By John Lyle Belden

As a certain song says, show business is wonderful, even when it’s awful for those engaged in it. In Ken Ludwig’s “Moon Over Buffalo,” now on stage at Mud Creek Players, fading Broadway stars George and Charlotte Hay are upstate and up the creek, struggling to keep a repertory theatre alive during the 1950s dawn of television, after washing out of B movies and failing to get a prestige picture (“The Twilight of the Scarlet Pimpernel,” directed by Frank Capra) in Hollywood.  

Backstage of the Buffalo venue, we meet the Hays’ daughter Rosalind (Chrizann Taylor), who had given up the stage and is back in town only to introduce her fiancé, Howard (Jeff Haber), a TV weatherman. George and Charlotte (Sean Berne and Zoe O’Haillin-Berne) make an entrance as only they can. Rosalind’s ex-boyfriend and past scene partner Paul (Malcolm Marshall) is also on hand. Also, the Hays’ attorney Richard (Craig Kemp) is in town, hoping to woo Charlotte away from the madness, especially considering that the cute ingénue Eileen (Anabella Lazaridez) has been impregnated by George. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s feisty elderly mother Ethel (Jean Adams) turns her hearing aid on only when she feels like it, and if she has to mend the trousers one more time…

True to his comic style, Ludwig gives us a sort of slamming-doors sitcom (a Broadway hit in 1995) with plenty of belly-laugh moments. This comes complete with mistaken identity as tongue-tied Howard is mistaken for Capra, who is believed to be in the audience, looking to recast “Pimpernel.” We also get the mash-up no one asked for as both “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” hilariously take the stage.

The flashes of I-love-you-but-I-want-to-kill-you between George and Charlotte feel real, as the Bernes are married offstage as well. Whether enraged, distraught, or otherwise always performing, they chew the scenery with a knife and fork. Taylor gives us Roz as a voice of reason, yet feeling conflicted especially when Paul is in the room. As for Marshall, and for his part, Kemp, they are each in their own way hopeless romantics. For one, at least, the bold optimism may pay off. Haber is our bewildered everyman caught in middle of so many situations this forecaster never saw coming. Lazaridez kinda gives the ditz vibes one would expect from her blonde character, but they are more reflective of stress and hormones’ effect on the mind than hindered intellect. Adams heroically stays the eye of this hurricane, adding her own stoic yet comic flavor to the proceedings.

Directors Kelly Keller and Dani Lopez-Roque wrangle the wildness well, with the help of a trio of supporting characters/set changers who can’t help hamming it up a bit themselves, keeping the farcical mood flowing from scene to scene.

Two more fun weekends remain (through May 4) before this “Moon” sets on the Mud Creek Barn, 9740 E. 86^th St., Indianapolis. Get info and tickets at mudcreekplayers.org.