By Joel Applegate
The bacchanalia that is Salt Lake Acting Company’s Saturday’s Voyeur is back! This classic spoof on all things Utah is celebrating its 40th season in Salt Lake City. But for this iteration, it’s not all things Utah, it’s the one thing that defines it. The LDS church is skewered from the First Vision to the last Family Home Evening some parents made their kids suffer through. The writers, Allen Nevins and Nancy Borgenicht, have completed the heroic task of coming up with this often outrageous extravaganza for 40 years. I doubt you will find a comparable team of creatives in any regional theater across this country.
In the past, Saturday’s Voyeur mixes up the parody by taking aim at local and national politics and its practitioners as well as Utah’s dominant culture. In three acts, this year’s edition focuses on Brother Smoot and his affair with the wrong sex, leading to being thrown in the slammer with a bunch of defiant women in LDS Spirit Jail, and finally, harrowing lessons learned – and unlearned – at home. This parody makes one lesson crystal clear: change or be damned.
In goofily choreographed, raucous, and irreverent song after song, what’s fun about this show is that it’s not just the social parody that works, but there are moments when it’s a parody of musical theater itself. See if you can guess which Broadway show tunes are getting cleverly made over with some hard-hitting new lyrics. Aaron Eskelson choreographs both familiar and inventive moves, drawing from Utah’s peculiar culture.
Director Cynthia Fleming is the great unseen hand, shepherding (if you will) the un-saintly saints through a fast-paced and laugh-out-loud show. Fleming has also assembled a great band with Michael Leavitt (also the musical director) conducting and playing keyboards, Nick Fleming on guitar and bass, and Spencer Kellogg on woodwinds as well as rocking a lovely saxophone. Just the three of them coax out enough sound to disguise themselves as a full orchestra. They are in command of many moods, nuance, and belting accompaniments.
Michael Horejsi’s thrust set is decorated with Salt Lake’s skyline, and Jesse Portillo’s light projections give us context and leave plenty of space for actors to make full use of the stage. And wait till you see what costumer Heidi Ortega does for our current commander-in-chief, and the angel Moroni – in high drag.
In drama there’s conflict. In comedy there’s push-back. SLAC pulls zero punches this year. The LDS Church comes in for the lion’s share, and we turn to politics only late in the show. Trump is easily made fun of, but what SLAC has done is call Trump’s Utah supporters to account as well. When Mormons swear, they turn to food: “cheese and rice!” and “fudge.” You get the drift.
Meanwhile Brother Smoot, the playful and brilliant Eric Lee Brotherson, is wading into LDS Spirit Prison amid “porn shoulders” and some former missionary companions he got to know real well. “It’s not my fault I look hot in garments!”
But Smoot soon cedes the second act plot over to Heavenly Mother played by Olivia Custodio, grabbing her unchallenged lead in the women’s revolt. She belts her opening number, “Hello Mama”, with a fine voice in one of the night’s most rocking songs. In what must be a wink to Orange is the New Black, the female ensemble don jumpsuits and the true confessions start. It startles me now that I’m thinking of it, that as dire as the #MeToo movement is, this is where the satire of Saturday’s Voyeur goes to next. These actors manage to turn this into a dark burlesque, borrowing from Chicago to explain why “he had it coming.” These women who committed “murder but not a crime” draw from actual local events and practices, hitting the Church hard. Among the confessions, Amanda Wright as Toynetta and Alice Ryan as Stormy have great voices, using them to direct their stories smack into our laps. The guards in Spirit Jail, Justin Ivey and Robert Scott Smith, wrest a shaky control over the ladies, but they do it full-voiced and with great comic timing. In the third act they hit their stride as both old and new patriarchs. Ivey’s Moses is aghast at the gall of Smith’s own Joseph Smith (probably related, right?), who sports a smarmy swagger.
Act III brings us a change of scene: Back home on a Monday night, Family Home Teaching and keeping company with a felt board and some distracted teenagers in a hilarious rendering of “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof. Costodio, this time as another mother, Thorla, again blows the doors off the place. The recalcitrant “kids” ask for answers to awkward questions, and Dad (Ivey, again) resorts to exhorting the theocracy; legislating while bishop-ing. Cross-fade to the First Prophet getting snared in the #MeToo movement and we’re all back in jail for a SLAC-branded grand finale.
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I’ve been tempted to spill more of the beans here, but there are too many great surprises to plague this review with spoilers. SLAC basically strips the hide off the Church and nails it to the side of the barn. You may think you have all summer to see this show, but really, you have only until September 2nd. See it before you go celestial.
Note: Contains adult language.
Salt Lake Acting Company presents Saturday’s Voyeur by Allen Nevins and Nancy Borgenicht
Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 West 500 North, Salt Lake City, UT 84103-1762
June 27-September 2, 2018 Wednesday-Saturday 7:30 PM, Sunday 1:00 PM, 6:00 PM, Running time is approximately two and a half hours with two intermissions. Patrons are encouraged to bring their own “picnic” and drinks (alcohol OK). Contains adult language.
Tickets: Theatre Seats $45, Tables $50, Skybox $55. Discounts available for groups of 10 or more. Call the box office for details.
Contact: 801-363-7522
Salt Lake Acting Company Facebook Page
Saturday’s Voyeur Facebook Event
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