COMIC TURNS

By BRAD LEITHAUSER

Heaven lies far away, in California. It's called The Twilight of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a movie to be directed by Frank Capra. Purgatory is right at hand, in Buffalo, New York. It's where a pair of aging stage actors, George Hay (Philip Bosco) and his wife Charlotte (Carol Burnett), dream of starring in the Capra film. Instead, on this June day in 1953, they are reprising rundown performances of Cyrano and Private Lives. Payrolls are not being met, and their troupe is nearing mutiny.

It has been more than 30 years since Carol Burnett appeared on Broadway. What lured her back is this play about plays and players, Moon over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig. His comedy Lend Me a Tenor was a Broadway hit in 1989 and moved on to a spate of international productions. Like Tenor, Moon over Buffalo is fast and farcical. Burnett veers winningly between squawking moments of indignation and blazing, face-overspilling grins. Bosco veers in another way. He gets to play most of the second act in a state of delirious intoxication, and does a lovely job of conveying the light-footed lumbering of the drunk whose every second step is an attempt to right his first.

Farces as a rule employ well-worn props. Even so, Moon over Buffalo has an especially familiar feel. To see it once is almost to see it twice, given how much daje vu is involved. You recognize this comic turn from Kiss Me, Kate, that one from a Preston Sturges film. But Ludwig has a gift for making the conventional convivial. Whether you know it or not, you have spent your share of mornings in '50s Buffalo. And you had a good time there.