For Immediate Release: June 14, 2006
Media Contact: Mary Bashaw, People's Light & Theatre Company, 610.647.1900 x103

Demolition expert Froggy LeSuer brings his old army buddy, Charlie, to his favorite fishing lodge deep in Georgia. But the depressed Englishman doesn’t want to talk—to anyone. So Froggy invents an exotic identity for Charlie, and soon the silent “foreigner” is at the hub of one antic exchange after another. But lurking beneath the farce is a dangerous threat that forces Charlie to lead the charge in a hilarious climax of the good guys vs. the bad guys.

The Foreigner runs June 28 through July 23, 2006 on the Mainstage at People’s Light & Theatre Company. Featuring Company members Alda Cortese, Lenny Haas, Mark Lazar, Graham Smith and Liz Webster, the production is directed by long-time PLTC member David Ingram. Completing the cast are returning Guest Artists Jeb Kreager and Pete Pryor. The production team includes set designer James F. Pyne, Jr., lighting designer Gregory Scott Miller, costume designer Marla J. Jurglanis and sound designer Charles T. Brastow. Kate McSorley will serve as stage manager.

About the Play
for•eign•er noun
1. a person born in or coming from a country other than one's own.
2. a person who does not feel or is not considered to belong to a particular place or group; a stranger or outsider.

Rich in elements of farce but laced with a sly thread of satire, The Foreigner takes a basic fish-out-of-water situation and gives it a twist or two. The action is set in Betty Meeks’ fishing lodge in Tilghman County, Georgia. Business hasn’t been too good in recent years, but one of her regular visitors is jovial Englishman “Froggy” LeSueur, a demolitions expert in Her Majesty’s army who gives an annual course of instruction at a nearby U.S. military base. To Betty, whose world extends to Atlanta and little farther, Froggy is an exotic curiosity, fascinating and charming. For his part, Froggy revels in the attention, bringing Betty souvenirs from the far reaches of Tijuana and wildest Canada. This year though, he’s brought a friend. Froggy has taken his annual trip to Georgia as an opportunity to get his old Army buddy Charlie Baker away from the conflicted emotional trauma of his philandering wife’s serious illness. The change of scene will be good for him, and meeting new people will get his mind off his own troubles. The catch: the last thing Charlie feels like doing is putting on a brave face and being polite for a bunch of strangers.

He doesn’t want to talk to anybody, but he also doesn’t want to be rude. He’s British, after all, so interacting with people means being polite, and Charlie is practically apoplectic at the prospect. In a moment of inspired resourcefulness without much forethought, Froggy comes up with a tidy solution: he tells Betty that Charlie neither speaks nor understands English.

Once Charlie lets pass the opportunity to set things straight without seeming like he’s been playing everyone for fools, he finds he’s stuck maintaining the charade no matter how embarrassing or bizarre it gets. This of course makes him all the more enchanting to Betty, and provokes varied reactions from the few other guests at the lodge: the Reverend David Marshall Lee, his fiancée Southern Belle Catherine Simms and her none-to-swift brother Ellard, practically the embodiment of country bumpkin.

We soon learn that local scoundrel Owen Musser is plotting to get Betty’s fishing lodge condemned so he can pressure her into selling the place to him for a fraction of its worth; moustache twirling is optional.

If the characters in The Foreigner sound like stereotypes or clichés, it’s wholly intentional. Shue sketches characters who at first glance appear to be a lot simpler than they are. Indeed, in many cases the characters in The Foreigner prove that first impressions can be, at the very least, deceiving. Charlie isn’t the only guest at the lodge who isn’t quite what he appears to be. Debutante’s mannerisms aside, Catherine is anything but demure, and it seems she and her preacher fiancé have just found themselves in a family way well before the wedding. A somewhat elastic interpretation of chastity isn’t the only impious thing about Reverend David; villainous Owen is getting some help in his nefarious plans from an inside man, and it certainly isn’t Ellard. With the revelation of who’s behind the whole plot, comedic villainy turns decidedly sinister.

For all its broad comedy and satiric undertones, part of what appeals to director Ingram about Shue’s play is its heart.

“There’s so much warmth and love in the play,” said Ingram. “It’s an odd thing for a farce—farces are usually about rather nasty people. But so much of Shue’s humor is about generally nice people trying to figure things out.”

While The Foreigner is certainly not autobiographical, it reflects the way Shue drew on his own experience. “Everything was material for him,” said Ingram.

