By Jennifer Mustoe
I asked my niece Kerisa to come see Salty Dinner Theater’s latest production, The Emperor’s New Clothes, which was at the University Mall’s The Old Spaghetti Factory. SDT always promises a fun time, and as Kerisa is one of my zaniest friends, I knew she’d enjoy herself.
For those unfamiliar with dinner theater, you go to the restaurant and the performers banter with the guests, in character, while everyone gets settled. It helps the crowd anticipate what they will see. The play starts, we eat salads, the play keeps going, then takes a break while we eat dinner, and then the play finishes. All this happens in amongst the crowd, wending and winding through tables, though there are a few boxes the actors stand on. A good staging move as sometimes it’s hard to see who is where.
During the eating breaks, SDT has a new singer, who plays The Fool. Johanna Blair may play a fool, but she sings like an angel. She is cute, perky, and fun, and her vocals were the bomb. I was not completely happy with the songs she was given to sing as they weren’t the typical SDT fare, oldies that everyone knows and jumps up to dance to. Instead, there were some lesser known oldies, that, while cute, weren’t recognizable enough for everyone to clap to, and Disney songs, which were nice, but weren’t necessarily fun. Also, Blair needs to insist she get a tie for her really cute hat as she spent a considerable amount of her time with the mic in one hand and her other hand on top of the hat to keep it on her head.
The plot (scripted and directed by Beth Bruner) for The Emperor’s New Clothes was sort of a morphing of the original story by Hans Christian Anderson (played by Joseph Thompson) and a king-looking-for-a-worthy-prince-for-his-daughter aspect. The script was funny in bits, but it actually seemed slightly risque and not as tight as I would have liked. It may have been that what seemed like an awful lot of moving around with no real reason might have distracted me.
What I liked about this production was a lot, however. First, each actor was amazing. There was Tonia Sayer, a SDT regular, and can play a good and bad fairy like nobody’s business. She goes from a horrible crone to a stately Advisor with just a little costume changing but some awesome acting chops. Thompson, as HC Anderson was delightful. He was quick with some one-liners, and very approachable and affable. I enjoyed whenever he was onstage. Clayton Barney’s Prince Eric was wonderful. Barney can sing, act, and is in every way adorable. Kerisa said he was “very cute” and she is right. His love interest, Princess Penelope, played by Marion Strobell, did a great job and their musical duets were nice, the second one more than the first, which was slightly out of Barney’s range. Strobell gave Penelope an innocent wonder layered with a “hey, I’m ready to live my life, Dad” attitude that I really enjoyed. The self-absorbed Emperor was played convincingly by Jason Jones. He was so fun to watch. You could tell that Jones loved this silly, preening, and completely blind to parenting Ruler. And hey, when your last scene is in a (spoiler alert!) pair of red long johns, you gotta have some fun with it, right?
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Salty Dinner Theater has grown dramatically since I started seeing their productions several years ago and in fact, often sells their shows out, and has added several venues. These are fun family shows that get the audience involved and are high energy. I have seen more audience interaction at other productions, and as I said, I think this show’s musical choices are responsible for fewer people just spontaneously (meaning me and my guests among others, usually) getting up and dancing and acting crazy generally.
I will say, too, that I haven’t been to all the venues and can’t say whether the food is great or only passable at all places, but The Old Spaghetti Factory is really only slightly better than fair. It took forever for me to get a refill on my water and their lasagna is really horrible. I say this from experience and the opinion of one of the people at my table. In their favor, though, I did notice several of the wait staff not only handily moving out of the way, but actually sort of hamming it up with the guests, as well. Hey, they work for tips, right?
All in all, I would recommend this show, though you may want to consider going to one of the Salt Lake venues if possible.
For more information, please go to their website: http://www.saltydinnertheater.com/
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