Reviewed 11/5/05
On the Titanic,
ill-fated passengers were treated by the orchestra with the lovely strains
of “Autumn.” In Peoria on Saturday night, ill-fated guests
of the premier performance of the long-awaited Arizona Broadway Theatre were
offered a pretty good production of Cole Porter’s Anything
Goes during their disastrous tent experience. Where the sinking
of the Titanic has been called “A Night to Remember,” the Klaphake
family will probably consider November 5, 2005 an evening to forget. Survivors,
though, will not.
Consider these choices: 1) Once again postpone your already delayed premiere when you realize your theatre is not going to be completed and incur the wrath of those who had bought tickets, or 2) Mount a full production with your regular dinner offering in a tent on the concourse of the Peoria Sports Complex and incur the wrath of those in attendance and the press. Which would you choose? Personally, I think disgruntled ticket purchasers will just call and cancel; whereas, those you have made wait almost two hours to choke down cold meals and then start the production 45 minutes late will do worse than that: they’ll talk. Have a listen.
To the left of the RV show and to the right of the signs for the Cat Clinic sits a large white tent. My wife and I arrive a bit early, just in case. At a little after 6:30, the “house” opens. For those beyond the fourth row of tables, the sight lines are as atrocious as you’d expect in a flat space. Then come the delays. It appears there are about ten servers for the 160 tickets sold, which sounds about right. We are lucky: we receive our salads at 6:50. Others around us wait until 7:20. By this point, the suited management of the theatre, including CEO Ronald Klaphake and his son, Kiel, has begun lugging out trays. Since dishes are the first priority, refills on drinks have been long forgotten. At 7:25, my obviously frazzled server takes our orders. She turns away, but before she moves on, I ask for a carafe of tea. The response she spits back is “Yeah, if I can find it. They’re back there somewhere. I’ll have to look for it.” She pauses, and then asks “Did I take your order already?” Not surprisingly, we never receive a carafe of anything. Rumors and excuses swirl around the increasingly incredulous crowd. One table tells me that their waitress has told them they’ve been slammed by twice the amount of ticket holders expected, while another waitress has claimed that half of their wait staff has not shown up. Lots of excuses and misinformation, and by 7:40, still no dinners in sight.
At five of eight, following the 500-yard trip from the far-distant kitchen, I am served my Beef Burgundy, and my wife receives her pork. Her meal has sat for so long before being brought to the table, it is inedible. My meal is room temperature, but I can tell that if it were heated, it would have been tasty. I shovel mine down, but my wife refuses hers. She wants someone to ask her how her meal is so she can have it sent back for reheating. No one ever comes. Eventually, she stands up, flags someone down and receives an almost-hot meal. I am envious of her chutzpah.
The apologies come over the sound system. The final four tables near us receive their dinners at 8:20. Some are still eating when Mr. Klaphake the elder begins his preshow announcements along with renewed and sincere apologies at 8:40. For our kindness, we will receive complimentary desserts at intermission (ordinarily a $4 to $5 addition to the bill). Though my policy is to leave a theatre if they have not started the show 20 minutes beyond their scheduled curtain, I indulge this company. At 8:42, the overture begins, and Daniel P. Vennes’ enforced limited lighting featuring only 20 instruments dims on Mike Monsos’ overly-blue ocean liner superstructure set.
The theatre part of this dinner theatre is limited by what they can accomplish
on a makeshift stage in a tent, but the talent of the performers is very strong.
There is a mix of local talent in the ensemble and smaller roles and out-of-state
ringers capably handling the leads. Kim Coben, Meigan
Stack, and Whit Baldwin are dreams as Reno Sweeney,
Hope Harcourt, and Billy Crocker respectively. All three are amazing singers,
Stack and Baldwin are beautiful dancers, and though acting is a minor detail
in a Porter piece, all three show moments of comic timing, though after awhile,
they seemed a bit embarrassed and rushed through the motions of some of the
stupider moments of the script. Brad York is a scream as the
malapropism-prone Lord Evelyn, and he shows himself to be a triple threat when
he launches into “The Gypsy in Me.” Mark Alan Hudson is
a bit of a disappointment as comic relief gangster Moonface Martin. He doesn’t
seem sharp or quick on the uptake, and his singing voice is weak enough that
his performance of “Be Like the Blue Bird” is played for the wrong
kind of laughs. Eleanore Gutwein balances this, though, as
fetching gun moll Erma. Gutwein takes over the stage along with a great quartet
of sailors during the second act “Buddie, Beware.” More traditional
and flatter performances come from Gary Steelman as Billy’s
boss Elisha and Pat Grover as Hope’s mom Evangeline.
The ensemble is quite strong, and at their best when the big chorus numbers begin and Luke Walrath’s energetic choreography gets into full swing. The bigger the show becomes, the greater the evening rises. John Massaro’s seven-piece orchestra sits in the “bridge” of this ship, and they are a strong, controlling influence. When placed into more supportive confines, they should do a better job of blending with the cast. As a group, they should be the happiest of the evening: for as we stumbled away from the curtain call around 11:15, they were assured overtime.
Have I mentioned the 27-minute long intermission? This was one ill-advised, unfortunate misstep. Here’s hoping that the future holds more of the type of entertainment we enjoyed during the show, and that the survivors who dealt with what happened before are a forgiving bunch. Especially the profoundly miffed critics.
