"The baddies elicit topical unease, hardly conducive to farce. Owen's aim of white supremacy doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore, and the climactic face-off with Klansmen plays as stark melodrama."
What is this harrowing theatrical experience, which current events have rendered so hard to watch? Larry Shue's The Foreigner, of course, in a current production at the Odyssey Theatre. Yes, folks, David C. Nichols' Times review today takes this week's prize for dubious and unsolicited political commentary--an honor usually reserved for the otherwise exquisitely written musings of the Weekly's Steven Leigh Morris (whose recent feature-length review of Caroline, or Change is a model of how we all wish we could write about theatre--and is also an instance of social and political exegesis that's entirely welcome and relevant).
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