Moon Over Buffalo
By Ken Ludwig October 7 - 23, 2005
Their motley company and crew are touring Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and Noel Coward's Private Lives. Cyrano is a late-1800s romantic sword fighting play with a huge cast (George and Charlotte have cut it back to a cast of five, thereby losing most of the point of the play). Private Lives is a British drawing-room comedy from the 1930s, fortunately having very few roles. Their egos dictate that George and Charlotte will play the too-young roles of Coward's Elyot and Amanda, and Rostand's Cyrano and Roxanne. Theory and reality are shown to be two very different things when both plays are staged the same day with hysterical results. Their daughter Roz (a darn fine young actress by the way) has had it with the hand-to-mouth existence and is marrying a safe and solvent young man. Paul, the company's young manager, wishes she weren't (you see where this subplot is going). We meet this theatrical family when the supporting actor has just walked out, the ingénue is headed to the doctor's for a pregnancy test, the payroll is two weeks overdue, and there's a matinee in an hour. It would all seem like just another humdrum day in the theater if it weren't for an unexpected phone call from their New York agent. Moon is told with typical twists, turns, collisions, mistaken identities, ridiculous miscommunications, slapstick antics, some terrifying swordplay, and a stage set with six doors. Add to all that an eccentric, near-deaf mother-in-law, a couple of love triangles, an overly square weatherman, and a chance at stardom if famous Hollywood Director, Frank Capra, comes to see the play and chooses George and Charlotte for Hollywood roles in his upcoming epic. Listen to RLT's radio advertisement (MP3 format)
Performance Information You are here: Home > Moon Over Buffalo |
It’s 1953 and George and Charlotte Hay (think Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne...or perhaps the Barrymores) are playing rep in Buffalo...BUFFALO!!! If you speak the lingo, you know that's very, very far from Broadway, (but at least they're not doing commercials). George and Charlotte carry on despite the small audiences and their inappropriate roles as young lovers in two classic shows.