"The Fox" scores a hole-in-one

By Aaren Pastor     10/4/12 7:00pm

"The Fox on the Fairway" was first produced in 2010 and means to hearken back to the sex farces of the '30s and '40s, but in the costuming of the late '70s.  To me, this means an utter lack of insightful social commentary in the subtext and instead a play entirely of alcohol quips, sports lines as sexual innuendo and no-innuendo-just-overtly-sexual one-liners. The plot is cookie-cutter and mechanistic, with all the predictable twists of a farce: Abandoned babies return as adults, love is hidden, lost and reunited once more.

In short, a young man, pursuing his waitress girlfriend to the Quail Valley Country Club, finds himself hired by the soon to be fresh out of luck club president, who has wagered $100,000 and his wife's antique shop to his rival of the Crouching Squirrel Club's wager of $200,000. Player poaching, rapid club inductions, a wedding proposal, a diamond in the U-bend and a rain delay then quickly work to ensure much tail-chasing through the doorways of the clubhouse, where the play is staged. By the performance's end, though, there are still three couples, albeit re-arranged and presumably much happier with their new partners than old. 

Despite the lack of originality and depth to the script, "Fox" proves to be entirely enjoyable, a frothy sugary treat to enjoy and laugh at with friends on a newly crisp

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fall evening. 

The staging of this production is wonderful. The cast is excellent, from delivery to movement.  Jones College freshman John Hagele's Bingham is frumptastic, from 'stache to sideburns to rumpled suit. Please, please let those magnificent pilary stylings be real. His reaction to McMurtry College freshman Rachel Landsman's Muriel is sublime. The nervous hand-wringing and perfect ability to blurt right things at inappropriate times completes the portrait. Though only a freshman, Hagele is spot on. 

Jones senior Carter Spires, making his debut for the Rice Players, is over the top. Images of Bob Pinciotti of "That '70s Show" swim in my corneas after watching Dickie work his pelvic swagger in those oh-too-tight-and-white bell-bottoms. Wearing garish sweater after garish sweater and constantly clenching a fat cigar in his teeth, Dickie never misses a chance to underscore his ludicrous idiocy that also makes perfect sense. Because really, you do need a sock to wear a shoe, when you think about it.

Baker College sophomore Dennis Budde's Justin is overly earnest, gangly and driven to tantrums after encounters with the Betty Boop Louise, played by Duncan College junior Jacquelyn Pass. Though occasionally pitchy, Justin, as the new hire-cum-golf prodigy-cum-savior of the Quail Valley Country Club, is a bundle of awkward, stammering nerves. Louise, with her big, starry eyes and penchant for bastardizing Homerian epics, is occasionally just too one-dimensional to stomach, clinging to her pin-up girl aesthetic to the

bitter end. 

Jones junior Susannah Eig's Pamela, the sophisticated woman prone to drinking and devastating one-liners, is the well-dressed accent to Bingham's frump. And my God, that luscious mane of hair. Landsman's Muriel is quite the domineering wife, who is last to the mayhem but proceeds to trample all the males into line when she executes her well-timed entrance. 

Plaudits upon plaudits for the set design, stage, lighting, and sound crews. Having had the dubious pleasure of once dining in the Red Room of the Houston Country Club, I found the oxblood red well walls and white trim of the Quail Hollow club a fine facsimile of a presumptuous country club. Though the microphone and megaphone cues did not sound quite right, that is just the barest of blemishes to a solidly executed performance. 

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