Shue had served in the Army during the Vietnam War before he began his career as a professional actor and playwright. At the end of his first season at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Shue wrote a send-up of the season and [Artistic Director] John Dillon told him he should be writing plays. His two best-known plays—The Foreigner and The Nerd –– were written and first performed while he was playwright-in-residence at Milwaukee Rep. The Foreigner was first produced there in January of 1983 and was an enormous success. Named by the American Theatre Critics Association as one of the best regional theatre plays for the 1983-1984 season, The Foreigner was subsequently produced Off-Broadway. Directed by Jerry Zaks with Anthony Heald as Charlie and Shue himself in the role of Froggy, that production opened in November of 1984 at the Astor Place Theatre in New York City, where it ran for 685 performances. The Foreigner was still running in New York at the time of Shue’s death in the crash of a commuter plane on September 23, 1985. He was 39 years old.

“In Shue’s plays, there’s someone who’s very nice,” said Ingram, “not spectacular, but people are drawn to him. Apparently that was Larry Shue.

“He went to Japan in 1980 to study, and there he was the foreigner. Shue started out amused by the idea, playing to the stereotype of what he thought the Japanese expected to see in an American,” explained Ingram. “He found that everything he did, people just accepted as normal for him because he was an American, a foreigner. The way people unquestioningly accepted him there really gave him a new sense of confidence.”

It comes as no great surprise that a playwright who began as an actor should people his plays with characters that are great fun to perform. “He was the kind of actor,” Ingram said, “who liked to disappear behind a role.” The characters in The Foreigner present great opportunities and significant challenges for the actors playing them. The principle challenge, Ingram pointed out, is to keep the characters real. If they play as mere stereotypes or broad caricatures, the play loses much of its substance and a good deal of its comic potential. Shue himself was adamant on the matter: “let there be no such thing as ‘comedy villains’ here. Our malefactors must be, within the style of the play, the real thing—obsessive, cunning and dangerous. They will be funny, but only if they can first make us recoil.”

Ingram agrees. “These are real people. They have to be. Letting these people fall into simple stereotypes would be the death of this play.”

About the Physical Production
Costume designer Marla Jurglanis has been very conscious of this difficult relationship with stock stereotypical images in establishing the characters’ looks. “Shue is giving me a little bit of place to touch at the stereotypes,” she said. “I’m trying to do that gently.”

“The setting is the recent past,” she noted, “so I looked rather wide in period to pull from.” For the Tilghman characters, this meant looking for ways in which costuming could reflect a character’s history. Jurglanis described the approach as “a collage of things from these people’s past, some people more than others.” Betty Meeks, for example, “progresses from a very rustic look, reflecting her situation of just barely making ends meet, and goes to a look that’s a little more refined but still with strong country influences.” Rev. David likes to present a very polished, even slick, facade, what Jurglanis describes as “crisp but very casual, very Lands’ End.” For Owen, expect an appropriate Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt to go with the tattoos Shue specifies in the script.

For Charlie and Froggy, to help establish their otherness, she looked to a slightly different palette. With Froggy, she said, “things were a little easier, since we could put him in a British uniform. There are elements there that look very foreign, even compared to what we’re used to seeing in American uniforms.” Froggy’s costumes provided an opportunity to incorporate some unusual but authentic elements, Jurglanis explained, “and of course there are the Klansmen, so there was some actual research there.”

Helping to establish the play’s world through sound design is the work of resident designer Charles Brastow. Aside from the task of coming up with some scene-setting music that reflects the play’s carefully balanced tone, Brastow is faced with one amusing technical challenge. Enthused Brastow: “I get to blow up a VW bus!”

For lighting designer Gregory Miller, the core realism of the play served as a baseline in considering the show’s look. “Shue’s script itself calls for a lot of variety over its four scenes,” he pointed out. “We have a bright sunny spring morning, an afternoon edging into evening, even a bit of the old ‘dark and stormy night.’ So maybe the lighting is a little more assertive than strictly realistic,” Miller conceded. “It’s a little like the clichés at work with the play’s characters. Shue’s very smart about knowing and using your expectations as an audience. It’s also a comedy, of course, so the stage needs to be a comfortable place, without the lighting intruding or really making any statement of its own.”

The idea of supporting the show’s comedy was also a prime consideration for James Pyne in designing the production’s set. “It’s a play that puts some specific demands on the set,” he said. “David [Ingram] and I started with the comedy – looking at the number of entrances, the flow, that sort of thing.” The script’s demands provided more opportunities than constraints. “Shue provided us with a pretty good shopping list of things we needed,” said Pyne, “and our job was to figure out how to arrange them for the best comic effect.

“It’s a world that the playwright has specified in great detail,” he said. In visualizing that world within PLTC’s Mainstage, Pyne gave the lodge a sort of A-frame greatroom with a fireplace and tall stone chimney. The interior walls reveal the building’s rough timber construction. Stairs center stage go up to an entrance to the second floor and three doorways lead off to other parts of the house. An upstage window looks out on the lake and the surrounding trees are visible above the roofline. The overall effect is cozy.

