The Riverside Theatre teed off its 2024-25 season last Tuesday night with the opening of “A Fox on the Fairway,” a boisterous farce by Ken Ludwig that runs through Nov. 10. Big on laughs, if short on story, it’s the kind of play in which characters routinely jump on the furniture, with just enough far-fetched narrative to hang the jokes on.
Ludwig rose to prominence with “Lend Me a Tenor,” a similarly antic farce which played on Broadway in 1989 and won two Tony Awards. He has had several additional plays and musicals reach the Great White Way, but in recent years has made a specialty of adapting other well-known titles to the stage, among them “Treasure Island,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and stories centering on Sherlock Holmes.
He’s extremely prolific, and his adaptations and original works are enormously popular in regional theaters throughout the U.S. and around the world.
First produced in 2010, “A Fox on the Fairway” takes place in the taproom of the Quail Valley Country Club, where a longstanding rivalry with the Crouching Squirrel Golf and Racquet Club comes to a head during their annual golf tournament.
It’s worth noting as an art-imitates-life aside that Vero Beach’s own Quail Valley Golf Club is a presenting sponsor of this production. (No Crouching Squirrel is known to exist here.)
In the play’s Quail Valley, executive director Henry Bingham is smugly confident that his club will finally take the trophy after years of losing, given the addition of a new member who shoots in the low 70s. He makes a huge wager with his Crouching Squirrel counterpart, Dickie Bell – who then drops the bomb that the star golfer has left Bingham’s team to join Crouching Squirrel.
This puts Bingham in a tailspin. Rod Brogan plays him with a comic energy of contained desperation as he sets about finding a replacement. Brogan gives the character an intense, Frasier Crane-like vibe. He’s particularly funny when he cuts loose after too much vino in the second act, battling with a misbehaving microphone and inadvertently broadcasting his heart’s desire to the crowd assembled out on the course.
Eventually, Bingham finds that he has a highly skilled golfer right under his nose in Justin, the young assistant he’s just hired. Justin is madly in love with Louise, a waitress at the country club, and the two of them can’t wait to share the excitement of their engagement.
Nate Janis plays Justin with a daffy, smitten naivete, such that we root for him even more when he turns out to be the scratch golfer his boss needs to fill the vacancy in his tournament lineup.
And Allison Elaine, who was so delightful two years ago in Riverside’s “Butterflies Are Free,” once again charms as Louise, the “fox” of the title. She’s as bouncy as Tigger and operates at a permanent emotional level of 110 percent.
Louise attends night school, where she has been studying Homer and “The Iliad.” This gives playwright Ludwig an entrée to fold the conventions of ancient Greek theater into the play, and director Chris Clavelli runs with the opportunity.
Each act begins with characters breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly with aphorisms about golf. (“Golf is nothing but a good walk spoiled.” – Mark Twain.)
There are Marx Brothers’ near-miss entrances and exits through adjoining doors; a brief musical-comedy chorus line delivered down front; and characters chasing one another around the set to the sped-up tune of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
Anything from the history of farce is fair game, and all such nods to the form are thrown into the mix. Finally, true to ancient form, a deus ex machina plot device wraps everything up tidily, however unlikely, with a happy ending.
Clavelli keeps the proceedings antic and zany without being rushed, and if only half of the barrage of jokes land with a laugh that’s still a reasonably high percentage, considering how fast and frequently they come at us.
Fortunately, Clavelli has found a cast capable of making the schtick work. In addition to those already mentioned, John Hedges’ Dickie has loose-limbed smarminess that’s nearly as off-putting as his parade of ugly sweaters. Which isn’t to say he’s not funny – he is, in a repugnant sort of way.
Sandy York imbues the much-married Pamela, a Quail Valley executive committee member who may have romantic designs on Bingham, with a seen-it-all sophistication. Pouring a brandy at 10 a.m., she observes that she’s “getting a late start.”
So it’s all the more fun when she lets loose with Bingham in the second act, dancing comically and serving as the golf ball tee when he drunkenly wants to show off his swing in a gasp-inducing practice session.
Carine Montbertrand as Muriel, Bingham’s put-upon wife, has her share of laughs as well. Her awkward mounting and dismounting from a taproom barstool is a moment of pantomime gold.
None of this is groundbreaking comedy, but as an affectionate homage to the farces of earlier eras, the production delivers a rollicking good time.
Per usual, the Riverside team offers a visually inviting production. Kimberly Powers’ scenic design of the posh country club taproom is a lovely shade of green with wood accents, but from house right, the much-used bar on stage left cannot be seen. (Intrigued, I wandered house left during the intermission to catch a look and could see why the characters would spend so much time there.)
Genny Wynn’s lighting nicely conveys the changing times of day and weather. And any mention of Kurt Alger’s attractive costumes will naturally drift to the series of, um … distinctive sweaters he’s dug up for Dickie, which the other characters frequently ridicule.
“A Fox on the Fairway” runs through Nov. 10 at the Riverside Theatre, 3250 Riverside Park Dr., Vero Beach. Tickets are available online at RiversideTheatre.com or by calling the box office at 772-231-6990.
Photos by Angel Udelhoven
