Imagine a high school attended by all the famous monsters and creeps from the movies: vampires, mummies, Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man, the werewolf, drama students (wait, I added that last one).

Now imagine their 15th year reunion where a murder takes place and everyone’s a suspect. There you have the gist of “Horror High Reunion,” the interactive comedy going on at Salt Lake City’s Off Broadway Theatre.

Laura Bedore’s script allows for differences depending on the whims of the cast members and audience — which means the show may be different each night — but in any case, one of the alumni is killed and it’s up to Principal Karloff (the always delightful David Hunsaker), his trusty sidekick janitor Igor (Mike Thomas) and the audience members to determine who the murderer is.

The production is more of a Halloween party game than an actual show, with rampant, over-done audience participation in the first act. Audience members have to come onstage and help sing the school song, act as cheerleaders, and even recite a poem. This is cute, and fun for the kids in the audience who get brought up there, but only marginally entertaining or funny for everyone else.

The second act has potential to be even more out-of-hand, as the audience has gotten used to interacting with the cast members (they walk around in character during intermission, dropping “clues” as to the culprit to anyone who is listening) and now feels like they can shout out anything they want. The night I was there, the cast members had a difficult time keeping control of the situation, as over-zealous audience members felt they had to accuse every single character of being the murderer based on the smallest detail they could think of.

Indeed, it becomes quite tedious as each character, in turn, explains where he or she was at the time of the murder, lies about it, and is caught by the ever-vigilant, easily entertained audience.

Shawn Zumbrunnen gives a great performance as Lance Parent, the “invisible man” who is no longer invisible. His energy and sense of absurdity breathe life into the show.

Cami Bogue is also a bonus as Carrie May Einstein, and Hunsaker leads things along as smoothly as is possible as Principal Karloff. Clarence Strohn as Jack the wolfman has a jittery, annoying, I-want-to-be-Jim-Carrey thing going; director Zac Zumbrunnen would do well to tone him down.

There are bright spots in the show. Most of the actors have improvisational skills that help in the interaction with the audience.

There are two musical numbers — a parody of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and a parody of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in which the murder is solved — both of which are the sort of zany entertainment we like to see at the Off Broadway Theatre. The rest of the show is often dominated by obnoxious audience members (I really don’t think the night I was there was a fluke; I think it was typical) and undermined by a script that doesn’t even scratch the surface on potential humorous interaction between the famous monsters.

Still, for kids, this is a fun Halloween party to go to. Just don’t expect a real show full of laughs and lunacy, like you normally get at OBT. Expect a goofy murder mystery in which the audience has to make its own fun.

Sometimes the Desert Star Playhouse, with its melodramatic musical parodies, goes overboard on the eye-rolling groaner jokes and you wind up with a show that is amusing and cute, but not exactly high-quality comedy.

But “Ghostbusters in Black: They Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance,” despite the characteristically stupid subtitle, is the exception to that. It’s a cleverly constructed, well-acted, wonderful piece of satirical Halloweenery, full of outrageous sight-gags, subtle inside jokes and manic energy from every single cast member.

The plot is an almost-brilliant amalgamation of the “Ghostbusters” and “Men in Black” storylines, combining elements of both into one coherent plot. It seems an ancient devil-type named Druul (yes, there are many drool/spittle jokes), at the behest of his dark overlord Logie, has found a new body to inhabit — that of nerdy Jerry Lewis-ish museum curator Stanley Bonkers (Matthew Mullaney).

All that remains now is to find a body for the evil high priestess, Becky. To that end, the apartment of newspaper reporter Fanny Berrett (Chelsi Stahr) becomes possessed by spirits, and she herself soon becomes possessed by Becky.

So it’s up to the Ghostbusters in Black — A1 (Ben Millet, also the show’s writer), 401K (Scott Holman, also director), 3D (Steven Fehr) and new-comer I-15 (Stefanie Omer) — to save the day. 401K takes the Bill Murray part from “Ghostbusters,” romancing Fanny and cracking wise. It’s a part Holman plays well, as he has always had a subtle, snide way about him in the DSP’s shows, and he can toss of a one-liner without looking out at the audience to make sure they caught the joke.

Gayle Hayes Castleton is fantastic as Dr. Polly P. Pratt, Bonkers’s fellow museum nerd and secret admirer. She is completely committed to her role, and sings a wonderful rendition of “My Guy” (“No other Ph.D is as provocative to me as my guy”).

Pretty much everyone’s funny in this show, from Mullaney’s wacked-out, Druul-inhabited Bonkers to Stahr’s all-out lunacy as Fanny and Becky.

The post-show Olio, “And the Beat Goes on,” is better than usual, too, with songs and jokes for Baby Boomers and others who remember the ’60s. Stahr and Fehr do a hysterical Sonny and Cher impersonation, and four of the guys do an impressive Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan sequence.

The only major drawback is that there is more background “mood” music than usual, from musical director/pianist Brooks Holm, and without much in the way of a sound system, it’s sometimes hard to hear the actors.

So that just means get a table as close to the front as you can. Then sit back and laugh at a smart, silly comedy that knows how to deliver the goods.

Upper-class society types with no real class whatsoever are skewered with gentle, deliberate stabs in BYU’s production of “The School for Scandal.”

Written 222 years ago in England by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, this farce-like comedy mocks with erudite language those who love and spread gossip.

Lady Sneerwell — get used to the name, they’re all like that — is the ringleader of a group of gossippers in high-society London. Sneerwell (Ruth Ellen Atkinson) would like to have the love of roguish lay-about Charles Surface (Casey Paul Griffiths), and plots with his older, more responsible brother Joseph (Brandon Michael Bringhurst) to get it.

Meanwhile, Joseph wants the hand (and money) of ingenue Maria (Anna Elizabeth Worthen), who is the ward of the semi-elderly Sir Peter Teazle (R. Jeremy Selim). Alas, Maria is also sought by Sir Benjamin Backbite (Benjamin Stull), and Joseph isn’t really devoting his full attention to Maria, anyway, as he is also wooing Lady Teazle (Rebekah Ruth Estrada), who isn’t particularly in love with her much-older husband.

Oh, then there’s the Surface brothers’ rich uncle (Martin Juul Sorensen), who arrives incognito in order to discern their true feelings toward him and thus decide upon an heir.

Confused? Well, that’s a bit of a problem: It’s unclear for a good while who or what the focus of the play is. Lady Sneerwell seems to be at the center, and indeed it is she who gets the most comeuppance at the end. But in between, we hardly see her. The whole subplot with the Surface brothers and their uncle uncle puts them at the forefront for a while, too.

Ultimately, very strong performances and a commanding stage presence from Selim as Sir Peter and Estrada as his wife make those two the focal point. Selim is understated and funny as Peter, and Estrada is vibrant and energetic — the closest thing to a real person in this show. When their characters’ relationship becomes the basis of a Sneerwell-perpetuated scandal, we realize how wrong all the other stories they’ve been telling, about characters we never meet, must have been, too. No longer is this gossipping funny; it’s downright inaccurate and unfair.

Kudos to costume designer Cathie McClellan and makeup/hair designer Andrea Kyriopoulos for their oustanding contributions. The vile Mrs. Candour (Melanie Joy Kieffer) is a delight to watch, and she owes much of that to her outlandishly wide dress and shrewish wig and makeup. Likewise Crabtree (Kevin Peterson), a bug-eyed, pompous, heavily painted buffoon whose braying performance reminds us of how transparent a gossip can be.

This is a challenging, ambitious piece for a graduate-student director (AdreAnn Sundrud) and a cast of student actors. All the characters speak in an affected, high-class British dialect. The accents are better with some than with others, and the numerous asides to the audience were hit-or-miss even after three public performances, because the actors’ timing was frequently off.

But there is great humor in this show, particularly after intermission, when the elements of farce really spring into action. It’s a show that must be paid attention to, as the language is high and the accents thick, but a careful viewer will be rewarded with a show that, while not perfect, doesn’t deserve to be back-bitten, either.

In the small Irish town of Leenane there is a woman named Maureen Folan who has a history of mental illness and who lives alone with her demanding, aged mother, Mag. An opportunity to leave this dead-end existence comes in the form of a fellow named Pato Dooley, who takes an interest in plain ol’ Maureen. But will Mag tolerate such an intrusion on their life?

Sounds like a grand setup for a comedy, as the mom and the potential son-in-law engage in a battle of wits, but are eventually reconciled and everyone is happy. At least, that’s one way it could have been done.

Another way — and certainly the more unusual, compelling way — is the path chosen by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.” Watching this show at Salt Lake Acting Company, one gets the feeling that McDonagh had no greater intention than to disturb us, and that he takes great, dark pride in succeeding. The play is funny at times (though darkly so), but ultimately devastatingly tragic and awful. And yet, you’re not sorry you saw it. Even as you walk out into the night pondering the dreadfulness of what these characters have done to each other, and what the unseen repercussions are going to be, there’s a strange sense of exhilaration, like you’ve just had one heck of a great theater experience.

Directed by Kevin Myhre, the Tony-winning “Leenane” is making its regional debut at SLAC, and it’s one to be proud of. As Maureen Folan, Joyce Cohen exudes plainness and quiet desperation in her claustrophobic setting, while still remaining Irish and feisty (that “feistiness” takes over, eventually…).

Marilyn Holt’s performance as her mother is textured, going beyond the stereotypical “demanding-old-parent” routine. Her demands are not unreasonable, nor does she mistreat her daughter. She genuinely loves her and their drab little life together in what appears to be the Irish equivalent of America’s Deep South.

