manner of hilarity ensues, thanks to public drunkenness, the announcement that the ingenue is knocked-up by the leading man, a deaf wardrobe mistress and much invective hurled toward the burgeoning world of television. Yet the promise of the premise never comes to life.

Johnny Peppers is quite good as George Hay, displaying much range and a nimble way with physical comedy, and Kathy Crisp is an excellent foil as Charlotte, showing how an actress' good timing can help a flawed script sound better. Flynt Foster, as company manager Paul, gives a remarkably genuine reading of his character, and Molly Quinn, as the Hays' daughter Rosalind (who, ostensibly, has returned to announce her engagement to a TV weatherman, deftly played by Matt Grimes with the right amount of smarmy charm), overcomes some distracting tics in her first scenes to deliver a nuanced performance in the play's second act.

As always, Sasser entertains with her acerbic wardrobe mistress Ethel (who just happens to be Charlotte Hays' mother), but she clearly could do this role "with both legs tied behind her back," as George might suggest. I'd love to see her in a meatier role that allows her to truly show audiences what she's capable of - she's got this part down-pat; can you imagine what she'd do with a good script? Cory Najarian, playing in this weekend for an absent Britt Byrd, is winsomely engaging as the company's preggers ingenue, showing some real chemistry in her final scene with Grimes. Finally, Robby Coles (who does double duty as stage manager) completes the cast as George's lawyer who longs to be Charlotte's lothario.

Obviously, Kramer approached this directing assignment with a clear-headed, sure-handed view of what was required of him and of his actors. Kramer's pacing for Moon Over Buffalo is terrific, moving the threadbare plot along, and his blocking of the piece is exemplary, making for a visually interesting production. He deserves kudos for the set design (the greenroom of a down-at-heels theatre in Buffalo, New York, circa 1953), while Darren Whorton's lighting and sound design adds to the overall effect, as do the costumes by Robby Coles and Bette Lordeman, the props by Beth Henderson and Pat Warr, and set dressing by Coles, Beth Henderson and Terri Merrill.

The director is at the top of his game, the production's physical trappings are well-conceived and executed, and the cast clearly know what they're doing. Unfortunately, Ludwig's script - which does have some flashes of brilliance, albeit very few and far between - doesn't have the necessary attributes to allow the production to take flight, to soar comedically, as it were. Instead, the dialogue is forced and repetitive (and not in a good way) and the characters are written with less affection that you would expect from Ludwig. In his earlier and far more successful Lend Me A Tenor, also a look at backstage antics, his characters are indelibly written, uniquely crafted people. However, in Moon Over Buffalo, his characters are seriously under-written variations on the archetypes of situation comedy. Where's the fun - or the brilliance - in that?

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Moon Over Buffalo. By Ken Ludwig. Directed by Patrick Kramer. Produced by Johnny Peppers. Presented by Towne Centre Theatre, 136 Frierson Street, Brentwood. Through Feburary 27. For tickets, call (615) 221-1174 or visit the company's website at www.townecentretheatre.com.

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