25
Jul
2011
As enjoyable as Countryside Community Theatre's The Wizard of Oz is, the most thrilling part is this: The witches fly. While L. Frank Baum's familiar story of the Kansas girl who's blown to the land of Oz by a tornado has its fill of magic, Countryside adds some magic of its own by making its witches (and a flying monkey) airborne. It's a special touch to a show that, during Friday's opening-night performance, proved to be a gratifying evening's diversion - if a long one, running three hours from beginning to end.
As if she hadn't already proven so in the previous three hours of Friday's Countryside Community Theatre performance, Christina Myatt left no doubt that she's worthy of the larger-than-life role of Mama Rose with Gypsy's final song, "Rose's Turn."
Countryside Community Theatre's current, charming presentation of Annie Get Your Gun is directed by married couple Christina and William Myatt, and stars married couple Sheri and Wayne Hess as Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. (You'll also find the wedded Cheryl and John Wagner among the show's 38 cast members, plus several parent/child and sibling/sibling combinations.) Yet the production's most endearing, unexpectedly inspired couple turns out to be two performers who don't share 40 years between them, and whose characters you're probably unfamiliar with if your only exposure to this Irving Berlin classic comes via Ethel Merman's glorious blare.