Don Glover is sympathetic as Maureen’s suitor, Pato, particularly in a monologue in which he recites a letter he has written to her. Also serviceable is Chris Sontag-Ratti as Pato’s brother and occasional message-deliverer. He also provides much of the comic relief.

The Irish dialects are good throughout — almost too good, since sometimes you can’t quite understand what they’re saying. They lend realism to a play that is, alas, all too real in its examination of what people are capable of.

“Blithe Spirit” at the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley is a pleasant comedy, heavy on style and light on punch lines.

Set in England in 1930, the story revolves around novelist Charles Condomine (Bruce A. Bredeson) and his second wife Ruth (Jennifer Parker Hohl). His first wife died several years earlier, and during a seance whose sole purpose is to mock flighty medium Madame Arcati (Annette Wright), the first Mrs. Condomine is summoned back from the great beyond.

Thing is, Elvira Condomine (Randi Harrington) can only be seen and heard by Charles, who is driven to distraction by a dead wife who wants him back, and a living wife who thinks he’s gone mad.

Charles is able to convince Ruth of Elvira’s presence, though, merely by having the unseen home-wrecker pick up a few items and move them around (“floating” objects have a way of persuading one to believe in ghosts).

Now Ruth’s attitude changes. No longer thinking her husband crazy, she is instead jealous of the meddling Elvira, who was irresponsible and carefree in life and seems to be so in death, as well.

This is a play full of banter, some of it genuinely funny, but most of it simply awash in primness, more clever and droll than laugh-out-loud funny.

That’s the whole play, in fact: never dull, but never really hilarious either, though there are moments of great laughter. Elvira has a bit of inspired physical comedy as she is tormented by yet another ghost whom we can neither see nor hear, and Madame Arcati’s scenes generally crackle with her insane energy and crazy-old-lady sensibilities. (Her line about riding her bicycle through the woods and being “absolutely deafened with birdsong” tickled me to no end.)

One has to admire playwright Noel Coward’s devilishly cavalier attitude toward death, too — much blacker humor in that department than one might expect from such an old and “proper” British play.

But even when we’re not laughing, we’re still entertained by the fabulous acting all the way around. The British accents are professional-quality — much better than one usually hears in community theater, and having voices you can believe adds tremendously to a show’s overall credibility.

Hohl, in particular, shines as Ruth, the much put-upon and increasingly impatient living wife. Though her situation is absurd, she is believable and engaging.

She is not alone. The entire cast works hard to be committed to their characters, making a play with few moments of true hilarity into something that is entertaining nonetheless.

It’s good to know the Utah Shakespearean Festival has a sense of humor about its patron saint.

“The Compleat Works of Wllm. Shkspr (Abridged),” part of the festival’s inaugural fall season, uses three actors to perform, summarize and skewer all of the Bard’s plays in one two-hour show.

The production is giddy and fast-paced, but not rushed. Much of the humor assumes the audience has at least basic knowledge of Shakespeare’s works, especially “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet,” on which the most time is spent. The gory “Titus Andronicus,” a lesser-known play, is made into a macabre cooking show — funny, but much, much funnier if you’ve actually read the play, which most audiences probably have not. Which makes it an odd choice. But oh, well.

Even for a Shakespeare novice, there is entertainment, as long as you don’t want it too high-brow: A lot of the jokes are just gleefully immature. Romeo says, “Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized,” so Juliet calls him “Butt Love” thereafter; one cast member refuses to do “Coriolanus” because “I don’t like the ‘anus’ part”; the brief history of Shakespeare’s life somehow turns into a biography of Hitler (“Shakespeare invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939…”).

The three performers are a talented, vibrant bunch, improvising and adapting to their hearts’ content and involving the audience as much as possible. Michael Fitzpatrick is the reliable straight-man; Brian Vaughn is the erudite, high-falutin’ Shakespeare scholar; and Gregory Ivan Smith is the well-meaning simpleton who plays most of the female roles and who is convinced that no heroine dies without vomiting on the audience first.

All 16 of Shakespeare’s comedies are condensed into one brief sketch; the play’s authors (Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield) wisely realized that it is much easier to do a parody of a tragedy than of a comedy, so they get those comedies out of the way quickly.

That leaves time for a rap version of “Othello” (to Othello, in regards to his suffocating of Desdemona: “She was pure, she was clean, she was viriginal, too/So why’d you have to go and make her face turn blue?”), an all-Scottish “Macbeth,” and a football game condensing all of the history/king plays into one.

The three actors are assisted by Jered “Rollerboy” Tanner, who rides inline skates and acts as a stage hand. He also wears signs on his back promoting the fact that he appears much more prominently in the festival’s other fall show, “Forever Plaid.”

In fact, “Compleat Works” is full of small, subtle jokes like that. Watch the costumes, listen to the music, pay attention to what each performer is doing at all times, because there’s lots to see. There are even references to the roles the actors played in this summer’s main festival shows (“You were terrible as Edgar!” Smith hollers at Vaughn in reference to the latter’s performance in “King Lear.”)

The show pays homage to Shakespeare as much as it mocks him; this may actually be a fair introduction to the Bard for a first-timer. But never mind the show’s educational value, which is dubious anyway. The point here is to dance, act, whine and soliloquize through Shakespeare’s works, raucously and without regard to political correctness. And to that end, the show succeeds marvelously.

Question: When are four guys who are dressed in matching dinner jackets and using tall plungers as microphones NOT funny? Answer: Never!

That’s the secret behind the success of “Forever Plaid”: The humor is understated and simple, whimsical and childlike, harmonizing perfectly with the nostalgic late-’50s/early-’60s songs being sung.

Some productions of this show poke gentle fun at that era; the one at the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s fall season genuinely celebrates it, while having a hilarious good time.

In case you haven’t seen any of the numerous Utah productions of this show in the last couple years — of which this one is just about the best, by the way — here’s the deal. In 1964, a four-part guy-harmony group called the Plaids were on their way to their first big gig when their car collided with a bus and killed them.

Now, 35 years later, they are permitted to come back and do the one big show they never got to do in life — and “Forever Plaid” is that show.

We’re treated to renditions of “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Heart and Soul,” and a three-minute version of “The Ed Sullivan Show” while “Lady of Spain” is performed on accordion.

Much of the humor lies in the amusingly quaint choreography of the Plaids. Anything done in unison by four guys dressed the same is almost automatically funny; when one of them forgets a step or comes in to early (it’s been 35 years, after all), it’s even funnier.

Two things make “Forever Plaid” either succeed or fail: You gotta have good singers, and your four guys gotta be likable. This production has both.

Jinx (Jered Tanner) is the timid one with nose bleeds; he and step-brother Sparky (Gregory Ivan Smith) are the lovable, boyish characters that win an audience over immediately. (Sparky has a lisp that is fairly annoying, though, and it should be dropped altogether — especially since it keeps coming and going anyway.)

Smudge (Brian Vaughn), who sings bass, gets asthma attacks when nervous, and the group’s leader Frankie (Michael Fitzpatrick) generally keeps things together.

Each of the four gets a solo at some point, and all four work together marvelously as an ensemble. This is a charismatic, endearing show full of silly humor and exuberant optimism. It’s a feel-good show, but without the cheesiness or over-sentimentality normally associated with “feel-good shows.”

Provo Theatre Company is back.

After last year’s season of masterpieces and duds, this year’s first show, “I Hate Hamlet,” suggets a return to the PTC we know and love: entertaining shows that are edgy, but not so edgy they scare off Utah Valley audiences.

The ads call this is a “contemporary farce,” but it’s really just a comedy: With the exception of a couple one-dimensional characters, there aren’t any farcical elements in the show.

But anyway. Andrew (Paul Walstad) is a TV actor whose show has been canceled and has moved to an apartment in New York — an apartment once owned by the great thespian John Barrymore. When Andrew agrees to play Hamlet in a “Shakespeare in the Park” production, Barrymore’s ghost (Richard J. Clifford) appears to him, announcing that he must haunt his old apartment until he has properly trained Andrew in playing the most complex role in theater history.

Problem is, Andrew hates “Hamlet,” and his weaselly TV-producer friend Gary (Steven Craig Dunford) — one of those aforementioned one-dimensional characters, whom Barrymore calls “a cultural cavity” — is trying to lure him back to Hollywood.

Andrew sees similarities, however, between his relationship with his no-sex-till-marriage girlfriend Deirdre (Anne Flemming) and Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia. Barrymore teaches him (and us) how to use “Hamlet” as a metaphor for sex — a novel innovation, and one of the play’s more clever points.

Clifford is hysterically brilliant as Barrymore. He is grandiose and pompous, full of sweeping gestures and theatricality — along with being a drunk and a womanizer. (One priceless scene is when Deirdre reads to Andrew from Barrymore’s biography of the once-great actor’s descent into alcoholism and wretchedness, while Barrymore looks on in horror.)

Walstad is well-cast as Andrew. One truly believes him as a blandly good-looking TV actor with enough talent to get by, but mostly with a really good agent. Andrew stinks at Shakespeare, but Walstad shines as Andrew.

The play gets off to a slow start — really, until Barrymore appears and saves things. There’s a real estate agent named Felicia (Carol M. Rice) who, in true sit-com fashion, becomes more involved with the other characters’ lives than is realistic and tries to contact Barrymore through a seance. (It doesn’t work, because he’s already there, which makes you wonder why the playwright even bothered.)

