By Tina Hawley
Anyone who has ever been in a community theater production (or any kind of performance, really) knows the excitement, laughter, and anticipation that comes with rehearsing and performing. They also know the pure petrifying panic of watching said performance go terribly, horribly wrong. (Picture getting called to the board in geometry when you’ve forgotten all your multiplication tables and multiply by a hundred!) Written by Rick Abbott and directed by Kara Henry and David Henry, Spanish Fork Community Theater’s Play On! is a hilarious, laugh-out-loud exhibition of what it’s really like to be on stage when the theatrical train jumps the tracks, flies twenty feet, crashes into a trailer park, and then bursts into flames—there’s no way to stop it, so all you can really do is watch—and laugh.
I had a little trouble finding Spanish Fork High School Little Theater, but fortunately there was also a football game the same night and I quickly found some parents willing to point me in the right direction. Once I found my seat, I enjoyed the music played prior to the show (credit to Lighting and Sound Designer Amanda Young), which included “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Copacabana”, and a great remix of BBC’s Sherlock! All of them really set the mood for a great murder mystery, a genius misdirect from the comedy to come.
Play On! follows a group of (very) amateur actors trying to rehearse and perform Murder Most Foul, a brand-new, badly written play by a debut author who keeps changing the script. With four days left until opening night, things start to get out of hand, to put it mildly. The combined stress of director Jerry (Michael Roberts), Stage Manager Aggie (Brooklyn Eden), and stagehand Louise (Carli Sorenson) is palpable as the first scene opens on a disastrous rehearsal: the set isn’t done, the actors are forgetting their lines, and the play itself makes no sense whatsoever. Little do they know the horrors still in store for them.
There are two dynamics in this play: the actors playing the actors, and the actors playing the actors playing the characters. Play-ception, if you will. Confused yet? I was at first, as I wasn’t quite sure when a mistake was real and when it was on purpose, but by the end of the first act, I was totally on board. The characters of Violet and Billy (played respectively by Lizzy Phipps and Beau Wilson) were instrumental in this. It gets funnier and funnier every time Billy forgets a line or Violet puts the emphasis on the wrong word (again!), and their improvised rehearsal of the love scene that culminates in a real make-out session is the highlight of the first half.
Roberts as Jerry draws real sympathy as he strives to herd his rebellious, whiny cast into something resembling a rehearsal. Sorensen and Eden’s frustration is equally real as the sound and prop cues grow increasingly complicated. Polly Benish (Whitney Bradham) owns the stage with her prima donna antics. Her henpecked husband Henry (Jake Sorensen) keeps to the background for the first act, but truly shines in the second and third. Billy’s (Jeffrey Rawlins) finely honed insults are funny and well-timed, and Rawlins’s characterization of the doctor is appropriately pompous and villainous by turns. Bethany Wilson steals the show in my opinion with her sweet portrayal of poor Marla “Smitty” Smith, who just wants to play the maid well and get home in time to study for her biology exam.
The “illustrious” author Phyllis Montague (Arlene McGregor) is absent for the first portion of the play, and the actors and production staff all complain loudly and often of her continual script changes as the reason they’re so far behind. In their eyes, she truly seems a villain, but when Phyllis at last appears, McGregor plays her with such a sincere, bumbling air that it’s impossible not to like her, even when she insists on rewriting the scenes while the actors are rehearsing them—then accidentally erases the sound board the night before opening.
BJ Wright’s patchwork set (assisted by Carli Sorensen, Cami Jensen, Kara Henry, and David Henry) of beautiful wallpaper, period paintings, and utilitarian folding chairs is a portrait of the theatrical “work-in-progress.” The costumes (Karen Grant) are appropriate to both rehearsal and performance, and Violet’s hilariously enormous wig (courtesy of Chelsea Kennedy) is the frosting on the cake.
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Even if you know nothing about theatre, Spanish Fork Community Theater’s production of Play On! is sarcastic, genuine, and downright funny. This play has been called “a hilarious love letter to community theatre,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Putting on a play is hard, scary, backbreaking work, but it’s good to remember that even with all the things that can go wrong, there is plenty to laugh at along the way. Make time in your schedule and come down to Spanish Fork! You won’t regret it.
(This play is rated PG for mild language.)
Spanish Fork Community Theater Presents Play On!, written by Rick Abbott
Spanish Fork High School Little Theater, 99 N 300 W, Spanish Fork, UT 84660
September 21-22, 24, 27-29, October 1, 2018, 7:00 PM
Tickets: $10 Adult, $6 Children, $8 Seniors & Students, $40 for a Family of 6
Contact: https://www.sfcitytix.com/, sfctonline@gmail.com
Spanish Fork Community Theater Facebook Page
Play On! Facebook Event
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