What’s a shy Englishman with a dying wife to do when he suddenly finds himself stuck in small-town Georgia?
In Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner,” this is the exact predicament in which the ever-endearing Charlie Baker finds himself. A timid man who would rather contemplate life than engage in it, Charlie adopts the persona of a foreigner to avoid all human interaction during his vacation. Instead, he soon finds that his silence has acted as an open invitation for the other guests to confer with him. Assumed to speak not a word of English, Charlie finds himself privy to the dangerous and frivolous secrets that surround him.
With a sick wife back home in London and a cheerful army sergeant for a best friend, the last thing Charlie Baker, played by Andy Belt, wants to do is sit around socializing with a group of small-town Southerners. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Baker is given the the opportunity to become a new and exotic person; a foreigner. Yet his plans for a peaceful weekend are derailed when he is unwittingly swept up in the drama of a corrupt preacher, a pregnant debutante, her dimwitted brother and the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan. While the world swirls messily around our thoughtful protagonist, the silence that protects him ends up being the very thing that leads him to find himself and emerge a hero.
The unsuspecting nature of this play makes it effortlessly lovable. Shue wraps his characters in a shroud of absurdity so well, it is all too easy for their relatable nearness to human nature to go unnoticed. This inspired comedic romp draws audiences in and releases them back into the world with a new perspective on what it truly means to belong, having had a refreshing lesson in the art of listening.
Theatre Oxford will be gracing the Powerhouse’s stage with its rendition of this classically American play starting at 7:30 tonight. The show will run each night at 7:30 until Saturday, and close with a 2 p.m. showing Sunday.
Caren Watts, the show’s director, noted the effectiveness of the play’s simplistic humor, as well as its ability to resonate with audiences of all ages.
“The play holds all of the humor of one’s childhood while still maintaining the meaningful poignancy of what it means to grow as a person,” Watts said. “In it, you will be able to see a piece of yourself. You’ll recognize people you know and the types of people you’ve only heard about.”
Despite the caricatures before them, the audience members will feel the gravity of the situations in which they find themselves. The reality that is only thinly veiled behind the plays theatrics will give theatre-goers a much deeper appreciation for what it means to grow as a person and the leaps of faith required to do so.
Tickets will be available for purchase online at theatreoxford.com, as well as at the box office.