But one slow scene that works is between Andrew’s agent Lillian (Jean Jenkins) and Barrymore. Seems they had a fling once — one of Barrymore’s many and her few — and they have a rather sweet reunion scene as she tries to recapture lost love and he tries to find some kind of redemption for his ultimately-wasted life.

Those serious moments are few here, but they are justified. And overall, the show is full of laughs and merriment. Some jokes will be more appreciated by those well-acquainted with Shakespeare, but anyone with a sense of humor can enjoy a show where the main character is a ghost wearing tights.

If you love the old male harmony groups that crooned on the radio in the late ’50s and early ’60s, “Forever Plaid” is a show that will surely bring a smile to your face and tap to your toes.

Produced by Payson Community Theater and being performed at Payson High School this weekend, “Forever Plaid” is the story of a fictitious four-man singing group that was tragically killed in 1964 when their car collided with a bus full of Catholic school girls. The Plaids never got to perform their “big show” in life, and so now, 34 years later, they are given one chance to do it.

“Forever Plaid” is that show: There’s not a plot, there’s not a story, there’s not even an intermission. There’s just the Plaids, onstage singing like they never have before and trying to remember the choreography that has lain dormant in their memories for 34 years.

The show is more nostalgic than funny. The songs, like “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” and “Heart and Soul,” are pleasant, enjoyable tunes that will surely bring back memories among the over-45 set — though young people should be able to appreciate the songs, too, for their upbeat melodies, and the Plaids themselves for their excellent vocals.

The Plaids, played by Nathan Dunford, Scott Wilson, Blake Draper and Stan Peck, sound great when they’re singing, and Wilson, in particular, is a good actor, though they are all serviceable when doing the between-songs patter with the audience. The show starts out a bit low on the energy, though, which could be easily improved with a little more enthusiasm.

There’s some good humor in this show, too. The Plaids never got a chance to sing “Crazy ’bout Ya, Baby” with real microphones, so they perform it the way they always practiced it: with tall plungers they borrowed from someone’s hardware store. The jokes inherent in plopping plungers up on and down on the stage are funny, and you get a sense of the dopey, good-natured fun the four actors are having.

Later, they bring an audience member onstage to help play “Heart and Soul,” and there’s audience participation in “Matilda” as well. One of the highlights is when they do a 3-minute, 11-second version of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” full of jokes that will be most appreciated by those who still remember that show.

There are also plenty of laughs in the group’s frequent inability to come in on the right note, or to perform exactly the right dance step — it’s been over three decades since they performed, after all.

“Forever Plaid” is often done as a parody of the guy groups of the late ’50s, but David C. Dahlquist’s direction here is more a celebration of it, which is fine. Dahlquist and Bill Lowe play piano and upright bass, respectively, and they do a bang-up job of it, livening up the show considerably.

For an evening of old-time music and some simple, cheerful fun, “Forever Plaid” is a good bet.

I recall the first time I saw “Forever Plaid,” about a year ago. I thought, “My, what a nice little show. I’d like to see this again sometime.”

Well, every theater in Utah apparently read my mind, because it’s being done everywhere. Between that and “Joseph,” one never sees anything else anymore.

The current incarnation, at Hale Center Theater Orem, manages to infuse new life into the show, though, making the production worth seeing, even if you’ve seen “Forever Plaid” a time or two already.

It’s a musical, but not a typical one. The eponymous Plaids are a four-man harmony group who, in 1964, were killed while traveling to their first big gig. Now, 34 years later, they are given a chance to come back and do that one big show they never got to do in life. We are the audience; “Forever Plaid” is that show.

That’s the plot — all of it. The entire show (and it’s a short show anyway, only about 90 minutes) consists of the Plaids doing their thing. They sing old standards like “Three Coins in the Fountain” and “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” crack jokes with the audience, and fret about whether they still remember their choreography after all these years (joke spoiler: they don’t).

This is a show whose success rests squarely on the shoulders of the performers. The four actors must be excellent singers, obviously, but they need to make the characters come across well, too. Frankly, just watching four guys sing — no matter how good they sounded — would be dull. The trick is to make the characters fun, to have amusing choreography, and to keep things moving.

Hale Center’s version succeeds at all of that.

Under the direction of Syd Riggs — in whose hands nearly everything turns to gold anyway — “Forever Plaid” is an enjoyable, thoroughly entertaining show. The Hale Center Theater is in the round — unusual for this show. But Riggs makes it work, with the four singers moving around the stage and into the audience, ensuring that no one has his back to any part of the audience for very long.

All the parts are double-cast; this review refers to the Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday group. Derek Call, as Sparky, stands out as the most energetic and silly. His face is in constant motion, occasionally over-doing the goofiness, but generally seeming just full of giddy energy.

That giddy energy is at the heart of the whole show, really. Jason Webb, as the group’s apparent leader Frankie, conveys it well in his mannerisms, grinning widely in a way that just makes you LIKE him, darn it.

Jake Fry and Richard Webb, as Jinx and Smudge, round out the cast and are also very enjoyable. All four characters are made to seem likable — essential, because it gets the audience on their side and keeps them there the whole time.

All four men are very talented singers. Each of them gets at least one “showcase” number, with Fry’s “Cry” and Call’s “Perfidia” (complete with atrocious Spanish) being among the more notable ones.

The choregraphy is simple and daft, often relying on the principle that if someone is dressed up nicely in a dinner jacket and bow tie, practically any unusual body movement will be funny. (And if you have four guys doing it all together, that’s even funnier.) (And if you put fruit on their heads for a Calypso number — well then!)

I’ve seen the number where they use tall plungers instead of microphones (that’s how they always practiced it, you see) in three difference productions now, and it still makes me laugh. It’s so simple, and yet they do it with such glee and childlike abandon, that you can’t help but smile.

That’s what makes “Forever Plaid,” if it’s done well, a great show: innocent charm and playfulness. It’s funny, it’s cute, it’s entertaining — and packed tightly inside of it is a whole lot of talent.

The touring company of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” delivers a show that packs a powerful punch, creating perfectly the emotions and feelings necessary to make it work.

Former star Petula Clark plays former star Norma Desmond, a silent-film star who became a has-been when sound came in. Now, in 1950, Norma lives alone in her mansion with her obsessively protective servant Max (Allen Fitzpatrick).

Enter Joe Gillis (Lewis Cleale), a young, idealistic screenwriter who, while fleeing some bad guys, winds up in Norma’s yard. She takes a liking to him, and she wants him to help edit her screenplay — the movie she insists will be her comeback vehicle.

Meanwhile, Joe tries to develop a more well-grounded, realistic relationship with a fellow writer named Betty (Christeena Michelle Riggs), who, alas, is engaged to Joe’s friend Artie (Michael Berry).

In terms of musicality and depth of material, this is the best thing Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever been associated with. Don Black and Christopher Hampton’s book and lyrics, based on the 1950 Billy Wilder film, are occasionally funny, often wrenching, and nearly always fascinating.

A few scenes drag, and Joe’s relationship with Betty never quite rings true, but overall the show moves at a brisk pace, engaging the audience’s interest throughout.

Clark gives a bravura performance as an aging, deluded woman who refuses to accept the reality that her time has passed. By the end, she is ghastly and horrible, her age having finally caught up with her — until she puts the makeup and wigs back on and becomes her younger self again.

The end of the show is haunting and darkly comic — though not in a way that will make anyone laugh — and rather a surprise to anyone not already familiar with the story.

Cleale is also good as the tortured writer Joe. Norma showers him with gifts and affection, and he lives in the lap of luxury, yet he longs for “real life,” for something more fulfilling. He sings bitterly of “Sunset Boulevard,” and the nastiness that lies beneath it — one of several excellent songs in this show, all well-sung by a talented ensemble cast.

The Grand Theatre at Salt Lake Community College has opened its 1999-2000 season with customary wit and flair in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

This is a satire of the business world, though it’s a rather gentle one — no cutting, “Dilbert”-style remarks here. Just a finicky boss, a bratty nephew, and a guy who wants to rise to the top — without ever really trying.

That guy is J. Pierpont Finch (Dan Larrinaga), a window-washer who happens across a book whose title is the title of the show. He applies for a job at World Wide Wickets (following the book’s advice to work someplace where “no one has any idea what anyone else is doing”). His rise to the top is nothing short of meteoric, as he shmoozes the right people, and pretends to be from the same university as Big Cheese J.B. Biggley (Spencer Ashby).

This being a 1961 musical, there has to be a woman who falls in love with Finch, without regard to the fact that she has known him approximately one second and that he is too wrapped up in becoming successful to even pay attention to her, let alone fulfill her every dream in life by marrying her. That woman is Rosemary, played by Brenda Sue Cowley, and bravo to Cowley for giving the woman more dignity and pizzazz than she is written to have (she’s got a great voice, too).

Larrinaga is wonderful as Finch, making the scheming little liar seem perfectly lovable — a sort of Harold Hill for the corporate world, and with no less energy required. Larrinaga fills the role perfectly.

Marnie Sears’ set design is worth of mention, too. There are about a million scene changes in this show, and they all happen fast and without much dead time in between.

