Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah and Caine College of the Arts are in preparations for the opening of the spring semester production of Larry Shue’s, Obie and Outer Critics Circle award-winning comedy, The Foreigner.
The play concerns a painfully shy young man named Charlie who is invited by his friend Froggy, a British demolition expert, to accompany him to Georgia while he lectures recruits at a nearby Army base. Charlie is terrified of conversation so Froggy tells the innkeeper that Charlie is from an exotic foreign country and speaks no English. Soon Charlie becomes involved in the lives and plots of the locals, and a certain invisible Empire, who believes Charlie doesn’t understand anything they say.
Tables are turned, the bad guys are thwarted and the good guys are saved is the recipe for comedy in this play that The Village Voice described as a “constant invitation to relax and laugh at the foolishness of life” and in the The New Yorker, “I laughed start to finish at one comic surprise after another.”
The cast includes some familiar faces as well as new ones. Isaac Jones from American Fork is playing the “shatteringly, profoundly boring” Charlie; Mitch Ewan is playing his friend “Froggy” Le Sueur; USU Eastern newcomer Anne Morey, originally from Olympus High School and most recently from Cisco Community College, Texas, is playing Betty Meeks the lodge owner; Bethany Gilmour-Woodruff is playing Catherine Simms, former debutante and Simms Prepared Meats heiress; and her hopelessly backward brother Ellard is played by Randall Scott Zaborski from St. George.
Rounding out the cast is Trax Decker playing the Reverend David Lee; and T.J. Revas from Grand County High School playing redneck and Tilghman County property inspector, Owen Musser. “We are excited to be able to offer this play to the college and community. It is a great comedy to which anyone can come and enjoy. I think this piece has a great deal of charm. The characters are well written and the relationships funny and heartwarming,” said Director Corey Ewan, Ph.D. “This has been a popular play in repertory throughout the country. CEU produced the play about 15 years ago and we felt it was time for a revival.”
The Foreigner runs from Feb. 10-15 with curtain time at 7:30 p.m. in the Geary Theatre. A Saturday matinee performance on Feb. 12 is scheduled at 2 p.m. with no Sunday performance. Ticket prices are $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for USU-CEU Faculty/Staff and non-USU/CEU Students and $3 for USU Eastern students with a current student ID.