A day on the green goes hilariously wrong in “The Fox on the Fairway,” Ken Ludwig’s golf-course farce opening Aug. 28 at Pintello Comedy Theater.
The play pits two rival country clubs against each other in a high-stakes tournament after one club’s leader poaches the other’s star player. That leaves Quail Valley Country Club scrambling for a replacement, and finding one in Justin Metz, a new employee who turns out to be a talented golfer.
“The young man who wanders onto the tee that day happens to be incredible, so they throw him in,” said Whitney Pintello, who is directing the production. “But everything is at stake.”
That includes the job of Quail Valley’s director, Henry Bingham, played by Rob Langford, who has bet everything he has on beating his longtime rival, Dickie, the owner of the opposing club.
“He’s got his job, $200,000, and his wife’s business on the line,” Langford said. “All this is at stake, so he really, really needs to win.”
The six-person ensemble includes Niko Veltri, who plays Justin; Lindsey Weller, who plays his girlfriend, Louise; Ronnie Misra as Dickie; Langford as Bingham; Joyce Bedard as Muriel; and Angie Higgins as Pamela.
Misra, playing the villain of the piece, described Dickie as a malicious schemer who is not as clever as he thinks he is.
“It’s a really fun role,” Misra said. “This is the first time that I’ve done a farce. I think the writing is really good, and I think the show needs to be done at a pace that’s really fast, because there’s so much stuff. The humor comes from things happening one after another.”
Veltri described Justin as a people-pleaser who gets swept up in the tournament’s pressure while newly engaged to Louise.
“He’s so in love with Louise that it blinds him in some capacity, and he’s also just so passionate about his job that it blinds him in that capacity too,” Veltri said.
Weller, playing opposite Veltri, called Louise upbeat but emotionally larger than life.
“Her emotions are always heightened in everything,” she said. “It’s definitely big feelings, both good or bad.”
Pintello said audiences don’t need to know anything about golf to follow the plot, and the small cast size helps the ensemble’s chemistry come through—including a late reveal about how several characters are secretly connected.
“There’s a great reveal at the end which I won’t give away,” Pintello said, “but you don’t realize how so many of them might know each other till the end.”
The production also carries on a tradition from other shows by playwright Ken Ludwig. At curtain call, the cast reenacts the entire play in roughly three minutes, timed to Rossini’s William Tell Overture.
“You’ve just seen a pretty quick farce in less than two hours,” Pintello said. “And in three minutes, they show it all again.”
Langford, a 12-show veteran of Pintello productions, said this cast came together unusually fast.
“We got off-book really early,” he said, speaking a few days before the show’s opening night. “We’ve been off book for maybe a couple weeks now. Usually this week is when you start to get things right most of the time, but we’ve been getting it right for a long time.”
“The Fox on the Fairway” runs Friday and Saturday evenings at 8pm on Aug. 28, 29, Sept. 4, 11 and 12, with 2pm matinees Sunday, Aug. 30, Sept. 5 and 6, at The Grange Hall, 8191 Swanston Lane, Gilroy. Tickets are $30 at pintellocomedy.com.