The show lags a little here and there; one wonders if the satiric edge has been lost in the 38 years since it was first staged, or if this production merely isn’t playing it up enough. The second-act “Brotherhood of Man” — in which Finch convinces everyone not to fire him after his disastrous bungling because we are, after all, brothers — is so big and show-stopping (thank choreographer Stephanie Howell) that we almost don’t catch the scathing satire nestled in there. The business world is just a big boys’ club, where women are merely secretaries and company party drink-servers. But that idea seems almost accepted here, not mocked like it should be. In the competitive world of business, where first impressions can make all the difference, having a memorable business card is key to standing out. Metal Business Kards offers premium-quality business cards that leave a lasting impression, helping you build a strong, professional image. Learn more at Metal Business Kards.

Nonetheless, toothless or not, this is a charming, entertaining show, ably staged by the Grand Theatre.

Leave it to good ol’ Pioneer Theatre Company to take a show we’ve already seen a few times — the musical farce “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” — and do the most polished, professional and funny production of it yet, effectively ruining any other versions we may see in the future.

Farce is a hard kind of comedy to do (it’s so easy to either be too big or too small), but the cast here is surprisingly strong, most of them with a clear understanding of what makes farce work.

Pseudolus (Max Robinson) is a Bugs Bunny-like slave in Roman times, always one step ahead of the game with a witty one-liner or two, and always with a scheme up his sleeve. He wants his freedom, which his teen-age master Hero (Joey Sorge) agrees to give him if he can procure a particular courtesan by the name of Philia (Becky Watson) from the local whorehouse.

Problem is, Philia has already been purchased by a military captain named Miles Gloriosus (Erik Stein). There are also a dozen or so subplots involving Hero’s parents Senex (Robert Peterson) and Domina (Lorraine Serabian), an old man named Erronius (Chet Carlin) and his search for his long-lost children, and fellow slave Hysterium’s (Wayne Scherzer), um, hysteria.

Along the way we get one great Stephen Sondheim musical number after another, from the slam-bang opener “Comedy Tonight,” to the delightfully lecherous “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” to Senex and Hero’s duet about whether the other could possible be in love with Philia (“Impossible”).

Robinson is a wonderful Pseudolus, and Peterson is also especially enjoyable as dirty-old-man Senex. Knowing that both actors are mature, talented thespians, adept even at the deepest of Shakespeare’s works, makes them even funnier as they roll in the mud, as it were, with this lowbrow (but not childish) goofiness — funnier than, say, seeing high school kids doing it.

In fact, everyone in the cast seems to revel in the sheer, wild silliness of what they’re doing. Stein’s Miles Gloriosus is grandiose and full of himself, strutting around and speaking boomingly. But he’s also hysterical in the way he poses himself, and especially in his slithery, mock-sexy walk. It’s basically a guy who doesn’t know how stupid he is, being played by a guy who knows EXACTLY how stupid he is.

And that’s the key here: Everyone plays everything for laughs, unashamed to have his or her character defined by one withering look (Domina), or by one emotion (Hysterium). Everyone’s funny, but no one’s trying to be the funniest, and that’s what makes it all come together.

While many LDS plays and musicals give up on being high-quality theater and seek instead to get by solely on their warmth and fuzziness, the creators of “PROPHET” have boldly declared all summer that their show would NOT be like that.

Thom Duncan (book and lyrics) and Mark Steven Gelter (music and lyrics) have insisted that while “PROPHET” would indeed have an uplifting message, that would not be the end-all and be-all of its existence — it would be, first and foremost, a quality show about the last days of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Being a testimony-builder was of secondary concern; being good theater was first.

Well, we’ve seen the show now, and it’s true: This is not a typical LDS musical. Unfortunately, it is also not any grand theatrical experience, nor does it provide any insight into the character of Joseph Smith beyond what we already knew.

The idea here is that Joseph (played with enthusiastic blandness by Sam Payne) was more than just a prophet: He was also a man, a husband, a brother, and a lot of other things.

The main person he is concerned with is his strong, long-suffering wife Emma (Johanne Frechette Perry). They have more scenes together than anyone else, and it is his love for her that motivates many of his final actions. One would think, then, that their final moments together would be extraordinarily powerful. But the show plods along so cumbersomely, so certain of its own magnitude (“This will be the DEFINITIVE play about Joseph Smith!” it seems to say; just look at the all-caps title), that there are few, if any, moments of real emotional connection.

Joseph and Emma do come close, and there is some chemistry there, particularly in the flashback to their courtship days. But Joseph and Hyrum (Jamie Edwards) — his brother with whom he was, in real life, inseparable — seem like strangers to each other.

Joseph has a guardian angel who looks like a white-jumpsuited Elvis (he even carries a guitar), played gamely by the venerable Marvin Payne. This part is entirely unnecessary, looking like it was written just because they wanted Marvin Payne in their show (not that I blame them).

The bad guy is Simonds Ryder, a ridiculously one-note character played with cartoonish conviction by Michael Cox. He struts around with a cane and a voice like the evil emperor in “Return of the Jedi,” leading his band of bearded, Dockers-wearing ruffians against the “fallen prophet.”

Ryder is a good enough “Satan figure,” I guess, but he’s too one-dimensional (especially with his eye-rollingly lame downfall at the end) to be an effective villain — especially when his enemy is so dull.

That’s right, Joseph Smith comes across in this play as dull. Of all the things Joseph Smith was ever reported to have been, dull is not one of them. We might expect him to be engimatic and unfathomable, like there’s something going on inside him that we just can’t comprehend. But Sam Payne’s portrayal of him isn’t impenetrable depth; it’s just blandness.

In a play whose sole purpose is to make Joseph seem like a real man, to break him down into pieces that regular folks can relate to, you’d think there’d be more insight.

Some attempt is made to show his sense of humor, his love for physical activity, and some of his other “human” traits. But those scenes are almost rote, just going through the motions and painting Joseph Smith by the numbers.

The show is nothing if not ambitious. Gelter’s music is generally quite good, and definitely a cut above the three-chord tripe we hear in a lot of other well-meaning shows. Payne and Perry both sing very well, though their supporting cast (particularly Cox) are a little uneven. Sam Payne even changed his hair and eye color to make himself look more like Joseph.

But all together, the result is weak. The show is too long (the entire “Oh My Heber!” number can be cut altogether), too talky, too slow, and it never really tells us anything. By its own admission, it takes itself out of the category of “cheesy-but-spiritual LDS musicals” (“Saturday’s Warrior,” etc.), so we can’t compare it to those. But in the category of “good old-fashioned high-quality theater,” in which we have plenty to compare it to, it fails to measure up.

The Little London Dinner Theater in Pleasant Grove has chosen the farcical romantic comedy “Beau Jest” as its second production, and it seems to have been a good choice.

This play begins with the conflict already in full bloom, and spends the rest of the time working out the climax and resolution. No time is wasted on exposition; we learn that as we go.

It seems single Jewish gal Sarah Goldman (Katie Purdie) has told her parents that her boyfriend, Chris Cringle (Jason Purdie, her real-life husband and the show’s director), is Jewish, even though he’s not. So when they want to meet him, she calls an escort service and has them send over any Jewish guy they’ve got to play her “boyfriend.”

They send Bob Schroeder (Jon Liddiard), who, despite the name, is not Jewish. Sarah is horrified — her parents and brother are due any minute. Not to worry, says Bob: He’s an actor, and he was in “Fiddler on the Roof” once. He can play the part.

And so now Sarah has this Jewish boyfriend who is actually neither Jewish nor her boyfriend, but whom she begins to fall in love with, due to their frequently having to put on the charade for her family.

It’s kind of fun to be tossed into a play where the action has already started: The show begins with Bob’s arrival at Sarah’s apartment; five minutes later, he’s playing the part for her parents (Agnes Broberg and Dennis Purdie) and brother (Brett Merritt). No time is wasted here!

Liddiard is the most noticeable character, as the actor/escort/fake boyfriend Bob. He is wound up all the time — perhaps too much of the time — frantically, loudly trying to fit in and endear himself to the family. Every line is big with him, with no subtlety, and every movement he makes is fast and broad. Though he does calm down near the end, as things with him and Sarah begin to get serious, some different levels throughout would be nice.

That said, I have to say that I like Liddiard, and liked him in the last thing I saw him in, too (“Saving Grace,” in Springville). He has a great deal of raw talent. With some good direction, his energy and wit could be channeled into something brilliant.

Broberg and Dennis Purdie are great as Sarah’s mega-Jewish parents, managing to get the impersonations across without parodying the culture. In fact, the second-act Seder seems fairly authentic and respectful, and is even fascinating to watch. It seems to be a realistic depiction of the way a typical Jewish family would do things.

It’s a charming, fun play with a little bit of a message, but not too heavy-handed. Perfect fare, indeed, after enjoying a nice meal (non-kosher) at the Little London Dinner Theater.

“The Lion in Winter,” James Goldman’s caustic, bitter comedy about a family of English royals after each other’s throats and property, is meant to be disconcerting. After all, the bickering is almost non-stop, the betrayal nearly without limit, and the sharply worded epithets fairly drip off the pages of the script.

Yet as directed by Loraine Edwards and performed by the Actors’ Repertory Theatre Ensemble at the Castle Theatre Festival, the blend of comedy and drama is more uncomfortable than it should be. The deceitful and sarcastic dialogue doesn’t crackle like it should, and many lines that are written with humor came across without it on opening night.

The one character who seems to be going for laughs at all is John (Marc Shaw), the pimple-faced teen-ager who is a possible heir to King Henry’s throne in 1183. Problem is, Shaw goes too much for the laughs. The character admittedly is written to be so buffoonish as to be out of place among his erudite fellows, but Shaw takes that to the extreme, doing far more physical shtick than seems appropriate in a play as smart as this one.

