Tim rates it:
Let’s not spend too much time on this unfortunate production. From the tip of its scalp to the bottom of its tippy-toes, The Foley Artist reeks of amateurism, and not in a good way. The plot is lame, the dialogue is banal, and the acting is, to put it mildly, uninspired. Not only is it set in the Great Depression, it is the Great Depression.
Patrick Daniels (Andrew McCord) is a multi-voiced radio actor who cannot find his voice when he pitches woo to the ladies. He longs to romance the sweet new ingénue, Ella Saunders (Tess Pohlhaus), but her beauty makes him tongue-tied. What’s more, the swinish radio-drama lead, Ethan Coventry (Dan Franko) has his eye on Ella too. Patrick is truly in a pickle until the Foley artist, Aaron James (Michael Ridgaway), offers him a solution: he, Aaron James, will feed Patrick lines to pitch at Ms. Saunders if Patrick will get their windbag of a boss (Nick Rose) to read a script which James has written.
Sound familiar? Of course it does. But Cyrano de Bergerac never climbed under the restaurant table where Christian was having dinner with Roxanne, and there stage-whispered his advice to his hapless protégé. And Cyrano never pretended to be a waiter and spilled wine on the antagonist, or jumped on the antagonist’s shoulders and bit him, pretending to be a spider. Nor did he go through any of the half-dozen other moronic antics through which playwright Mike Meagher drags his characters.
Afterward, the Cyrano motif is abandoned, and the play staggers toward a conclusion. It turns out that Ella is as smitten with Patrick as he with her, and he could have said anything to her. The romantic part concluded, the play gives itself over to comic revenge, which mostly consists of a drunk Coventry (looking, for no discernable reason, as though he has just slow-danced with a wildcat) chasing James around the set. At one point the boss, pressed into service as the Foley artist in order to create the sounds of a swordfight, witlessly plays all the instruments at his disposal and makes a cacophony. Why would he do that? Who cares?
Because the plot of The Foley Artist is so awful, Meagher is obliged to make the plots of the radio shows being broadcast even worse. He succeeds. At the top of the show they are doing a story about a superhero who becomes half man, half bee. He is fighting a villain named the Horny Hornet. The other shows are even worse. James’ script, which is supposed to save the radio station, is as bad as the rest of them. None of these shows would have lasted a week on real radio; some of them might have been pulled mid-broadcast.
The characters are all given one note, and the actors faithfully sound that note – sometimes at an unbearable pitch – for the course of the play. Patrick is nervous; the boss is blustery; Ella is sweet (and apparently incapable of removing her hat); Covington is insufferable; Aaron James is – well, I don’t know what he is supposed to be. I did enjoy the brief performance of Rachel M. Loose as a secretary/script girl who has the hots for Covington.
Until this year, some Fringe shows were staged in Chief Ike’s Mambo Room. I miss it. It used to be that after a show like this, you could repair to the bar and get one of their excellent Black Russians, at the very reasonable price of eight dollars, for solace and consolation. But now, at the conclusion of The Foley Artist you have no choice but to walk down the steep stairs of the Bodega, and out into the melancholy Washington night.
The Foley Artist 
One hour, ten minutes without Intermission
By Mike Meagher
Directed by Chris Hickle
Produced by zerohour theatre
Reviewed by Tim Treanor
I think the review is a little harsh. I enjoyed the show taking it for what it is, an affectionate and stylized sendup of old time radio serials. This show isn’t meant to be high art; instead, it’s not much different than countless sitcom episodes with the same plot line. [Note: it’s not the plot that’s awful, it is execution that’s a bit lacking.] Yes, the story was predicable and the characters limited, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t funny at times. For example, the Ethan Coventry portrayal reminded me of Ted Baxter on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (a role which received Emmy Award). Further, to criticize the radio serials as being awful misses the point that they were supposedly to be laughable bad (and succeeeded). I laughed enough to say I had a pleasant evening and I found the acting mid-range among the 20+ Fringe offerings that I have attended.
Ethan, obviously Tim and I struck a nerve. I apologize. As I said elsewhere on these pages, I know this is supposed to be all light-hearted and fun, this Fringe stuff, and here come the critics to rain your parade. And it’s undeniable that the author and the actors put their total hearts into this production.
If critics bug you, you have the constitutional right not to read them. But they will still be there, for those who find value in what they have to say. I find critics one good source for whether I will spend my hard-earned on seeing a show. One can learn to tell when a critic is clueless or whether he has an agenda or some other terminal disease. No one should let a critic tell you what to do. He is just one tool out of many at your disposal.
Also, I dabble in play-writing, and I have found that feedback of any kind is quite precious. Again, you can pick and choose what to take to heart.
The 3 people who went with me enjoyed the play. We thought better of the actors than the reviewer did. The heat in the theater was uncomfortable even though we sat in the back row to take advantage of the fan. Then they turned it off at the beginning of the play!! oh no!!
“It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” -Teddy Roosevelt
I agree. The play could have benefitted from some pre-production read-through’s and the dialog could have at least been cleaned up a bit to make it more realistic and natural. In comedy, a little bit of credibility goes a long way, and the radio dramas the author created were so bad they robbed the rest of the story of credibility. But the acting — please, please, please, actors, vary your delivery. You don’t need to rush through the good lines and scream the funniest. Or vice versa. And move more naturally about the stage. In short, a complete re-write and the actors availing themselves of acting lessons is the indicated Rx. That would upgrade the show to acceptable at least, if not a comedy classic. The story has legs (despite its proximity to Cyrano), the plot is well-paced and attractive, but we yearn for the genius touch (or even just the craftsman touch), both in the writing and the execution. Yeah, what Tim said.