05
Jul
2011
The Timber Lake Playhouse's current production of Sweet Charity features the single most electrifying, exhilarating dance number I've ever seen on a stage. I'm well aware of what a sweeping and potentially exaggerated generalization that statement is, and almost hesitate in making it, because it's the type of effusive praise that can easily make theatre-goers (to say nothing of theatre participants) roll their eyes and say, "Oh, come on." But I'll say it again: Sweet Charity features the single most electrifying, exhilarating dance number I've ever seen on a stage. And I'm betting that fellow patrons at Thursday's performance might easily feel the same way.
Peppy, cheeky, and somewhat unsatisfying - though in ways that are rarely the fault of its current Timber Lake Playhouse presentation - Flight of the Lawnchair Man boasts a friendly spirit, a number of witty and weird diversions, and a brisk running time, clocking in (with the intermission) at a mere 105 minutes. Yet for all of its strengths, and unlike its determined hero, this musical comedy never really takes off. Director Chuck Smith's production is ingeniously designed and energetically performed, but the show itself is a little bit You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, a little bit The Wedding Singer, and a little bit Bat Boy, and about as stylistically awkward as that description implies.
After an extended silent-movie montage - one featuring clips from F.W. Murnau's horror classic Nosferatu - and the appearance of the show's title, the Timber Lake Playhouse's Sunset Boulevard opens with screenwriter Joe Gillis (Brandon Ford) at the bottom of a swimming pool. Granted, the water, like that montage, is a multimedia projection, and Gillis is standing (and singing) rather than floating face-down. But the Act I prelude is still enough like the opening to Billy Wilder's beloved Hollywood noir that fans of the Sunset Boulevard movie will likely smile in recognition and appreciation, and we're returned to this scene of a future crime at the start of the musical's second act.
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.
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.
I love TV's The Office for many reasons, but the most basic is that nowhere else on television will you find a weekly ensemble of 16 performers, each of whom is consistently in character, and each of whom is consistently funny. No matter where your eye lands in a group scene, you find yourself grinning - if not laughing out loud - at some priceless reading or reaction, and that's what routinely occurs throughout the Timber Lake Playhouse's current, knockout presentation of Grease, a production that, coincidentally, also boasts an ensemble of 16 stellar comedians. (Seventeen, if you count the hysterical, wordless, run-on cameo by Jake Bollman.) And Timber Lake's troupe even tops the sitcom's office drones in one regard, because damn, but this staff can sing.
