We went to the opening night of The Wedding Singer directed and choreographed by Devon Frieder. The show was fantastic, and I would encourage anyone living in the greater Albuquerque area to go and see it. The show dates and times, ticket prices and the location are available on my Happy New Year post.
The show is at the Musical Theatre Southwest Black Box Performance Space, which is a small, intimate theater where the performance space is larger than the space allocated for seating (about 100 seats), which gives the allusion that the number of performers are about equal to the audience members. When the full cast is on stage dancing and singing the intimacy, activity, variety of colors and the performers expressions are so exciting that it all becomes almost overwhelming trying to decide who to watch — you can’t take it all in at once like you can in a larger theater.
The story is about Robbie Hart, a singer/song writer, who plays for weddings with his friends Sammy and George. Julia Sullivan is a waitress who becomes engaged to a successful broker, Glen Guglia, but she and Robbie fall in love and everything seems to go wrong for them becoming a couple.
The music and choreography are fun and were delightful to listen to and watch. The comic lines are delivered flawlessly, and the acting was superb. Most of the cast play multiple characters and they play them well. They wouldn’t have had to name the stars and famous people they portrayed, as even I, the no TV, cultural misfit that I am, recognized all of them. Although I don’t usually care much for musicals, I throughly enjoyed the performance, was taken in by the story and characters, and I even fell for the romance and wanted to see Robbie and Julia get together and be happy in the end.
Off Center & Not Even 