Scott Bronson plays King Henry, a powerful monarch who must decide which of his three sons to leave his kingdom to, hardly loving or trusting any of them. Complicating matters is his wife, Eleanor (Barta Heiner), whom he has locked in a castle due to her tendency to lead civil wars against him, and who wants the throne to go to Richard (Cameron Deaver), while Henry thinks John should be heir.

Then there’s Geoffrey (Christopher Clark), the plotting, scheming middle child; Alais (Susan Davis), the king’s mistress and supposed fiancee of at least one of the princes; and French King Philip (Jared Stull), Alais’s brother, in town this Christmas season to make sure a wedding happens (or else he wants his dowry back).

It’s all very complicated, and the twists and turns of the story would take a review twice this long to summarize. There is not a bad actor among the cast, nearly all of them having given fine performances in other local productions in recent months.

Yet again, something is not quite up to par. Bronson’s Henry is un-king-like in his demeanor and speech, a choice that makes him seem too much Regular Guy and not enough Your Highness. The result: When he howls at the end of the first act that “all my sons are gone,” he’s no raging monarch experiencing a mighty fall as he feels the knife of betrayal in his heart; he’s just a father who’s mad at his boys.

None of which is to say this is a bad production. Rather, it’s a slightly flawed production of a brilliant script, and still well worth watching.

Stull plays boy-king Philip, who is supposed to be 17, as if he were actually 17. This could be interpreted as mere inexperience on the part of the actor — i.e., he just doesn’t know how to act regal — but I rather think it’s a conscious choice, a decision to play Philip as if he’s still just a kid, despite being king.

Deaver and Clark are good as Richard and Geoffrey, giving the roles the passion and energy characteristic of both actors.

Finally, Heiner plays Eleanor with great sympathy and passion, the best performance in the show. There are moments when she actually wants peace and love in the family — only to have another scheme proposed to her, which she agrees to, pausing only briefly (and poignantly) to acknowledge the irony of her actions. Her performance is nuanced, sad and tragic, giving the play most of its best moments — her statement that “we have everything but hope” among the most wrenching.

Scholars have tried in vain to find much meaning in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Instead, they enjoy it for being a charming, goofy play about fairies and love entanglements and guys with donkey heads.

A silly play deserves silly treatment, and the Actors’ Repertory Theatre Ensemble at the Castle Theatre Festival gives it just what it needs, with director Colleen Baum treating Shakespeare’s odd little play like the queer piece of fiction it is.

Our foursome of star-crossed lovers, particularly Hermia (Jennifer Erekson Knudsen) and Lysander (Ary Farahnakian) are giddy and goofy, naive in their love as they follow each other around like puppy dogs, occasionally reciting their dialogue in a sing-songy kind of way that maybe indicates bad Shakespeare-acting, but that is probably just meant to be funny (which it is). They make a fine pair.

The much put-upon Helena (Trish Reading), in love with swarthy Demetrius (Chris Glade), is also excellent, especially in the scene when fairy-influenced Lysander and Demetrius both fall in love with her.

The stage is very busy sometimes — perhaps too busy — but it keeps the energy flowing and the play moving.

Josh Bingham and Liliana Romero play two couples: the mortal Theseus and his unwilling bride Hippolyta; and fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania. Both couples are at odds with each other, making for a nice parallel — better than in many productions, where all four characters are played by different actors.

Romero, in particular, gives more life and spunk to Hippolyta than I have ever seen, even smacking Theseus around a little (don’t worry, he deserves it).

The main scene between Oberon and Titania is inherently dull, as they argue vaguely about some Indian boy or whatever, but these two make the most of it.

The mischievous Puck is played by a woman this time, Tara Tanner, and a pluckier Puck you never saw. Her interaction with Oberon is not tense or blustery, as it sometimes can be — it’s just fun, yet another amusing duo in a play full of them.

Finally, we will mention Deric Nance, who plays Bottom, whom Puck turns into a donkey and with whom Titania falls in love. I’ve seen Nance in a few things, and he has a tendency to play everything so broadly that it’s either hysterical or embarrassing. Here, finally, he has a role where he can be cocky, arrogant, almost deranged — all well-developed elements of his repertoire — but remain in control, without being hammy. It’s a perfect role for him, and he plays it with a restrained-but-it-looks-unrestrained professionalism.

If you’re only going to do one show a year, you ought to choose a good one.

Unfortunately, “The Pirated Penzance,” a quasi-parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance,” is not of a quality befitting the normally stellar Payson Community Theatre.

The premise is that it’s 1933, just after talking movies have come in to fashion. Many of the silent film stars have terrible speaking voices, but cheap director Roger Marshall (Daniel Ellis) doesn’t want to replace them. Instead, he hires unattractive but nice-sounding actors to dub the voices in for the good-looking stars.

The film they’re doing is “Pirates of Penzance,” and mid-way through filming, the voice actors get fed up with being second-class citizens, and a brave one named Daniel (Nathan Matthews), who has an uninteresting relationship with Marshall’s daughter Constance (Julie Jensen), sneaks out of the sound booth, knocks out his lip-synching counterpart, and takes over the role himself.

Soon (but not soon enough) it’s pandemonium, as all the voice actors are konking the screen actors over the head, donning their costumes, and performing the movie themselves. Marshall doesn’t notice; he’s too busy playing the Major General.

This takes up the entire first act. For about 20 minutes, the only humor going on is that one of the men who plays a pirate also puts on a dress and wig and plays one of the Major General’s daughters. (Why?) A man dressed as a woman may be funny, but not for as long as they want us to laugh at it.

Simultaneously, there’s the humor in Daniel’s subtle wrecking of the show. Mostly, though, he’s just standing behind the main cast, mocking them and singing his part. Not very funny — but it goes on for 10 minutes.

There is good potential here, but it’s wasted. When the film actors are lip-synching as the voice actors speak, it’s often hard to tell they’re lip-synching at all. Why not have the lip-synching be way off, or have the voices be inappropriate for the bodies? (That second option is explored later, and it is funny.)

The plot in the second act directly parallels “Pirates of Penzance,” as Marshall calls the police to come arrest the voice actors who have commandeered the studio. There are too many forced parallels, though, where a “Pirates” song and plot device are included simply because they have to be, and our actual story — about the film studio — makes little sense.

That would be fine if this were a parody of “Pirates.” Then, the show’s purpose would be to make fun of the old classic, not to present a coherent new story. But it’s not a parody, strictly speaking. The lyrics to the songs have been changed, but there is no holding up of “Pirates” to ridicule or anything else in the vein of satire or parody. It’s basically a new story that kind of parallels an old one, with borrowed music.

It doesn’t help that Ellis, as Marshall, is a fine singer but a flat actor, or that the volunteer orchestra, bless their hearts, hit many a wrong note the night I was there.

The policemen have a good dance number, choreographed by Molly Mangelson, and there are some amusing moments when the lip-synching doesn’t match the voices coming from the sound booth. But these are not enough to save the show — rather amateurishly written to begin with, I think — from coming across as a tedious, over-long campfire skit.

Why not just do “Pirates of Penzance”?

When the Hale Center Theater Orem wants to, it can really put on a great show. And “Lucky Stiff” — about a man who must cart his uncle’s corpse around Monte Carlo in order to earn his inheritance — is an outstanding musical, stylish, funny and professional.

The silly comedies typical of the Hale Center — “Lo and Behold,” “George Washington Slept Here,” “Kiss and Tell,” etc. — are fine, but often make the theater seem quaint and provincial. A bold, unusual farce like “Lucky Stiff” shows they can do something different and still hold an audience.

(The show is double-cast; this review is for the Monday/Wednesday/Friday group.)

Written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Broadway’s “Ragtime,” and last year’s animated “Anastasia”), “Lucky Stiff” is about a boring shoe salesman named Harry Witherspoon (Neal C. Johnson) who must follow his dead Uncle Tony’s instructions to the letter — including taking his dead body all around the south of France for a week of fun.

So the corpse (Eldon B. Randall) gets pushed around in a wheelchair and is made to gamble, sky-dive, visit museums and scuba dive — all portrayed cleverly by a frenetic cast that skirts around the stage carrying cardboard fish or putting their own faces in famous paintings, as the case may be.

Pestering Harry is a representative from a dog society, Annabel Glick (Korianne Johnson), who knows that her organization is next in line for the money, should Harry fail to fulfill Tony’s wishes exactly.

And for good measure — it’s a farce, after all — there’s a near-sighted dame named Rita (Hailey Jones Smith) who knows how Tony got the money he’s leaving to Harry: he embezzled it from her husband. She wants it back, and drags her brother Vinnie (Jason Webb) to Monte Carlo to find it.

All this makes for a jolly time anyway, and the songs just add to it. Even the slow songs, the ones that might normally be “tender,” are goofy, as Annabel sings of her love for dogs in one, and she and Harry sing of their contempt for each other in another.

There’s one good scene after another in this show, with no weak links in the cast and strong singing voices all around. Perhaps the ultimate in the show’s weird sense of humor is a surreal nightmare sequence in which even dead Uncle Tony gets up and dances hysterically.

The props and sets (by Linda Hale, Will Swenson and Nate Hale) are two-dimensional and stylized, greatly enhancing the look and feel of 1960s Monte Carlo.

The show’s only flaw is its structure. The first act is 60 minutes; the second is only half that long. Which means the story reaches its climax way too soon after intermission, and things wrap up just as you’re settling in for another mad flurry of wackiness.