“A lot of warmth,” described Pyne, “a lot of wood. This is a farm house that’s been loved and worn to a kind of rustic patina.” The room also reflects the amount of time Betty and her late husband lived in the house. “They’ve adorned the walls with a lot of trophies, taxidermy fish and animals.” While those decorations play to the elements of stereotype in Shue’s play, Pyne is quick to point out that “we don’t want to make fun of these people, because they are in earnest.”

Pyne’s primary goal for the set is a simple one: “Create a place where funny things can happen, provide opportunities for the actors, and then step away.”

About the Playwright
Larry Shue was born in New Orleans on July 23, 1946. After high school, Shue enrolled in the theatre arts program of Illinois’ Wesleyan University, receiving his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts in 1968. Prior to graduating, he wrote and directed his musical children's play My Emperor's New Clothes, for which he later won a writing prize. From 1969 to 1972, Shue served in the U.S. Army. Stationed at Fort Lee, Virginia, he became actively involved in the post's Entertainment Division. Upon discharge, he joined the Harlequin Dinner Theatre of Washington, DC and Atlanta, playing numerous roles. He appeared in the television series One Life to Live, as well as the films A Common Confusion and The Hungry Leaves and joined the Milwaukee Repertory Theater in 1977. Two years after he joined the Rep, Shue was made Playwright-in-Residence and they produced his one-act comedy Grandma Duck is Dead. Shue's fourth season featured the premier of The Nerd, which became his best-known work, and The Foreigner followed in 1981. 1984 was a particularly successful year for Larry Shue's plays. In addition to the premiere of Wenceslas Square—the last play he wrote for the Milwaukee Rep, The Foreigner appeared Off-Broadway at the Astor Place Theatre, and The Nerd was produced in London's West End.

About the Cast
Alda Cortese (Betty Meeks) has been with People’s Light since 1976, first appearing in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage at the Yellow Springs Center. She has since appeared in nearly 100 productions with this theatre — including Jack & the Beanstalk, The O’Connor Girls, The Miser, String of Pearls and Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire. Other PLTC appearances include Playhouse Creatures, He Held Me Grand, A Delicate Balance and The Little Red Riding Hood Show. Alda also serves as the Literary Manager.

Lenny Haas (Rev. David Marshall Lee) has been performing professionally in local theatres for over twenty years. He has been seen at Act II Playhouse, The Arden, The Wilma, Cheltenham Center for the Arts, Bristol Riverside, Hedgerow, Luna and, most recently, 1812 Productions. A member of the Resident Ensemble of Artists since 1988, he has performed in over 30 productions at PLTC. Notable appearances here include Around the World in 80 Days, Born Yesterday, Once in a Lifetime, The Memory of Water and as Henry in The Fantasticks.

Jeb Kreager (Ellard Simms), who made his PLTC debut in The Crucible, is a founding member of the Obie Award-winning New Paradise Laboratories (NPL), and has co-created and performed 10 original pieces with the company since 1996. He also maintains ongoing collaborations with Headlong Dance Theatre, Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental and Early Morning Opera in NYC. Recent work includes Planetary Enzyme Blues (NPL), The Earth’s Sharp Edge (Lucidity), Valparaiso (Theatre Exile), Prom (NPL & Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis) and 1812’s Recent Tragic Events. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and trained at Circle in the Square in NYC.

Mark Lazar (Sgt. “Froggy” LeSeuer) is a company member in his ninth season at People’s Light. Other recent appearances include The Crucible, Jack & the Beanstalk, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sleeping Beauty and The Miser. Mark has also appeared here in Born Yesterday, Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire, A View from the Bridge, The Little Foxes, Camping With Henry and Tom and Hearts. A founding member and ten-year veteran of the acting company at The Madison Rep, he performed regularly with nearly all of Wisconsin’s professional theatres. Before joining People’s Light, he spent nine years with The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, and many off seasons with The Charlotte Repertory Theatre.

Pete Pryor (Charlie Baker) has previously appeared at PLTC in Sleeping Beauty, The Miser, Holes, Book of Days, Misalliance and a Short Stuff festival. He is an actor/teacher/director and the co-founder of 1812 Productions in Philadelphia. He has worked for the Arden Theatre, Act II Playhouse, Azuka Theatre Collective, The Philadelphia Theatre Company, Theatre Exile and the Wilma, among others. Recently, Pete appeared in the title role of the Lantern Theatre's production of Richard III.

Graham Smith (Owen Musser) is a graduate of Davidson College (BA) and the Hilberry Classic Theatre (MFA) who has been in over one hundred seventy plays and twelve films. Past PLTC productions include The Crucible, 30FEST, The Miser, Born Yesterday, Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire, A Delicate Balance, Camping with Henry and Tom, Book of Days, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Adventures of Pinocchio, As You Like It and More Grimm Tales.

