Stage: Lee St. Theatre's "Moon Over Buffalo"
Despite some missed beats, "Buffalo" has what it takes to fire on all cylinders and deliver zany laughs.
A traveling repertory theater group, led by husband and wife team Charlotte and George Hay, has stopped in Buffalo, New York. The Hays are Hollywood has-beens: self-obsessed, jealous, and still hungry for an increasingly unlikely moment in the spotlight.
They still cast themselves as Cyrano and Roxanne despite being too old for the parts. Neither Charlotte’s mother Ethel, once a stage actress herself, nor their daughter Rosalind, who finds theater ridiculous, can take them seriously.
In the same tradition with Waiting For Guffman, Big Night, and Lend Me A Tenor, the Hayses look to reignite their dimming careers with a deus ex machina.
The opportunity comes in the form of golden age film director Frank Capra. We hear he has lost the two aged leads of his new film, and will attend the matinee performance at Buffalo Theatre to see if our washed up main characters have what it takes to star in Hollywood once again.
Moon Over Buffalo
by Lee St. Theatre
Written by Ken Ludwig
Directed by Michelle Medina
April 5 - 20, 2024
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30PM
Sunday, April 14 at 2:30PM
Directed by Michelle Medina Villalon, Moon Over Buffalo has what it takes to fire on all cylinders. The set up is fun, and there is individual promise in opening performances from Alice Rich as Charlotte Hay, and Shelby Annas and Debbie Hubbard-Pastore in the roles of the Hays’ daughter Rosalind and Charlotte’s mother Ethel.
Rich plays silly well, and Annas and Hubbard-Pastore are sharp, handling the pacing with ease. Caitlyn Brown as ingenue actress Eileen has too little time on stage, but hits every time she appears.
Nevertheless, the first half of this comedy of errors suffers from missed beats and aimless blocking. Characters chase each other back and forth across the stage. The actors cannot find the same rhythm, and punchlines fall flat as a result. Gum is not everywhere in the works – an extended Scooby-Doo style chase scene, through one door after another, delivers perfectly on its purpose.
Then, once George Hay believes all is lost, our leading man chooses to soothe his devastation by getting very drunk. David Cruse does not play drunk in a way we have seen it before, opting for a janky, frenetic physicality. His feet are like an inebriated cha-cha dancer desperate to keep his balance; his hands flap this way and that, gesticulating at everything or nothing; his expression has permanently just encountered an overpowering odor.
The choices are idiosyncratic to be sure, but he commits to the bit and is funnier by the moment.
Here, Villalon finds the heart of Moon Over Buffalo. The problem of a drunk George is like a shock of lightning through the rest of the company, whose desperation to pull off the crucial matinee drives the remainder of the action. The second half of the play is tight and well-prepared. Rich, Annas, and Hubbard-Pastore continue to shine, and the cast, galvanized by emergency, finds unity.
Moon Over Buffalo continues its run this weekend, with performances at 7:30 PM on Friday and Saturday night.