That complaint aside, the show is non-stop fun, a fast-paced, animated bit of whimsical lunacy.

Michael McLean and Kevin Kelly’s musical “The Ark,” first performed last year, has undergone some revisions and has come out the better for it, delivering an uplifting message with characters that are likable, if not especially well-drawn.

The first act establishes the story: Noah’s built an ark, everyone gets on it, and it starts raining. Just as everyone’s about to go stir crazy, the rain stops and they all rejoice — only to realize they still can’t leave, because there’s no dry land.

With nothing to do in Act Two but wait for the water to evaporate, we finally get to know the characters. Noah (Art Allen) is an optimistic prophet, bedecked in a King Lear beard and robe and always seeing miracles. (He also occasionally lapses into an amusing “prophet” mode and refers to futuristic things like cyberspace, Big Macs and, of course, “The Love Boat.”)

His wife, Eliza (Lynne Carr), is supportive but hates animals. Japheth (Daniel Law) caters to the every whim of his vain wife Sariah (Kelly K. Shepardson). Shem (Josh Meurer) is creative and sweet; his wife, Martha (Lori Lehman Rucker) lacks self-confidence and thinks everyone on board is better than she.

Finally, there’s the rebellious Ham (David Tinney, also the show’s director) and his wife Egyptus (Lita Little Giddins), who is black (leading to an amusing reaction from Eliza: “Noah, look who’s coming to dinner”). Ham is at odds with Noah because he doesn’t believe in his father’s calling; he comes to be at odds with Egyptus, too, when she becomes part of the family — i.e., spiritual.

Most of the second act consists of vignettes from the various relationships, with each character eventually overcoming whatever is making him or her unhappy. The problem is that all the characters are drawn with very broad strokes, even stereotypes: Does Ham HAVE to wear earrings to help establish that he’s “rebellious”? And does Egyptus HAVE to sing gospel music, just because she’s black?

The platitudinal songs that go along with the characters’ dilemmas (“One Step Closer to Liking Myself,” “Change of Tune,” etc.) wind up sounding a little hollow without real characters behind them. The feelings, situations and sentiments are very real and relatable — that is McLean’s song-writing genius, really — but the characters are not.

The lone exception there is Ham, whose crisis ultimately is the most serious and receives the most attention. When he finally gains his testimony (this is not particularly a “Mormon” show, but there are a few LDS-specific themes) and reconciles with Noah, it is truly touching.

One of the problems with the show last year was that it was way too long. To alleviate that, most of the scenes with the animals (played by the same cast members, as counterparts) have been ditched or changed. There is a very funny Letterman-esque variety show that the animals put on late at night, and it is they who convince Ham that if God can forgive him, he can forgive himself, too.

This means that if you buy the soundtrack CD, you’ll get a few extra songs and read in the liner notes some interesting parallel plotting that originally went with the animals. One excised song, however, called “It Takes Two,” was between Japheth and Sariah. Without it in the new show, their relationship winds up curiously under-explained.

Another change in plotting: In the CD version, Martha is the one who can’t forgive herself; now she simply lacks self-confidence, for whatever reason, and Ham, more fittingly, is the unworthy one.

This is a good show. Some more tinkering would be good. The animals need to either serve a function or not; as it is now, they’re sort of in between, and it’s obvious they USED to be a big part of the show and have been cut back.

The show is ambitious, though, and sweet, with earnest performances throughout the cast. Artistically, it has its flaws. But emotionally, yeah, it packs a punch.

Since we’re reviewing the new musical version of “Pollyanna” at the Villa Playhouse, let’s do as its chipper young protagonist would advise and play the “Glad Game.”

1. We’re glad this stage version of the classic novel, written by local resident Rene A. Sheets, stays close to the original story with no obvious modernizations or tweakings. Pollyanna (double-cast between Jessica Woahn and Ariel Leigh Jensen; no indication was given at the show, nor did the theater return multiple phone calls, to say which girl played the role when I saw it) is orphaned and must live in a huge rich-people mansion with her dour aunt Polly (Carolyn J. Stevens, also the director), in a town full of equally dour townsfolk. Through her optimism — including the “Glad Game,” which we are currently playing, and which involves finding the good in every situation — Pollyanna makes everyone happy.

The characters and situations are established in the first few minutes; the rest of the first act ambles about leisurely. Things actually start happening after intermission: We find out the source of Polly’s dourness, makes us glad, and Pollyanna herself suffers a crisis and yet manages to be glad through it.

2. This is a musical version of “Pollyanna” (as if the original story weren’t cheerful enough!), with songs by Carol B. Daniels, Rene A. Sheets and Randy Morris. We’re glad most of the music and orchestrations (by Brian Jensen and Steven Smith) are well-done, even if a majority of the lyrics are rather lame. (Pollyanna’s declaration upon seeing her new home: “I can’t wait to be rich/It would make me very glad/I can’t wait to be rich/I don’t think I could be sad.” Or, if you prefer, the Zen-like ruminations of the hired help: “All we ever do is work/Work is all we ever do.”)

3. We’re glad director Stevens had the good sense to cast herself as Aunt Polly, as she is one of the most talented performers on the stage, with a beautiful voice. We only wish the character had more stage time. But we’re glad she gets to sing the show’s best-written number, lyrically and musically (“I Know My Duty”).

4. We’re also glad for the casting of Michael Hadley as Pollyanna’s young friend Jimmy Bean. Hadley is confident and lively in his role, and is one of the few supporting cast members who doesn’t seem to be feeling awkward onstage. Again, we wish he had more stage time.

5. We’re glad Pollyanna herself manages to comes across as happy and cheerful without being perky or bubbly. Let’s face it, a constant, aggressive barrage of optimism can get annoying after a while, but Pollyanna’s never does here.

6. We’re glad the shrill Mrs. Potter (Alauna Tucker) and her disciple Mrs. White (Nancy Rolfe), two hypocritical high-society ladies, only appear for a total of five minutes or so. They and their Ladies’ Aid Society associates are annoying in the extreme — the most flatly written and poorly developed characters in the show.

7. We’re glad to have a different format in which to write a review every now and then.

August Night Theatre Group’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” playing at Kingsbury Hall through Aug. 30, is a perfunctory, average staging of the popular musical, with only a few minor things separating it from the other whiz-bang versions you’ve seen already.

To its credit, unlike many of its counterparts, this production does very little in the way of shtick, gimmicks or clever “bits.” It’s fairly straight-forward, in fact, keeping the spirit of fun intended by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music and Tim Rice’s lyrics, without too much additional embellishment.

(Finally, someone has realized that the script doesn’t NEED a whole lot of extra stuff thrown in — it’s written entertaining enough.)

Popular Utah vocalist David Barrus is Joseph, and he lives up to his reputation as an excellent singer, with a powerful, clear voice. He plays the character as a little prideful, like maybe the whole “daddy’s favorite” thing went to his head. Watch him particularly as he sings “I look handsome, I look smart, I am a walking work of art.” He seems to really believe it.

This isn’t necessarily bad, although it is different from our usual view of Joseph as a guileless, naive fellow. It’s an interesting interpretation, in fact, whether it came from Susan S. Holland’s direction or whether it’s just Barrus being cocky.

Another small but interesting deviation from the norm is how the Narrator (Jenny Jordan Frogley; triple-cast with Amy Ashworth Barrus and Chelsea Bagley) actually interacts with the characters. When she scolds the brothers for selling Joseph, they cower in shame and quickly shuffle away. It’s common to see the Narrator dance and sing with everyone, but to see them actually responding to her is unusual.

The sets are big and marvelous, making full use of the large Kingsbury stage. The live orchestra sounds great, too, although the sound mixing could have used some help opening night: During the numbers in which many people were singing in unison, their voices often sounded too loud, almost like a rock concert. A better balance between voices and accompaniment could be worked out, and probably has been by now.

Holland also designed the choreography, and it is superb, especially in the “One More Angel in Heaven” hoedown scene. I’ve never seen such a raucous number in this show.

One problem with the production is that it lacks cohesiveness. It seems less like a show with a plot and a story, and more like a concert full of show-stopping musical numbers. Almost every song ends BIG, with the cast members lined up, their arms raised Young Ambassador-style.

The result is that the whole thing doesn’t really hang well, and what little character development there is in this show to begin with doesn’t come through.

Finally, the show is padded out at the end with a full reprise of “Close Every Door” — an unfortunate choice, if a reprise had to be done (which it didn’t), because it brings the show to a screeching halt before the big “megamix”/curtain call.

These quibbles aside, the show is entertaining, particularly for a first-timer (I had one in attendance with me who absolutely loved it). “Joseph” aficianados — which must be just about everyone in Utah by now — may find it just average.

Hale Centre Theatre West Valley’s “April Ann,” written by Ruth and Nathan Hale, is such an odd play that it’s hard to know whether to like it or not.

Set in the Canadian Rockies in the 1950s, the title character (played by Sheralyn Pratt; double-cast with Marissa Young) is a headstrong, masculine gal who takes care of her grandmother and siblings on a small ranch in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly, two men enter the picture. One is Art (Porter Brinton/Mark Dietlein), a fur trapper with a too-frequently used unconvincing laugh who requires a mere five seconds to prove himself a chauvinist.

The other is Larry (Bret Wheadon/Sanford K. Porter), a genteel pilot whose plane has crashed nearby and who now spends his time doing things for the hopelessly ignorant Pritchard family like build them a shower and put a door on the outhouse.

