Everyone loves a tenor, especially an Italian one. Many over the years have swooned over the powerful and passionate voices of Caruso, Pavarotti and Bocelli.
So it’s no wonder that when one of the greatest living, fictional tenors, Tito Merelli, is scheduled to perform the lead of Othello with the Cleveland Grand Opera Company, everyone and everything falls to pieces –– and that’s before the guy even opens his mouth to sing.
The mayhem begins as soon as the door –– make that doors –– open to Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor, the West End and Broadway sensation, which opened at Vernon’s Powerhouse Theatre Wednesday.
A tale of mistaken identity in its truest form, this is a loud play: doors slam –– a lot –– passionate Italians argue and props go flying. But for all the banging, crashing, smoke (I think that was a real cigarette choking the air, lending to the play’s 1930s’ artistic authenticity, I suppose) and mirrors, Lend Me a Tenor is absolutely entertaining.
A farce that uses physical comedy through its five doors –– and boy, do these actors get a workout –– the play is the perfect cure for the mid-February blahs.
It contains many laugh-out-loud moments, and we’re not just talking about interspersed polite laughs, but hearty guffaws.
Expect your face to hurt afterwards.
Most of the laughs come in the form of protagonist Max, the bumbling slave servant assistant to high-strung theatre manager Saunders.
The role has been perfectly cast in the form of Joel Montgrand, who captures the sweet innocence of Max, with all his pratfalls, and high-pitched panic attacks, in fine form.
The guy is from the same school as Charlie Chaplin, mixed with a little Rowan Atkinson, for his ability to fall, dust himself off, and make us laugh in the process –– a great performance. Oh, and it turns out that he can sing, too.
Montgrand receives a lot of help from fellow cast members, including Rick Smith as the often shouting Saunders, and Ashley Plomp as Saunder’s giddy daughter and Max’s love interest, Maggie, who has a serious heart on for one Tito “Il Stupendo” Merelli. (Insert giggle here.)
Secondary characters also swooning over the tenor include the decked-out Julia, chairman of the opera guild (the always great Jean Given), sultry soprano Diana (Emily Heayn, who just came off a just as impressive take as Marty in Grease) and the Bell Hop (Chris Froese, perfectly creepy, and hilarious, as a camera toting stalker fan.)
When the grand tenor (played with both laid-back coolness and fiery gusto by Geoff Ingram in fine Italian accent) finally makes his entrance, it’s his wife that steals the show.
Christine Cuglietta-Braun, perfectly cast as Maria Merelli, has the Italian fire in her, especially when her character is jealous over her fictional husband’s affairs.
The passion she projects almost set the audience on fire (or maybe that was the ciggie she was smoking.) Let’s just say, I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.
Lend Me a Tenor follows Max as he is asked to babysit Merelli, who has shown up late at the hotel, where the play is set, before his performance that night.
Merelli is exhausted and has stomach trouble and eventually, with a few unfortunate mishaps, passes out in bed, helped along by a handful of sleeping pills washed down with a little chianti.
After finding a note and an empty bottle of pills, Max believes the great tenor has killed himself.
Max is later convinced by Saunders to emulate Merelli’s role as Othello that night, so Max colours his face with black makeup, pads his costume, and dons an over-the-top afro wig. (Hey no one said plausibility was part of the plot here.)
There’s something about seeing a nerdy, white guy emulating an Italian in blackface that really should be insulting.
The play is set in the ‘30s, and harkens back to the days of Al Jolson, where blackface was not construed as risqué as it is today, but you have to wonder how that initial audience who saw the play in the mid-’80s reacted to such a bold move.
(It wasn’t long after that when actor Ted Danson tried to impress his then girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg at a Friars Club roast by donning blackface –– let’s say it didn’t go down well.)
Today’s audience isn’t as PC, perhaps (the revival of the play last year on Broadway didn’t conjure any controversy), and the disguise is important in the confusion that ensues when Merelli awakens from his haze, and makes his way in the same costume to the theatre.
The craziness in the second act is just that: crazy, especially in the scenes where each “Othello” experiences a set of circumstances, including some va-va-voom in the bedroom(s), simultaneously.
Led by director Matt Brown, the whole ensemble does a fine job with the quick pacing, parallel staging, and finding their way through the chaos, except for the poor Bell Hop who heads face first into a door (I hope he was meant to do that!?)
You’d be amiss not to open the door to this exhausting, funny play yourself.
Lend me A Tenor continues at the Powerhouse Theatre today with a matinée performance at 2 p.m. as well as Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are at the Ticket Seller, 549-7469, www.ticketseller.ca.
