17
Aug
2009
As the title character in the Timber Lake Playhouse's Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, Chris Froseth is a spectacularly confident dork. With his slender frame, curly mop of brown hair, and iconic horn-rimmed glasses, he nails the physicality to perfection, and his cascading drawl and thrilling rock vocals are oftentimes uncannily similar to Holly's. Yet what's even more impressive is how completely the actor seems to capture the singer/songwriter's gawky yet fantastically determined spirit.
Some 20 minutes before the finale to the Timber Lake Playhouse's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you'll finally hear something that you hadn't heard once during the musical's first two hours: a legitimately sincere number. Granted, this romantic ballad is being sung by a practiced con man, and the object of his affection is a young woman from whom he's trying to swindle 50 grand, and he's only been hitting on her to prevent his rival from scoring first. But, hey, sincerity is sincerity, and besides, it's the only heartfelt moment you're gonna get.
Over the last five summers, I've attended more than a dozen productions directed by the Timber Lake Playhouse's artistic director, Brad Lyons, and the majority of them have been utterly sensational. But I can't recall ever being more knocked out by the man's skills and obvious love for his craft than I was during Friday night's Wait Until Dark, Timber Lake's current - and top-to-bottom stunning - presentation of playwright Frederick Knott's 1966 thriller.
On Thursday night, the Timber Lake Playhouse opened The Wedding Singer, the musical-comedy version of 1998's love-in-the-'80s movie hit starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Imaginatively and exuberantly directed by Brad Lyons, it's a joyful take on stage material that (in a wonderful surprise) is pretty damned terrific to start with, and Thursday's production was so big-hearted, so funny, so brilliantly costumed, and so smashingly well-performed that I might as well get it out of the way and say that its technical presentation was so routinely clunky that it bordered on the infuriating.
In the 11-week period between June 1 and August 12, I saw 28 area productions. And how did you spend your summer vacation?
