Shooting over par

​North Coast Rep in Solana Beach has opened its 34th season with Ken Ludwig’s madcap comedy The Fox on the Fairway. Few playwrights write madcap better than Ludwig, whose Lend Me A Tenor four years ago was one of NCR’s most memorable recent productions. But Fox on the Fairway, about love, golf and a high-stakes contest between two warring country clubs, is an exhausting exercise in farce and physicality. Its prop hi-jinks are obvious ones, its plot antics strained. The six-person cast directed by Matthew Weiner goes all out, it must be said, and Jacquelyn Ritz, sexy, saucy and smart all in one, continues to be one of the NCR’s most delightful regulars.