items tagged with Marc Ciemiewicz

Judging by the children dancing in the aisles during Saturday’s performance, Circa ’21’s current children’s offering Diary of a Worm, a Spider, & a Fly is a hit with younger audience members. But the hour-long musical also has quite a few laughs for the adults.

When the kids weren’t laughing at playwright Joan Cushing’s fart jokes or Worm describing his sister as having a “face that looks like her butt,” I was laughing at what I assume are director Kimberly Furness’ additions of pop-culture references. My favorite was Worm and Fly singing along to “Carry on My Wayward Son” after being told to “Please enjoy this music while your party is reached” when they call Spider’s cell phone.

Before November 26, I didn’t know much about Junie B. Jones beyond her being the main character in a popular children’s book series by Barbara Park. With that in mind, I felt I needed to enlist the help of my family’s resident Junie B. expert, eight-year-old Madison, to adequately review the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse’s production of Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. (Madison is, after all, the show’s target audience, as opposed to this 37-year-old, balding male.) I suspected that if she was pleased with the play, I would be, too.

Of all the installments in the Nunsense series, which includes six sequels and three spinoffs, the Christmas musical Nuncrackers – currently running at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse – seems to me the most palatable. For one thing, it has the added benefit of its Christmas theme; there’s just something about the holidays that puts you (or at least me) in a cheery mood, which, in turn, makes it easier to forgive the show’s shortcomings. And when you add the merry goofiness of the Little Sisters of Hoboken, it’s hard not to be in good spirits throughout the show.

If the goal of Happy Days: A New Musical – making its Midwestern debut at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse – is to have the feel of the 1970s TV series, then playwright (and series creator) Garry Marshall and songwriter Paul Williams are working against each other. The book is reminiscent of the sitcom, with similar character dynamics and situations, but it comes across as a caricature of the TV show – purely wholesome, without the slight edge and hints of rebellion present in its televised incarnation. Williams’ songs, meanwhile, don’t suggest the series at all; it’s as if the tunes were taken from some other 1950s-themed musical, and plopped into an episode of Happy Days without consideration for whether they fit the characters.