Naturally, April Ann falls for Art, the more loutish of the two, even though he frustrates her. She can’t decide if she should just be who she is — a tree-felling, fur-trapping tom-boy — or if she should be feminine. She seems to change her mind on the matter every few minutes or so, which suggests she’s more feminine than she realizes. (Pardon me.)

The Pritchard family consists of April Ann, her grandmother (Ruth Hale), and three younger siblings. All of them are ignorant, uncouth, vile, boorish, antisocial, backward, deviant, and lazy — but in a lovable sort of way. Furthermore, Grandma wants the family to stay dumb as they are, and she doesn’t want Larry teaching them high-falutin’ things like reading and dental hygiene.

Adding to the weirdness is the fact that we’re told that just after they were married, Grandma and Grandpa Pritchard hiked up to these woods, carved out a homestead, and started having, um, grandchildren. One would assume there must have been regular children in the middle there, but no mention is ever made as to what became of these children’s parents, or why the kids are living with their grandparents now. Considering Grandma says she’s never left the homestead, and neither has anyone else (except Grandpa, who wanders off for months at a time), you have to wonder what’s going on here.

Did I mention the show is odd?

This is a musical, with about 20 songs — or, rather, 19 reprises of what sounds like the same song, with tunes and orchestrations lifted either from a John Denver TV special or the Country Bear Jamboree. The lyrics are negligible; one could argue quite convincingly that the play doesn’t need any songs at all, although they’re all mercifully short and everyone who sings them does so with strong voices.

The play drags quite a bit, considering how brief the plot really is. There are some genuinely funny moments, mostly based on the family’s complete disregard for all things civilized and decent. Mostly the play just sort of plods along, though, never reaching much of a climax, but never getting too dull, either.

Ruth Hale, matriarch of the vast Hale Centre Theatre empire, is a charming old gal, to be sure. She gets applause when she first comes onstage, and she gets a standing ovation at the end, even though she’s not the main character and probably isn’t even the best actor in the show. Her popularity, like the popularity of this play, is somewhat inexplicable: You like them both, even if you can’t put your finger on why.

At Murray’s Desert Star Playhouse, good-natured parody is always the bill of fare, but never has the parody been so good-natured as in “The Lone Stranger: The Man in the Macho Mask,” playing through Sept. 18.

In fact, things are almost TOO gentle here. The jokes are aimed at a target that’s not exactly at the forefront of American consciousness (the Lone Ranger? C’mon!), and the show is, alas, largely forgettable.

That said, I should point out that, as always, Scott Holman is the show’s saving grace. He plays Spud, one of two dim-witted, dentally impaired bad guys who operate under the direction of Finius Thermador (Jack Drayton), who plans to take over the town of Tumbleweed Junction.

Holman has emerged over the last several shows as the Desert Star’s most reliable, consistent performer. He knows how long to milk a joke, and he carefully walks the line between being silly and KNOWING he’s being silly.

With Kori E. Hazel as his fellow bumbling idiot, the two are so dumb so much of the time that you can’t help but laugh. It’s not that their lines are terribly funny; it’s just that they’re so relentless.

The outrageous set pieces so well beloved at the Desert Star are also in full force here, with a horse, a train, and various other larger-than-life items that make one laugh at the mere sight of them.

Steven Fehr plays Buck Sidesaddle, a rather wimpy fellow who turns quite manly when he becomes the Lone Stranger. Ricky Jason is his Indian sidekick, Pronto, whose constant war dancing and other stereotypical behavior would make him a racially offensive character, were it not for the fact that Desert Star is so naive that one has to assume it’s all done in innocence.

The post-show “Sand-n-Surf Olio” is the usual mixture of singing and dancing, slightly better than a Road Show, with choreography by Hazel and musical direction by Brooks Holm.

With such a weak target and a lack of oomph in the writing, “The Lone Stranger” is one of Desert Star’s lesser shows. You’ll enjoy seeing it, but you’re liable to forget almost everything about it immediately afterward.

What better subject for a light-hearted family musical than the Civil War? When brother is pit against brother and a nation’s future is at stake, hilarity is bound to ensue!

Actually, “Shenandoah,” playing through Aug. 14 at the SCERA Shell Outdoor Theatre, is not so much about the Civil War as it is about a family’s desire to stay together and stand up for what’s right.

Charlie Anderson (Marvin Payne) is patriarch of a Virginia family that wants to stay out of the war. Charlie doesn’t own slaves (he has six sons to do all the farmwork, after all), but he can understand how those who do would be upset at the government coming along and taking them suddenly.

The Andersons are forced to act, though, when young Robert (Ben Abbott) is abducted by Yankee troops who think he’s a Rebel.

That doesn’t happen until almost intermission, though. Before that, we’re treated to a charming slice of 1860s American life. The ferociously feisty Jenny Anderson (Natalie Hill) wants to marry a Rebel soldier (Rex Kocherhans Jr.), though he’s a little hesitant. Her “Over the Hill” number is a highlight of the show, sung by Hill with energy and wit.

The five older Anderson brothers (Rob Abney, Jason Celaya, Scott Wetsel, Todd Beagley, Jared Pulham) sing “Next to Lovin’ I Like Fightin’,” a “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” type of song full of great choreography (designed by Michelle Marquis Gardner) and clever lyrics.

The second act is much darker, as the search for Robert breaks the family into two sections, and tragedy visits them both. In the end, “Shenandoah” is about war after all, and the terrible effects it can have on society.

Veteran Utah actor Marvin Payne is reliable as always as Charlie Anderson. He doesn’t just preside over the family; he presides over the whole show, with a commanding stage presence and powerful singing voice.

The show has many enjoyable songs, a few of which have already been mentioned. “Beautiful Pair,” sung by Jenny and her sister-in-law on Jenny’s wedding day, is a charming, unornamented number, and “Papa’s Gonna Make it All Right” has a similar simple beauty to it. The cast’s voices are good all the way around.

The show seems slow of pace now and then — not dragging, exactly, just a little slow. And it was unwise to cast a Polynesian-looking boy as a black slave and still expect him to speak in a “slave dialect” (“My massa says I gots to go home,” etc.). It’s almost embarrassing, which is unfortunate, since the boy in question (Jared M. Young) is a talented young singer and actor.

Overall, “Shenandoah” is a successful end to the SCERA summer season.

Wordplay, duplicity and extreme Britishness are the key elements of “Tons of Money,” a 1920s-style farce being performed at the Springville Playhouse by the Playhouse Youth Guild.

It’s your basic farce, but without the sex. Long-suffering Aubrey (Tyler Thorstrom) and slightly dim Louise (Laurel Asay) Allington are a live-beyond-their-means couple in high society London. A dead relative leaves them a wad of dough, but with one catch: Once Aubrey dies, whatever money’s left will go to his cousin George, whom everyone presumes to have died in Mexico but who is officially still alive.

No problem, Louise decides. We’ll fake Aubrey’s death, then have him show up in disguise as George, claim the money, and live happily ever after. The death-faking goes well, but when Aubrey shows up pretending to be George, he discovers his butler, Sprules (C.J. Mecham), has also enlisted his own brother Henery (Justin Ritter) to pose as George for the same purpose. Obviously, the real George (Michael Roberts) shows up, too, adding to the confusion.

None of the three Georges looks the slightest bit like any of the others, yet everyone still mistakes them for each other. You kind of have to accept that, as you do the extraordinary coincidences inherent in a farce. Also, don’t think too much about the fact that Jean (Shannon Minch) kisses all three of the Georges, yet still can’t tell which one is actually her long-lost husband.

Thorstrom is gently wacky as Aubrey, the much-killed main character, spouting odd plays on words at every turn. (Upon learning of his inheritance: “Have you never had money left you? I have. All my money’s left me.”)

Stealing the show, though, is Andrea Keddington as the daft Aunt Benita. She wobbles and complains hilariously, and while her “Don’t shout, I’m not deaf” joke wears thin after hearing it approximately every eight seconds during the first act, she is still the best thing it the show. It’s a shame Keddington doesn’t have a larger role, as she is a talented actress, and the only one who can do a convincing English accent.

The cast is generally good all the way around, giving professional and consistent performances throughout the show. “Tons of Money” is not the best source material they could have chosen — it’s a rather unimpressive script to begin with — but what they do with it is considerably more than it could have been. And they seem to have so much fun doing it, too, which makes the show just that much more enjoyable.

Sundance Theatre is proud, and rightly so, of the fact that big-time actor Christopher Lloyd (“Taxi,” “Back to the Future”) is playing Fagin in its current production of “Oliver!” It’s a shame, then, that as of opening night, he was still stumbling over his lines — the only cast member to do so.

That’s just one example, though, of elements in this show that could have been great but instead are just so-so.

In keeping with Sundance’s reputation for doing cutting-edge, experimental productions (e.g., the ’90s updating of “Cinderella” a couple months ago), Lionel Bart’s only slightly subversive “Oliver!” has been tweaked as follows: We’re led to believe we’re watching a rehearsal of the show. The stage is just a raised platform with chairs around it, and the actors mill around onstage before the show starts, running lines and joking with each other. It’s very convincing, too, and it hints at some very funny, clever things that could be done once the show gets going. Will they be stopping and starting a lot? Will the actors suddenly break character and critique one another’s performances? Will the actors’ cell phones ring?

The answer is yes to all of the above — but they only happen occasionally. In fact, it’s a good 25 minutes into the show before anything really out of the ordinary happens. After that, the “this is just a rehearsal” references, while very funny when they do materialize, are few and far between.

