“There’s no business like show business,” as the old song goes, and there are few things more fun than a good showbiz farce. The Originals are currently giving a wild show a rapid run at the Saco River Theatre.
Ken Ludwig’s 1995 “Moon Over Buffalo” concerns a traveling company of has-beens in the early 1950s who may get a second chance at the big time in, of all places, Buffalo.
George and Charlotte Hay are a squabbling, though still in love, theater couple on the brink of going broke.
A call about big-time movie man Frank Capra coming to see them work sets the 90-minute show’s craziness in motion. A frenzy of desperate backstage activity leads up to an audition that goes horribly, and hilariously, wrong.
Veteran local actor William McDonough III pulls out all the stops as the bellowing George, who loves to quote Shakespeare and swill booze in about equal measure.
His heart is in the right place, even as other parts of his body wander, causing problems but somehow ultimately holding the troupe together.
Jennifer Porter plays Charlotte as a diva, equally given to melodramatic collapse and take-charge opportunism. Threatening to leave George and the troupe, she never quite gets out the door before being lured back to the romance of a life in the theater.
A visiting daughter who has given up on the theater, her TV weatherman fiancé, a wise-cracking grandmother, an earnest young stage manager, a pregnant ingenue and a slick lawyer add to the mix of madcap characters as plans made on the run spin out of control.
Elisabeth Hardcastle, as their daughter, slowly abandons reason to reveal herself a chip off the old block. At one point, she offers a particularly funny take on a character from “Private Lives.” Randy Hunt and Joseph Spinelli, as her love interests, both learn they have their hands full, though only one ends up with her in his arms.
Francesca Jellison makes the most of a choice role as the seen-it-all grandma who goes all in herself by the close. Amanda Painter gets to pull on another comedic thread as the young actress who’s expecting.
Dana Packard, who also directs this production, appears as the lawyer who’s not quite able to derail all the zaniness by taking Charlotte away to be, as George says, bored forever.
Adding another level of backstage to this backstage show, the set was designed by star Jennifer Porter, who also co-designed the period costumes. The five doors onstage allow for a multiplicity of well-timed entrances and exits that quicken the pace in this fun visit to a not-so-distant showbiz past.
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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