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The second show of Reagle Players' 41st
season is "Mame", originally titled "My Best Girl", is based on the 1955
fictional novel Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis and a 1956 Broadway play
that starred Rosalind Russell. The Broadway production of this show opened
on May 24, 1966, ran 1,508 performances and starred Angela Lansbury
and Beatrice Arthur who both won Tony Awards for their roles
Set in New York and spanning the Great Depression and World
War II, it focuses on eccentric bohemian, Mame Dennis, whose famous motto
is "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to
death." Her fabulous life with her wealthy friends is interrupted when the
young son of her late brother arrives to live with her. Her madcap life is
disrupted when her ten year old nephew arrives. Rather than bow to
convention, Mame introduces him to life, instilling in him her favorite
credo. Also figuring in the story line are Mame's personal secretary and
nanny-in-law, Agnes Gooch, her "bosom buddy" Vera Charles, the baritone
actress and the world's greatest lush, Dwight Babcock, the stuffy and
officious executor of Patrick's father's estate. Mame loses her fortune in
the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and tries her hand at a variety of jobs,
with comically disastrous results, but perseveres with good humor and an
irrepressible sense of style. Mame eventually meets and marries Beauregard
Jackson Pickett Burnside, a Southern aristocrat with a Georgia plantation
called Peckerwood. The trustee of Mame's late brother force Mame to send
Patrick off to boarding school while she and Beau travel the world on an
endless honeymoon that ends when Beau falls off an Alp. Mame returns home
a wealthy widow to discover Patrick has become a priggish snob engaged to
an empty-headed debutante, Gloria Upson, from a bigoted family. Mame
brings Patrick to his senses just in time to introduce him to the girl who
will become his wife. Director Frank Roberts infuses his cast
with exuberance and energy from start to finish with topnotch musical
direction from Dan Rodriguez and Jeff Leonard while the choreography and
different dance styles by Susan Chebookjian is breathtaking. The
audience propels themselves to their feet to give the hard working 45
member cast a standing ovation as its reward.
Frank does an excellent job with his direction of
this show and creates beautiful picture post card moments throughout recreating Gene Saks original staging.
The flapper costumes and the 1930's costumes are by Costume World
Theatrical. Susan recreates the choreography of Onna White complete with crowd pleasing kick
lines, cake walks, tangos, ballet, soft shoe and Charlestons to
Jerry Herman's insistent toe-tapper songs. Jeff Leonard conducts the 15 piece
orchestra with outstanding trills from the harpist in the touching ballads, "My Best
Girl" and "If He Walked into My Life" while the brass soars on the
title number, "It's Today", "Open a New Window. (An added treat in the orchestra
is a banjo player.) The set is by David Allen Jeffrey complete
with a spiral stairway for Mame to enter from with her bugle while the multitude of
lovely costumes are by Costume World especially impressive are Mame's gold
lame pantsuit for her opening number and the other lovely
outfits she wears thru the show. Hard working stage manager,Karen Parlato keeps
things running smoothly all night long with her assistant
stage manager, Paul Reynolds and his crew flying
the scenery in and out as well as moving set pieces on
and off.
Lee Meriwether is stunning as the hard-drinking
Manhattan socialite, Mame whose world is turned upside down when she
is appointed guardian of her orphaned nephew. Patrick. (Even
at 74 years old, she is very energetic in this role and is
still a statuesque red head who worked a 7 day
week to learn this enormous role.) She commands the stage in a
bravura performance,capturing Mame's "live, live, live motto splendidly.
Lee possesses the charm, wit and poise to make her version of
Mame like one who lives life to the fullest and persuasively
encourages everyone around her to do the same. She delivers a comic line
or a deadpan look with ease. Her singing voice is heard in a
multitude of songs. She sings "It's Today" with her home full of guests
while descending a long spiral stairway, "Open A New Window" with her
nephew Patrick,(while taking him on a tour of New York with them all
getting arrested at the speakeasy), she sings an obligato in the Moon
song while balancing herself on a crescent moon, the tear
jerking "My Best Beau" and her best number "If He Walked
Into My Life" which stops the show with her powerful rendition and its
poignancy. Lee also leads the upbeat "We Need a Little Christmas" with
Gooch, Ito and young Patrickand the big dance number "That's How Young I Feel" which she
does with Junior Babcock and the teen crowd in Connecticut. She does "Bosom Buddies"
with Vera, her alcohol-pickled best friend played by Maryann Zschau (a 3 time IRNE Award winner
who played Mrs. Meers in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" at Reagle) in a triumphant return
to Reagle Players. They do a soft shoe routine
during this song with Vera leading the way. Her first exit is as
she is carried offstage by the chorus boys when she collapses in
a drunken stupor. She also plays the leading lady in the operetta "The Man in the
Moon" in Act 1 with the chorus girls in the background
while she is dressed as a lady astronomer and the boys and girls
do a wonderful ballet in one of the funniest songs in the show.. Maryann is
hilarious as this bitchy Tallulah Bankhead star of the past and
one of her funniest lines is when she says the man in the
moon is a bitch when Mame doesn't appear on the
moon when she is supposed to and she throws her telescope
at Jeff Leonard in the orchestra pit invoking many laughs.
