Tess McLaughlin and Tom Call comprise the comic romantic matchup in “The Wedding Singer,” the musical comedy that opens the 2019-2020 season at Portland Players. Mary Meserve
If you’re sad to see the end of summer, let’s note that two of the region’s theater companies just opened shows that will make you laugh. Both represent respective bookends for their companies’ seasons.
Portland Players opened their 89th season with a superb community production of “The Wedding Singer,” a tuneful and hilarious musical comedy, in South Portland.
Ogunquit Playhouse, a company with a season that extends deep into fall, opened its 2019 finale this past weekend, a fully professional production “Kinky Boots,” a six-time Tony Award-winning musical.
The University of Southern Maine opens its 2019-2020 Faculty Concert Series on Friday with a concert featuring a husband-wife duo.
The Portland String Quartet opens its season on Sunday with a concert featuring composers from three countries.
‘The Wedding Singer’
The traditional structure of a romantic comedy, from William Shakespeare to present times, revolves around a pair of intersecting and sometimes competing matchups, each with its own set of characters, comic complications and twists and turns. At the denouement, all the mix-ups sort out and two happy couples march down the aisle.
That’s the basic formula for “The Wedding Singer,” a wildly funny romantic comedy that opens Portland Players’ 2019-2020 season. This high-spirited show is one of the funniest and most tuneful I’ve seen the quarter-century that I’ve been covering this venerable community troupe.
With book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy and score by Matthew Sklar and Berguelin, “The Wedding Singer” is set in the 1980s, and the cast is populated with impersonators. Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper and Billy Idol are there, and the score is a pastiche of pop tunes of the period.
My choices for best actors are Seth Crockett in the title role and Tess McLaughlin as the flamboyant follower of his three-man band.
Portland Players, 420 Cottage Road in South Portland, presents “The Wedding Singer” through Oct. 6 with 7:30 p.m. performances Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Call 799-7337.
‘Kinky Boots’
“Who am I and how do I fit in?” are questions that have inspired storytellers for centuries.
This past weekend, Ogunquit Playhouse opened the final show of its 2019 season with “Kinky Boots,” a six-time Tony Award-winning musical that explores those questions in an utterly unique and compelling context. Plus it’s an amazingly tuneful, colorful and entertaining show.
With book by Harvey Fierstein and score by Cyndi Lauper, “Kinky Boots” tells a story of a straight-laced young Englishman and a black transvestite who become business partners and create a fashionable new product line: thigh-high stiletto-heel dancing boots for female impersonators.
The improbable pairing of these different souls from the antipodal extremities of the cultural spectrum produces a fascinating and emotionally moving drama that easily resides within the context of a traditional romantic comedy.
The show-stealer is Kyle Taylor Parker playing the flamboyant transvestite nightclub performer. Kudos also to David Rockwell’s fabulously detailed multi-level set.
Ogunquit Playhouse, a mile south of the village on Route 1, presents “Kinky Boots” through Oct. 27. Call 646-5511 or visit OgunquitPlayhouse.org.
USM Faculty Concert Series
The fall semester has begun at the University of Southern Maine School of Music, and the season-opener for the 2019-2020 Faculty Concert Series is slated for Friday. I’ve been a regular for about 20 years and I’ll be there.
The featured artists are a husband-wife team. Violinist Rob Lehmann chairs the school’s strings program; wife Kimberly plays viola with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. The conversational interplay between the violin’s soprano and the viola’s alto voices have inspired a wide array of exceptional duets. In addition to the duets, the Lehmanns will be joined by pianist Martin Perry for a seldom-heard trio.
Catch “Let’s Duet” at 8 p.m. Sept. 27 at Corthell Hall on the University of Southern Maine’s Gorham campus. Call 780-5555.
Portland String Quartet
Since 1969 the Portland String Quartet has been a mainstay of Maine’s cultural world, and this Sunday the foursome continues with the opening concert of their 51st season. For the second half of that period, I’ve been a regular.
Second violinist Ron Lantz and violist Julia Adams are original members, while first violinist Dean Stein and cellist Andrew Mark joined more recently.
This Sunday’s program features three works by composers from three periods and three countries. Franz Joseph Haydn represents the Classical period in Austria, while Ernest Chausson was a French composer of the Romantic. George Whitefield Chadwick was a Massachusetts native who was responsible for building Boston’s New England Conservatory into a world-class institution around the turn of the 20th century.
Catch the Portland String Quartet at 2 p.m. Sept. 29 at Woodford’s Congregational Church, 202 Woodford St. in Portland. Call 761-1522.
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