Elizabeth Webster (Catherine Simms) returns to People’s Light after earning her MFA in Acting from The Academy for Classical Acting at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. She recently appeared in Grail at the Kennedy and in Tartuffe at the Bay Theatre Company in Annapolis. Past PLTC performances include A View from the Bridge, Sally’s Gone, She Left Her Name and The Skin of Our Teeth. Liz has performed with The Wilma, The Walnut Street, InterAct, The Eureka Theatre Company and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

About the Production Team
Charles T. Brastow (Sound Designer) is PLTC’s resident Sound Designer and Production Stage Manager and most recently designed sound for The Man From Nebraska, The Crucible, The Member of the Wedding, Jack & The Beanstalk, The O’Conner Girls, A Higher Place in Heaven and Around the World in 80 Days. His work on The Miser marked his 100th design for PLTC. He has also designed in Delaware, New York, Washington D.C. and for other Philadelphia area theatres. In addition, he has served as stage manager for over 60 PLTC productions since 1990.

David Ingram (Director) has been with People's Light since 1989, and has appeared here in a number of productions, the most recent being Midons—or the Object of Desire. Other PLTC credits include The Skin of Our Teeth, A Flea in Her Ear and Hard Times. Last fall, David performed with Theatre Exile in Rounding Third. He has also appeared with InterAct Theatre Company, The Wilma and The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival. David directed My Children! My Africa!, Distant Fires and Beauty and the Beast for People’s Light, as well as two pieces for 30FEST: The Yellow Line and July 7, 1994. He is on the faculty of the Theater Department of Temple University.

Marla J. Jurglanis (Costume Designer) has been Resident Costume Designer for the past 16 years. Recent designs include The Crucible, Jason and the Golden Fleece, The Member of the Wedding, 30FEST, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Sleeping Beauty. She has designed costumes for over 70 PLTC productions, including Born Yesterday, Holes, The Fantasticks, The Little Foxes, He Held Me Grand, Playhouse Creatures, The Memory of Water, Sally’s Gone, She Left Her Name, and many more. Marla’s designs have also been seen at the Delaware Theatre Company, The Arden Theater Company, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Virginia Stage Company and George Street Playhouse.

Kate Mc Sorley (Stage Manager) previously served as stage manager for Yemaya’s Belly, Fabulation, Jason and the Golden Fleece, 30FEST, Jungalbook and A Higher Place in Heaven. Past shows at People’s Light include String of Pearls, Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire, Midons—or The Object of Desire and In the Blood, among others. Kate has worked with many theatre companies in and around Philadelphia, including Brat Productions, The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival and Amaryllis Theatre Company.

Gregory Scott Miller (Lighting Designer) is PLTC’s Master Electrician. He handled lighting for our Mondays Out Loud and One Night Stand series and designed the lighting for 30FEST, the Theatre School’s production of The Dining Room, the Underground Railroad special events, Pretty Fire and the Project Discovery show, Power Plays. Greg is currently Producing Director at the Players Club of Swarthmore, where he directed Moon Over the Brewery and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as designing sets and lights for several productions, including Arcadia, Red Herring, Oliver!, Impossible Marriage, Proof and the upcoming production of Schoolhouse Rock.

James F. Pyne, Jr. (Scenic Designer) is Director of Design at People’s Light. In his 29 seasons with PLTC, he has created sets and/or lights for over 200 productions, including The Crucible, The Member of the Wedding, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Holes, Once in a Lifetime, The Little Foxes, He Held Me Grand, Playhouse Creatures, The Diary of Anne Frank, A Village Fable, The Road to Mecca, A Flea in Her Ear, Sally’s Gone, She Left Her Name and Sister Carrie. He has also designed scenery for the Arden, Villanova University, Act II Playhouse, the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis and the Enchantment Theatre Company. Most recently, Jim created the setting at World Café Live.

Post-Show Discussions
Audiences are cordially invited to join the artists after each Thursday night performance to discuss the making of this production.

Our Sponsors
People’s Light is also most grateful to WRTI 90.1 FM for serving as Media Sponsor for our 2005-2006 season. WRTI, the Temple University Public Radio Network, is the Delaware Valley’s only source for classical music and real jazz. Broadcasting from studios on the main campus of Temple University, WRTI is part of a network of 12 stations that serve the tri-state region with music and NPR news 24 hours a day. One of the country’s top public radio stations, WRTI is also a training ground for university students.

People’s Light & Theatre wishes to thank BLUEWIRE MEDIA for their continuing support through video production services for cable and broadcast television. Bluewire provides end-to-end creative solutions for small and large companies with strategic thinking, design, development and execution across a wide range of media. The Business of Imagination, The Art of Communication.

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