She also has some excellent zingers when she insults the obnoxious Upsons in the second act. Agnes Gooch, Patrick's drab
and decidedly repressed nanny is played by Maureen Brennan (a Tony nominee
for Broadway's "Candide" and who I reviewed as the fairy godmother in
"Cinderella" at NSMT in 2006) who's glorious soprano voice soars
in "St. Bridget" which opens the show as she is terrified
to bring Patrick to the evil city of New York and afterwards appears
in a red dress while descending the stairway dancing in a vampy version of "Bosom Buddies"
with Lee and Maryann. Agnes takes Mame's advice on living life to its
fullest to a fault by letting her hair down along with
her guard and Maureen does a show stopping song where after Mame and Vera transform her
from a frump into a bombshell, she appears at the door
pregnant and sings "Gooch's Song" with her voice soaring off
the charts. Ito, the butler is played by Kai Cho who also
appeared with Maryann in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" which Frank
also directed. His constantly laughing butler is a
hoot and his running in and out of various scenes are well
done, too.
The biggest scene stealer in this show
is 10 year old Troy Costa who plays the young, impressionable
Patrick as a boy. He mixes a martini for Mr. Babcock with ease
and recites the dirty words he has written on a pad because he
doesn't understand them. Troy has a fantastic voice which he shows off in
"St. Bridget" with Maureen, "It's Today" and "Open a New Window with
Lee and the very poignant "My Best Girl" at the theatre after Mame
is fired from her job as the Moon Lady and when he runs to Mame after
the title number declaring that she still is my best girl, your hearts
will melt. His acting is superb as is his is dancing ability in the tango segment and throughout Act 1. Troy may
be young but he has a very bright future in show business after this marvelous
portrayal. Bravo! Older Patrick is played by Curly Glynn( who is a onetime Boston
actor and BC alumnus) whose excellent baritone voice brings tears to the crowd's eyes with
his two renditions of "My Best Girl".Patrick is naive about
Gloria but Mame sets him straight in her own not very subtle
way. Curly does a wonderful job with this character. The obnoxious Upson
family is played by Jerry Walker, a 32 year veteran actor of Reagle shows,
Linda Lodi plays his wife and Thayer Surette is the bubble headed, Gloria. A
very debonair R. Glen Michell plays Beauregard perfectly and he lends a gentile warmth as this
Southern gentleman from his time onstage as one of Mame's casualties in the beauty salon to bringing Mame and
her family a little Christmas and finally he sings the title
song "Mame" with his fantastic baritone voice. In the famous first-act curtain finale, Mame
is serenaded by a chorus of smitten Southern aristocrats and
with his powerful voice leading them stops the show with the
audience cheering at it's intensity. Stan Alger plays Mame's publicist M.
Lindsay Woolsey. Playing the bombastic Dwight Babcock is Rick Sherburne who puts Mame in her place
but he finally gets his comeuppance when she tricks him during
the "It's Today" reprise scene. Other scene stealers include Jim Kopycinski as Gregor, the tres gay assistant
in the beauty shop scene and Jane Corrigan clad in widow's
attire as Mother Burnside who despises Mame and sings loudly during the Fox Hunt Georgia
sequence for her to fall off her horse with Chris King as Uncle
Jeff and Lenni Kmiec as Cousin Fan. (He was in Joseph last season
while she was in "No No Nanette".) The bitchy Sally Cato is played by
Aurelie Alger while the comical smoking wise ass, Junior Babcock is
played by Mark Linehan with a cigarette in his mouth. The cute Peter Dennis
who appears at the end of the show, quoting Mame's motto
out loud is Jeff Sewell. The dancing chorus for this
show is outstanding and is lead by Rachel Bertone as are
the fantastic singing prowess of the cast, too. So for a
fabulous rendition of this Jerry Herman blockbuster musical,
be sure to catch "Mame" at Reagle Players before she cakewalks out
of town.
MAME ( 16 to 27
July, 2009)
Reagle Players, 617 Lexington Street, Waltham, MA
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