[ back ]
'Lend Me a Tenor' is slam-dunk farce
(by Herb Hammer - August 17, 2011)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
'Lend Me a Tenor' is slam-dunk farce
As soon as you see all those doors on Ray Beach's elegant set, you know right off each one of them will be slammed many times over. "Lend Me a Tenor" is a farce, after all, and Ken Ludwig is arguably the best modern farce writer around. What would a farce be without a ludicrous plot and, oh, yes, all those slamming doors.
Rabbit Run Theater, the barn theater in Madison, is performing this sure-fire comedy these summer nights where everybody and everything clicks.
Michael Crowley steals the show in the part of Max, a sullen clerk whose job it is to keep an eye on opera star Tito Merelli, who is staying at a hotel to perform with the Cleveland Grand Opera Company. No kidding, Mr. Ludwig uses Cleveland.
The set-up is brief. The Italian opera star enters but feels ill. He takes a handful of pills and flops onto the bed.
Saunders, the nervous general manager, calls Max and tells him to get the great Merelli going, for the reception is about to start.
But the great "Ill Stupendo" is unconscious or maybe dead. Saunders, played with consistent desperation by the remarkable Roger Principe, falls to his knees, hanging onto Max's leg, begging him to step in and play Othello.
Now, we know it's ridiculous to think a little black makeup and a fright wig will suddenly turn this young fellow into an opera star who knows the part of Othello by heart. But this is farce, after all. The sillier it becomes the funnier it gets.
There are honest laughs as three ladies and one bell hop throw themselves at the opera star, who is not always Merelli but often Max. Caitlin Rose's Maggie, the silly girl eager to lose her virginity to the great star; Evie Koh's Diana, the soprano determined to screw her way to the Met; Kathe Tascone's Julia, the culture queen who just wants to touch a real artist; and, the most desperate of all, Matthew Mortensen's opera-mad bell hop. They all add much to the comic mayhem.
Don Knepper is the big surprise as he carries off the part of Tito Merelli perfectly. Merelli's spitfire wife, Maria, is played with magnificent abandon by the brilliant Nancy Brooks.
Though Michael Crowley's Max does amazing work, the rest are up to the job of keeping us laughing all the way through.
While the mistaken identity of two Merellis wandering the stage brings most of the laughs, "Lend Me a Tenor" has everything, from start to finish.
Director Janet Shank, who knows her way around comic farce, has done amazing work in keeping her charges on the move. She certainly knows how to keep the doors slamming and how to keep her audience in stitches.
Hats off to Rabbit Run Theater for keeping us grinning all the way home.
[ back ]
