By CHERIE DONNELLAN
Englishman Charlie Baker seemed an innocuous foreigner to the characters of The Foreigner who failed to realise he was collecting intelligence on them.
Their story will return to life when Torquay Theatre Troupe presents the Larry Shue comedy on the Surf Coast from the end of the month.
The troupe’s Maryanne Patten said the story was set in an unkempt fishing lodge in rural Georgia in the early 1980s where the apparently “shy” and “boring” Baker first emerged.
He learned the locals’ secrets after friend Froggy LeSeuer told lodgers that Baker “couldn’t understand a word of English”, Patten said.
Patten, who plays 70-year-old lodge owner Betty Meeks, said she became fascinated with the Baker character.
“It makes Betty’s day to meet someone from a foreign land.”
Patten described her own character, Meeks, as “feisty, funny and sometimes wise but mostly naïve”, which made her fun to play.
The challenge was achieving Meeks’ Georgian accent.
“It can be hard trying to keep my voice in character but then I suppose doing a character with an accent is easier because then you really aren’t yourself and can focus on the role,” Patten said.
The storylines, which included a Ku Klux Klan plot to marry off a woman to access her inheritance, were “farfetched” but the characters were “relatable”, she said.
Patten promised audiences could “expect to laugh every few lines”.
“Charlie comes to the lodge because his wife is dying but she sends him away because he’s boring but when people think he doesn’t understand English they tell their secrets in front of him and the jokes keep coming.”
The theatre troupe will present The Foreigner from 31 October and on various dates in November at Torquay Seniors Citizens Club.
