It was difficult to go into Saturday's performance of New Ground Theatre's The Way West without high expectations given the cast of women involved. I've enjoyed all four of them in the past and was certain I'd be impressed yet again, and by the end of the night, my respect for their talents was mostly renewed due to each one's admirable characterization.
Urinetown is one of my top-five-favorite musicals, due to the many songs with memorable, singable melodies by composer/lyricist Mark Hollmann and lyricist Greg Kotis, as well as Kotis' sharply funny, self-referential book. Unfortunately, I was almost immediately disappointed with Quad City Music Guild's production of the show during Wednesday's final dress rehearsal, because the first full minute of director Heather Beck's staging had the ensemble cast frozen in place (and for what actually felt like two to three minutes) during the overture. Yet while my heart sank seeing this dull, uninteresting start to such a creative piece of musical theatre, thankfully, once the overture ended, I wasn't disappointed at any other point during Music Guild's presentation.
If you're planning to see Quad City Music Guild's Oklahoma!, I'd recommend getting to the theatre at least 10 minutes before the presentation begins. Those buying - or hoping to buy - tickets at the door should certainly arrive earlier than that; Friday's opening-night performance was already nearly sold out, and I imagine word-of-mouth will make the musical's second weekend equally jam-packed. But 10 minutes seems like an appropriate amount of time to take in this production's absolute beauty of a set, and besides, you might find yourself forgetting about the set once the cast shows up and gives you even more wonderful things to look at.
Legally Blonde: The Musical is, of course, based on the 2001 hit starring Reese Witherspoon, a movie that led to a rather woebegone sequel in 2003's Legally Blonde: Red, White, & Blonde. Yet while watching the original film's stage version on Thursday, I felt that Red, White, & Blonde also would've been a fitting title for Quad City Music Guild's terrifically peppy new presentation, considering that this solo-star-driven show came off, instead, as pretty wonderfully democratic.
As with many things in life, it can be blamed on a friendly purple dinosaur.
Quad City Music Guild's Les Misérables has the look and feel of the local community theatre producing its own, specific version of the Broadway favorite, with its music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. And that delights me, given that I wanted to see the group's take on this much-loved musical, rather than an attempt to recreate one of its previous stagings.
Sitting down with director John Weigandt, assistant director Jaci Weigandt (John's wife), and cast members Faith Hardacre and Jennifer Sondgeroth prior to a Tuesday-night rehearsal for Quad City Music Guild's A Christmas Survival Guide, I mention that this forthcoming show seemed like a rather unusual choice for the organization's wintertime slot.
Quad City Music Guild's Thursday-night preview performance of Peter Pan - which, it should be stressed, was still technically a rehearsal - clocked in at roughly an hour and 55 minutes, making director Beth Marsoun's presentation at least a half-hour shorter than any of the four other Peter Pans I've thus far seen on stage. This proved, at alternating times, to be both a very good thing and a rather unfortunate thing. But let's start with the good.
Three days after seeing A Nice Family Gathering at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, I was still trying to understand the inclusion of the word "nice" in playwright Phil Olson's title. This isn't a feel-good, fuzzy-holiday-feelings sort of Thanksgiving play that would render the title appropriate, if clichéd. Nor is it an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy that makes the use of the word ironic. (Nor, for the record, is it a play about a family with the last name Nice.) I'm guessing, however, that an over-the-top, crass, outrageous comedy was Olson's intent, given that the content of his play kind of approaches shocking, though barely.
Quad City Music Guild's Hello, Dolly! seems something of a self-parody, as director Erin Lounsberry amps up the silliness of the piece, reveling in the fun of it rather than taking this story of the matchless matchmaker too seriously. It's Lounsberry's almost campy approach that makes the production worth seeing, with Tristan Layne Tapscott and Bryan Tank carrying much of its wacky weight.
