Think Marx Brothers at the Opera who get laid through mistaken identity. It’s a stretch, but go with it and you’ll get an idea of chaos theory made hilarious that embodies Lend Me a Tenor.
Ken Ludwig, playwright, has a long and impressive list of credentials, including six Broadway and six West End plays.
The occasion of this summer offering was a fundraiser for the Kody Hodge Foundation. This foundation, according to the website, was established to honor the memory of the Kody Hodge and to provide scholarships, as well as promote, empower and encourage student actors. This year the organization offered a $2000.00 scholarship to a student studying Theatre Arts at AC, as well as sending fourteen area students nominated by their theatre directors to the Big Apple to see three Broadway shows.
Thus, this production provided laughs for a very good cause.
The setting is Cleveland in the 1930’s, pre-George Szell who would put Cleveland on the world artistic map. This gives more credibility to the plot as the impressario, Saunders, this time a female character skillfully played by Kendall Knapp, is driven by a desire of cultural recognition for her city. Hence, her booking of a famous Italian tenor, Tito, played by Jimmy Nguyen.
Saunders is a manipulative micromanager who has a gift for monumentalizing the trivial and trivializing the monumental. Witness her near apoplexy regarding the state of shrimp for the hor d’oeuvres, then, in a most cavalier manner, telling Max to stand in for Tito. Her brusque dismissal of the feelings of Max as well as her daughter Maggie, don’t garner any votes for ‘Boss of the Year!”
Max, the hero of the drama, is well-played by Alex Hernandez. He is the lap dog, Walter Mittyesque assistant who everybody loves to overlook, even his girlfirend Maggie, who wants to “have a fling” before any bling. That reaction maintains until he’s needed, then he literally finds his voice, outshining the person he’s impersonating. By the play’s end, the audience sees a different Max, the result of a character arc tracing his evolution from wimpy yes man to an assertive male vertebrate.
The entire play surges with a libidinous undertow that suddenly ensnares characters and rips them from their moral morings. There’s Tito, Il Stupendo, whose profligacy keeps his frustrated wife Maria in a state of mongamous celibacy. Diana, the diva whose sights are set on greater stages than Cleveland, and who plans to work her way up that ladder horizontally. As conniving as she is alluring, she’s uninbitied by restraints of conscience or propriety. Julia, the blatantly self-absorbed culture vulture and president of the opera guild, who credits herself with irresistibility as well as being maven to all things operatic.
Opera afficionados, between laughs, will surely note the character switch from Othello to Pagliacci, which means from blackface to clown white. Artistic license in the service of the greater good. Nor will they mind when Diana’s references her singing Desdemona to the real Otello (Pagliacci), which doesn’t register with Tito, but the audience gets it. This switcheroo doesn’t weaken the plot whatsoever. Laughs dictate their own reality.
Speaking of laughs, Tito’s warmup routine, which he shares with Max, was hilarious. Both actors tromped the stage with the grace of terpsichorean troglodytes, emitting vocalises more akin to rutting buffalo. You just had to be there.
The funny is written on the page: it’s up to the cast to make the audience feel the humor. And, that gets down to the essence of stage comedy of any form: timing! On that score, these young Thespians nailed it, as well as making their characters real. That happy result was a convergence of innate talent, and adherence to direction, astutely given by Ray Newburgh and Shannon Mashburn. Suffice it to say, all of the players showcased incredible professional potential.
This delightful play is also a testimony to the quality of the Amarillo College Theatre Department, which, even in the off-season is able to mount a Broadway show. Anyone witnessing a production of this department, at whatever time of the year, realizes that quality theatre is just one of the reasons that Amarillo College was named Outstanding Community College in America this year!
For this, as well as the cornucopia of culture available here in the Comanchera, we say:
Keep Amarillo Artsy!
Keep Austin Weird!
Keep Lubbock in the Rear View Mirror!
Keep Amarillo Artsy 