“IT’S A typical farce, really”, says director Liz Bradley of the sixth production for Canberra REP’s 2013 season, “The Fox on the Fairway.”  

Yes it’s nearly Christmas time and where would the company be without something to make audiences laugh?

American playwright, Ken Ludwig is well-known to Canberra theatregoers from his other plays, “Lend me a Tenor” and “Moon over Buffalo,” but in this case he turns his attention to one of the stranger human phenomena, the obsession with golf.

In a small excerpt from the play yesterday, cast members Jim Adamik, Martin Hoggart and Natalie Waldron gave us some of the flavour of the high-speed production, replete with fast-moving dialogue, American wisecracks, onstage doors opening and shutting and a little bit of sex.

Adamik gets to play the CEO of an exclusive golf club, relocated by Bradley to “somewhere in Melbourne.”

“I’ll be playing the straight man,” he  said as he embarked on a scene where he attempts to dress down the two young lovers on his staff.

Hoggart and Waldron, the younger characters who can outplay the adults on the golf course, explained the general drift of the over-the-top plot, while set designer Andrew Kay was busy draping two sinister-looking fox furs over parts of his capacious set. K Bradley indicated the technique they would use to move from inside the golf clubhouse to outside on the course.

Director Liz Bradley told Citynews that in relocating the play from America to Australia, she had made the decision to use Australian accents. While she agreed that there was  a subtle difference between Ludwig’s wisecracks and those of an Australian playwright like David Williamson, in her view, the dialogue would be readily comprehensible to REP audiences.

“The Fox on the Fairway”, at Theatre 3, Repertory Lane Acton, November 22 to December 6, bookings to 6257 1950 or  canberrarep.org.au