The Sock & Buskin Theatre Company’s production of Ken Ludwig’s comedy Moon Over Buffalo was an enjoyable performance marked by excellent comic timing. Under the direction of Stefanie Austin—a co-founder of Sock & Buskin—the full force of the farce came to the fore through Ludwig’s trademark wit and series of happy accidents.

Moon Over Buffalo is an actor’s farce, about the trials and tribulations of the Hay family and their 1950s touring theatre company. George (Michael Waldhier) and Charlotte (Laura Waldhier) are aging stars who have had good theatre runs and minor success in the movies—though they still dream celluloid dreams of Hollywood. Their company, including stage manager Paul (Nate Schierman), younger actress Eileen (Isabel Vullings), and Charlotte’s mother Ethel (Michelle Rodino-Colocino) are doing Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in rep in Buffalo, NY—a theatrical backwater apparently. Their daughter Rosalind (Liz Fuhrmann) returns with her new fiancé Howard (Zachary Myers) having left both Paul and the stage forever. The initial conflict is driven by the revelation that Eileen is pregnant with George’s child, which leads to Charlotte announcing that she’s leaving George for their lawyer Richard (Eric Zeigler). George gets a call letting him know that big time Hollywood director Frank Capra is coming to see their matinee because the two stars of his current film—roles George and Charlotte had wanted—have left the project. George tells Charlotte that Capra is coming and this could be their big break, but she doesn’t believe him. After Charlotte walks out, George disappears to get drink, so he isn’t there when Charlotte returns having seen in the newspaper that the other stars are out of the picture. She, Paul, and Rosalind try in vain to find George, and when they finally do find him he’s so drunk he can barely stand, let alone do their matinee performance of Private Lives. George, for his part, decides that the matinee should be Cyrano, and so when they finally manage to get the matinee with Frank Capra in the audience started, George comes on stage in his Cyrano costume, still absolutely steamed. The performance is an unmitigated disaster, with sets falling over, George missing his cue and in the wrong costume, lines getting mangled, and Ethel making a surprise appearance to try and “save” the show by “explaining” to the audience what’s going on—an explanation Charlotte dismisses by acknowledging that the audience will already think they’re insane. The play ends back in George and Charlotte’s apartment, with her once again planning to leave with Richard. George makes a speech convincing her to stay, Rosalind’s fiancé Howard (whom George and Paul mistook for Eileen’s brother who vowed to kill George, and therefore tied him up in the closet) is now engaged to Eileen and planning to start a family right away (much to George’s relief), and Rosalind goes back to Paul and her life on the stage. To cap the action off, the actors are informed by telephone that Capra’s plane was delayed, so he missed the matinee and will be seeing the evening performance instead.

Like most farces, Moon Over Buffalo really depends on the timing of the performance, the actors absolutely need to have flawless comic timing to make the play work. And the Sock & Buskin production definitely did that. One of the most challenging scenes is probably the play-within-the-play, in which the company is doing Private Lives and George is doing Cyrano. This scene reflects multiple aspects of comic timing—the reaction and drawing tension out. There is a series of unexpected events (unexpected, that is, from the audience’s perspective; the actors know what’s going to happen but must act as if they don’t). When, for instance, the railing falls over first as Rosalind is on stage alone—George has missed his cue—and then again when Charlotte and Paul are on stage, the actors repeatedly jump in surprise. And of course, when George rushes on in his Cyrano costume, Fuhrmann’s reaction is shock and confusion. The same reaction is repeated when Charlotte and Paul first see George in costume when he interrupts their scene. And while reactions to a surprise need to be performed believably, the other element of comic timing in this scene is building suspense by waiting. Rosalind enters the stage alone at the beginning of Private Lives, and George misses his cue. And the hints she tries to drop. And the subsequent cues she tries to give him. Eventually, Rosalind begins essentially narrating their entire conversation as a hypothetical of what he would say if he were there. During all this time, Fuhrmann is alone on stage, with no one to play against but herself, and she has to master humorous timing all on her own, which is much harder than having someone to play off of.

There were a few moments, mostly at the beginning of the second half, where the timing wasn’t entirely ideal. But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Across the entire cast—including supporting characters like Ziegler, Myers, and Rodino-Colocino—the timing made the pacing of the show quick, enjoyable, and uproariously funny.