(SPOILER ALERT! The following may reveal details of the Timber Lake Playhouse's current production of the musical Titanic. Readers are advised to cease reading if they don't want to know how the story ends.)
It struck me, during Saturday's matinée performance of Big River at the Timber Lake Playhouse, that theatre is my church, considering I repeatedly wanted to raise my hands in praise and shout "Amen!" at various points, and in ways I used to while attending Sunday services in my younger years. Theatre, for me, is a spiritual experience, and this Big River served as a big-tent revival that reminded me of that truth.
Though I've watched the film version several times and viewed a staging of its musical earlier this summer, the Timber Lake Playhouse's production of Big Fish still had me choking back tears despite my (over-)familiarity with the material. That's in no small part due to the magic in director James Beaudry's staging, the cast's endearing rendering of the supporting characters, and Karl Hamilton's captivating charm as Edward Bloom, the father at the center of this tale of tall tales.
Fewer than 90 minutes after it began, the Timber Lake Playhouse's season-opening production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ended, appropriately, with a blast of exuberant, life-affirming color. Yet at the curtain call for this fantastically well-sung presentation of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's and lyricist Tim Rice's beloved biblical musical, it became clear that the stars of the show weren't the gifted performers portraying Joseph, the Narrator, or any of director James Beaudry's 19 other cast members. The real stars, it turned out, were the streamers.
The inherent danger in seeing any production of Footloose, whether on stage or screen, is that you risk having those maddeningly catchy pop tunes trapped in your brain for days. I'm therefore pleased to report that, less than 72 hours after attending the Timber Lake Playhouse's speedy and sprightly take on the musical, I no longer have "Let's Hear It for the Boy," "Holding Out for a Hero," and the rest playing in an endless mental loop. It's actually the performances by Karl Hamilton and Elizabeth Haley that I can't get out of my head.
Based on the justly celebrated 1974 nonfiction by Studs Terkel, the musical Working is a two-act series of vignettes on the joys and frustrations of professional life, and the search for satisfaction in even the most mundane of careers. It's somewhat ironic, then, that in the Timber Lake Playhouse's current, wholly engaging, superbly performed production of the show, the most effective segment in it concerns a man who actually doesn't work for a living.
On any given day, the musical I consider my all-time favorite will either be Sweeney Todd or Guys & Dolls ... unless that day is the day after I've seen a production of Guys & Dolls, in which case it's the clear winner. Heaven knows there are plenty of entertaining, tune-filled warhorses from Broadway's golden era, but do any of them have the effervescent fizz and pop of composer/lyricist Frank Loesser's 1950 triumph, a beautifully constructed musical comedy so funny and clever and sweet that it can keep you happy and humming for hours - like, 100 hours - after it ends?
As befits a musical based on the biblical book of Genesis, Children of Eden starts In the Beginning. Yet in discussing the Timber Lake Playhouse's current presentation of the show, it seems more appropriate to start at the end, because the curtain call - arriving more than two-and-a-half hours after the opener - appears to be one of the few sequences in which the performers understand exactly what's expected of them.
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