Review: Bergen County Players Stage Riotous, Entertaining Performance of Ken Ludwig's "MOON OVER BUFFALO"

It's 1950s New York and lunacy looms over a drab town as one dysfunctional family is going mad.

In the Bergen County Players' riotous, wildly entertaining production of Ken Ludwig's 1995 comic play, "Moon Over Buffalo," directed by Rachel Alt, Charlotte and George Hay (Janet Gayonor-Matonti, Jody Laufer), parents to their only daughter, newly-engaged Rosalind (Emily Gardner), are navigating midlife crises in a play within a play. The narcissistic couple not engage in the usual bickering typical of most married couples, but their careers are also a bone of contention: Charlotte, every bit the fiery redhead, has dreams of living the glamorous life to ditch their current home in Buffalo, a town Rosalind describes "Scranton without the charm," to a mansion in Hollywood Hills; George, on the other hand, the equally good-looking, but two-timing husband, is content with live theater. The two are performing Cyrano de Bergerac, a 19th Century romance by playwright Edmond Rostand, and Private Lives, a 20th Century romantic comedy by Noel Coward about a divorced couple who find themselves at the same locale while honeymooning with their new spouses.

Fittingly, the set is split between a green room and a family living room. In Cyrano, George plays the role of Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a formidably dressed cadet in the French Army with a protruding nose symbolic of both his womanizing nature and a sexual indiscretion that he initially chose to keep a secret from his wife. While George gets a phone call from a famous film director Frank Capra in need of replacements for the stars of his current film, The Twilight of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Charlotte's excitement is hindered when she ascertains her husband's affair with a younger actress Eileen (Paige Marian), who is presumably pregnant with his child.

While tensions stew between husband and wife (Charlotte repeatedly slaps her husband with a rolled-up newspaper,) their daughter Rosalind, a bonny girl with a classic flip hairdo, long skirt and polka-dot blouse, shares her giddiness of her recent engagement to Howard (Eric Holzer), a plaid-suit wearing weatherman, to her hard-of-hearing, dry-humored bitterly sarcastic grandmother Ethel (Mara Karg) who is the household sorter of both the laundry and the problems of the home. Rosalind is anxious for her parents to meet her fiancé for fear of scaring him off given their current martial predicament. Refusing to have her pride taken from her, Charlotte makes plans to run off with Richard (Patrick Little), a successful attorney, much to her husband's dismay who drowns his misery in booze. As if life couldn't get any more complicated, George receives word from Eileen that her brother seeks to kill George for impregnating his sister.

In between door slams, shoves and running circles up and down the living room stairs, Howard returns to the house who Ethel mistakenly introduces to Charlotte as Frank Capra. While Charlotte welcomes him into her home with open arms, in a fit of paranoia, George believes Howard is in fact Eileen's vengeful brother and ties him up and locks him in the broom closet.
Thinking Capra is going to see George's performance of "Private Lives," Rosalind, her ex-fiance Paul, family friend and stage manager (Dan Loverro) and her mother struggle to get an inebriated George into costume and sobered up before the start of his performance in 20 minutes. In the midst of a catastrophe performance (George dresses as the wrong lead), Capra calls to apologize to Charlotte for missing the afternoon performance and will instead catch the evening one, leaving all involved with a sigh of relief.

The family, needless to say, is too crazy for Howard, who reunites with the pretty, down-to-earth Eileen, his ex-lover with whom he carries out a romantic relationship and announces his engagement, much to Rosalind's chagrin who is still wearing Howard's engagement ring. Love, however, isn't entirely lost. Though Richard winds up eating the chocolates in the heart-shaped box that he had in his hand for Charlotte, who he catches making out with her husband before the two are supposed to leave together, Rosalind reconnects with Paul whose chemistry on all levels is both sultry and impassionate. The family also learns that through their neurotic tendencies, both life and themselves can be trusted after all.

"It's a gift to be that reckless and insane," says George.

In a play that deftly illustrates the testing of love and patience in life and in relationships, "Moon Over Buffalo" (the spirit animal of liberation) is a hysterical, calamitous, yet redemptive and endearing play that proves that no matter how chaotic life gets, and no matter how awful the triggers, true love ultimately prevails and peace in the form of a full moon on the other side.

For more information about Bergen County Players and to purchase tickets for "Moon Over Buffalo," please visit https://bcplayers.org/.

Photos by Lianna Albrizio

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