“The Foreigner,” by Larry Shue, takes place at a fishing lodge in rural Georgia, where the plot revolves on the visit one weekend of two guests, Englishmen Charlie Baker (Sean Biskey) and Staff Sgt. Froggy LeSueur (Ric Stevens), an explosives engineering instructor. Naturally shy, Charlie is also depressed because his beloved wife may be dying. He tells Froggy he simply cannot speak with strangers just now.

To help his friend, Froggy tells lodge owner Betty Meeks (Colleen Biskey) that Charlie is the native of an exotic country who does not understand a word of English. Betty, who has never traveled, is delighted to cater for a stranger who is “as foreign as the day is long.”

Once they’re alone, the fun begins as Charlie overhears more than he should – the evil plans of a sinister, two-faced minister and his redneck associate; that the minister’s pretty fiancée is pregnant; and many other damaging revelations made with the thought that Charlie doesn’t understand a word being said. That he does fuels the nonstop hilarity of the play and sets up the wildly funny climax in which things go uproariously awry for some and triumphantly for others.

Performances are at 7 p.m. Oct. 2 and 3; and 4:30 p.m. Oct. 4 and 5 at the Encore Performing Arts Center in Cloquet.