Comedy is a tricky creature.
Let it fend for itself, and timing can be off, causing gags and entire scenes to fall flat. Do too much, and the humor becomes overwhelmed by style and shtick so all looks forced, ham-handed, and begging for laughs that simplicity, or, more to the point, sincerity may better provide.
In my experience, the best way to play comedy, and especially farce, is to play it straight. Characters should be funny without knowing they are or trying to be. Jokes should be handled as if they were natural comments and responses rather, again, than an intentional bon mot.
Exceptions to these maxims exist. Line delivery and physical comedy have their place as any cast of “Saturday Night Live” or Lucille Ball singlehandedly prove. For the most part, letting the script do the work and keeping antics to a minimum is the soundest rule.
This essence of comedy resonated in my mind as I watched the Princeton Summer Theater production of Ken Ludwig’s farce, “The Fox on the Fairway,” running through Sunday, July 17, on Princeton’s campus.
Ludwig’s writing and structure is too well-honed for the fun and enjoyment of “The Fox on the Fairway” to disappear entirely from view, but Jacob Musgrove’s production is a juvenile affair that puts too much emphasis on extreme mannerisms and overt physicality rather taking time to build believable characters and let some of the edgy sparkle of Ludwig’s effort emerge at its most potent.
Everything is done at such a high pitch, vocally and gesturally, that Musgrove’s production never gets the chance to relax and breathe a little. If it did, some of the sophistication of Ludwig’s characters, denizens of a posh suburban country club for the well-heeled and golf-addicted, might surface. So might some of the satire Ludwig builds into his script.
From the beginning, Musgrove’s direction is too broad, too bombastic. At lights-up, two employees of the country club, the managing member’s assistant, Justin Hicks (Xavier Jefferson), and a staffer whose duties range from helping folks on the green to serving cocktails, Louise (Olivia Levin), enter Jeffrey Van Velsor’s perfect set in search of each other. They are boyfriend and girlfriend, and they each have information to impart. Neither Jefferson nor Levin is instructed to, at first, call out in a casual way for the other and then build frustration, urgency, and volume as their objectives seem mutually elusive. Jefferson comes on raving and waving his arms as if he’s a character in one of the Greek tragedies to which Louise often refers. Levin follows suit. It all seems wild and overdone and loses any import because right off the tee, everything is too fast and frenetic, and nothing seems human or in proportion to the country club setting or the people likely to populate it.
I know it’s Musgrove’s direction that makes this happen because everyone in the cast, with the possible exception of Nora Aguilar, takes the same tone and overdoes to the point Ludwig’s farce gets lost in the performance. Its sturdiness prevails in that you can pick out the good lines and see how things could develop in a more realistic and funnier way, but all subtlety and finesse is thrown to the wind, and all sense that the characters are real people in a real situation is abandoned.
Does this ruin “The Fox in the Fairway?”
Not entirely. Remember Ludwig’s wit and mechanics being decipherable despite the tumult. Also, you begin to get used to the pace and the superficiality, so you settle into what is, rather than what could or should be, there. The story and lines are good enough to carry you once that point is reached. The acting is never calm or crisp, but that also becomes accepted as being the state of this production, so you begin to go with Musgrove’s flow rather than resenting it or letting it spoil what can be turned into a good time.
The overriding verdict is this “Fox on the Fairway” plays like an amateur production that has ambition but scuttles itself with overexuberance and overdoing.
In his program notes, Musgrove quotes Brecht as saying, “From the start, it has been the theater’s business to entertain people; it needs no other passport than that.”
I agree with Brecht’s sentiment and of Musgrove’s taking it to heart. Looking at theater as a pyramid, its first job to entertain. Enlightening, educating, elucidating, and fomenting epiphany are the higher facets of the appropriately narrowing pyramid and not as elemental or essential as entertaining.
“The Fox on the Fairway,” a farce about a golf tournament, two marriages, and one should-be sweet romance going awry in a single weekend, is that basic entertainment. No matter what witticisms or barbs Ludwig might supply here and there, his object is a plain old retreat from the workaday world via comedy. And laughs. He’s out for laughs.
The good news is it’s hard to keep a play like this from taking some comic hold. Musgrove succeeds at some level of entertainment. It just isn’t polished, knowing, sure-handed entertainment.
The cast, working at high dudgeon, often misses the pith of Ludwig’s lines in the hurry to get them out. Another thing my experience has also taught is weak productions often let you realize the script and its intentions more clearly than ones in which clever theatricality and taut writing mesh.
In spite of the speed, the obvious direction to go big and play directly to the house, with big arm gestures when possible, and the cartoonish approach to characterization, you see the potential in some actors.
I know Xavier Jefferson has a more disciplined performance in him because I saw him two weeks ago in Princeton’s Summer Theater’s “The Great Gatsby,” in which he was fine and in keeping with a character.
Zach MonteLeon, who plays the country club executive trying to save his club’s reputation along with his job, displays talent that would be more effective if tamped down. The same is true of Kelly Brosnan, who plays the wealthy, oft-married board member who figures into all of Ludwig’s plot lines.
Brosnan is particularly adept at hitting the right note on Ludwig’s more sarcastic gag lines.
Nora Aguilar, as the club executive’s wife, comes off the most solidly because her character is said to be cool and austere, and Aguilar finds that tone. Her relative calmness and steadiness are a relief, like stopping for water while running a marathon.
All the actors are likeable. You feel for them, especially when you see how they have the ability to do better. Olivia Levin is a case in point. Even when Louise is whining or agonizing profusely, there’s something about Levin that makes you root for Louise to prevail.
This “Fox on the Fairway” is strongest in its design. Jeffrey Van Velsor smartly chose the green of the Masters’ Tournament champion’s jacket for his pallet, with walls covered in Astroturf and painted in a way that reminds one of the baize on the walls of British golf clubs. Props are also fun, including a lamp with a golfer as the base and a telephone embedded in a golf bag.
Becca Jones’s costumes were spot-on, but the mismatched trousers MonteLeon wears in a banquet scene could use some ironing, and his shoes should be black.
The Fox on the Fairway, Princeton Summer Theater, Hamilton Murray Theater, Princeton University. Through Sunday, July 17, Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. $34.50. 732-997-0205 or www.princetonsummertheater.org.