The result is that we’re really just watching a show with no scenery or costumes. One is almost inclined to believe that the rehearsal motif was chosen to justify the theater’s not wanting to build sets.

The climax of the show becomes confusing, too, happening way too fast and without clearly defining what, exactly, is going on. A show shouldn’t rely on its scenery and wardrobe, but SOMETHING here would have helped us understand whether or not Bill Sikes gets killed (he does, but the staging here makes it vague), and why Fagin decides to go straight in the end.

Lloyd is as lovably disheveled as ever as Fagin, though his performance is not as worthy of being an audience-attractor as it’s billed to be. Susan J. Whitenight as Mrs. Corney, for example, is every bit as good, and young Dustin Harding as Oliver Twist is also impressive, with a sweet, cherubic voice.

The star of “Oliver!,” as far as I’m concerned, is the score. This show has fantastic songs, full of wonderful, funny rhymes and hummable melodies. To its credit, this production plays up each number to its fullest potential, thanks largely to musical director Ryan T. Murphy and a top-notch live orchestra.

The lack of sets and costumes could have been made up for with the innovative rehearsal idea, but that idea is not employed often enough. The result is a rather bland show that is not quite a standard, safe production of “Oliver!,” but not really original, either.

Can Salt Lake’s Off Broadway Theatre, best known for loony parodies and improv comedy, earn respect as a venue for Shakespeare, too?

Probably not, but its production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a fun, good-hearted attempt, anyway.

“Midsummer” — fast becoming the “Joseph” of Shakespeare, with a half-dozen or so Utah productions this year — is a whimsical, pointless comedy about love and fairies. It has a few key elements that make it an instant winner (e.g., men dressed as women), although it rarely makes its audience fall on the floor laughing.

As usual with this show, the last 20 minutes of Off Broadway’s production are the best, when a group of Athenian handymen-turned-thespians perform a hysterically funny play at the Duke’s wedding reception.

The star here is Dave Hunsaker as Bottom, whose prolonged death scene in the play-within-a-play is fantastic. One can see Hunsaker’s natural tendencies to improvise — urges which must be supressed if one is to stick to the Bard’s original words — coming to the surface as he uses a breadstick for a sword and stabs himself “gallantly for love” with it.

In fact, Hunsaker is just about the best thing in all of “Midsummer.” He’s a round, merry fellow, boasting and bragging like Bottom should, but in a way that is thoroughly endearing. His interaction with the fairies — all played by adorable young children — would bring a smile to anyone’s face.

Hermia (Amber Hutchings) and Helena (Melissa Porter), the two women in pursuit of love (i.e., men), spend most of their time crying, although Porter rises a little above the norm as a snappy, cynical Helena.

Robert Bogue plays both Duke Theseus and King Oberon surprisingly well. Both characters come across as authoritative, with Oberon appropriately flustered by Puck’s incompetence as a fairy prankster.

Ah, yes, Puck. In the grand tradition of “Peter Pan,” Puck is played by a woman in this production (Alexis Owen), instead of by a gay man, which is how it’s usually done. Owen gives the character a great deal of flair, gadding about the stage with energy and shrill zeal.

So who would enjoy this play? Casual Shakespeare fans, or people who aren’t big fans at all. Unlike some of that man’s plays, “Midsummer” is fairly easy to follow, and this production is certainly not a hoity-toity, theater-snob affair. Purists might be upset by the amount of material cut from the script, particularly in Acts IV and V, and by the haphazard way in which lines meant for one character have been re-assigned to another, in the interest of giving everyone equal stage time.

Some of the line-readings are just plain wrong, too, reminding us that Shakespearean acting is a different breed altogether, even when you’re trying to make it accessible to ordinary folks.

As a Shakespeare play, this one’s second-rate. But as an entertaining play that’s fun for the whole family, it’s hard to beat.

Samuel Beckett’s long-lived absurdist tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot” is not abundantly entertaining, nor does it exactly change one’s life with its profound meaning — yet true theater connoisseurs are obligated to like it anyway, lest they be looked down upon by their fellows.

BYU’s student production of it, while generally good, is marred by a few directorial choices that don’t work, and by performances that emphasize style over substance.

The folks who get mad when I spend too much time discussing the plot shouldn’t have a problem with this review, because there is no plot. Vladimir (Javen Ronald Tanner) and Estragon (Ryan Rauzon), two powdery-white hobos, sit and wait for Godot to arrive. He doesn’t. The end.

In the course of their waiting, they discuss a good many things, and also talk about truly nothing — a sort of pre-“Seinfeld,” post-modern, ultra-absurdist exercise in deliberate tedium.

They also meet up with Pozzo (Joshua Brady, also the director) and his slave Lucky (Chad Gooch), who are passing by. Pozzo is a proud, pompous plutocrat; Lucky is a drooling old man with only one line in the entire play (but that line is three minutes long, and everyone tries to get him to shut up after about two).

Tanner looks and acts like a cross between Charlie Chaplin, Oliver Hardy, and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. His acting method distracts and is jarring at first, as he flits wildly from one emotion to the next, without ever really registering in any of them. In fact, he seems not to be acting the part so much as worshipping it. Tanner is also the show’s dramaturg, and he wrote the commentary included in the program; he’s obviously a big fan of the play. This works against him, though, as he is so intent on making his performance technically perfect, hoping to live up to what he considers to be brilliant source material, that he forgets to add any humanity or realism to his character.

On the other hand, Rauzon’s Estragon is more comfortable and honest. The laughs in the play come almost entirely in the second act, and almost all of them come from Rauzon. With a look or a tone of voice, he conveys the humor inherent in two men waiting for something that won’t happen.

To make a biblical analogy, Rauzon and Tanner are Mary and Martha. Tanner bustles around the stage, delivering a spotless yet soulless performance, while Rauzon just sits back and enjoys the opportunity to act in such an unusual, challenging play — and as a result achieves more.

Director Brady has added quite a bit of odd physical movement — synchronized one-foot hopping, other choreographed weirdness — some of which gets laughs but most of which seems hollow. Instead of finding a way to get laughs out of the lines themselves, Brady has directed our attention to the shtick, which is never a good idea.

Beckett refused to say what the play is supposed to mean. He was fine with people coming up with their own interpretations, as long as they stayed true to his script and didn’t try to pass off their analyses as being the only correct ones.

Which makes it easy to produce the show, because you don’t have to worry about conveying a theme in harmony with the playwright’s intentions. Convey any theme you want, and you’ve succeeded.

So what’s the theme in this production? Again, the question is impossible to answer. I could tell you what I got out of it — the seeming absurdity of religious devotion and the inherent banality of life — but that may not be what the director intended. And yet, by Beckett’s rules, we’re both right. Everybody wins!

This is a mature, mostly successful production. Theater fans ought to see this play at least once in their lives, if only for the sake of well-roundedness. Some dialogue from the show sums up my take on it:

POZZO: You find it tedious?
ESTRAGON: A little bit.
POZZO: And you, Sir?
VLADIMIR: I’ve been better entertained.

Sundance Theatre’s production of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” is a unique theatrical experience, using little more than music and singing to create a wrenching love story full of powerful emotion.

Set on a mostly bare stage, and using almost no props, “Cherbourg” tells of young Genevieve (Britani Bateman), a French gal in 1957 who is in love with hunky auto mechanic Guy (T.J. Young). Her mom (Maureen McGovern) (yes, THAT Maureen McGovern) disapproves, however, and when Guy goes off to war, she hides his letters to Genevieve from her in the hopes she’ll get over him and marry Roland Cassard (David Raphael D’Agostini), a diamond-encrusted slickster who may or may not have good motives, but who definitely has money.

Get over Guy she does, and marry Roland she does, thus setting up a heart-breaking finale that saddens the audience without really depressing it, fortunately.

The show is based on the acclaimed 1964 French film, which was also entirely sung. At the request of the filmmaker, however, the stage version is not a full production in the traditional sense. It is meant to be a “concert performance.” This means minimal sets, props and costumes (though the costumes here are gorgeous, solid colors, designed by James Scott). There is movement and acting and some dancing, but it’s not as theatrical as a full-fledged musical.

Oddly, leaving out the normal musical trappings makes this piece even more intriguing. It’s not your standard “Seven Brides for Oklahoma’s Technicolor South Pacific” — fitting, because the plot and musical structure is entirely different from traditional musicals anyway.

This is a jazz opera, mostly, with some haunting melodies by Michel Legrand and engaging lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and Norman Gimbel. Every part is well-sung by the very talented cast.

It is somewhat unfortunate that Guy is called to military service for two years — the length of an LDS mission — and that he keeps asking Genevieve to “wait for me.” That coincidence causes a few audience chuckles in places where they should be melting at the fact that the couple’s love is being torn asunder.

Young and Bateman, both products of BYU (as their names might suggest), have tremendous chemistry as a romantic couple. Their love, and eventually their heartbreak, are palpable, especially in Young’s passionate performance, as he takes center stage in the second act.

This play has not been performed professionally for 20 years, and it’s not likely to come back again soon. See this one while you have the chance.

The very smart and funny “Teahouse of the August Moon” is performed with wit and cleverness at the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley, causing many of us to wonder why John Patrick’s Tony Award-winner doesn’t get performed more often.

Set in Okinawa just after World War II, the play deals with the United States’ effort to bring democracy to the island and to teach the locals American ideals. Captain Fisby (Eric Jensen) is sent to the small village of Tobiki, along with a native translator named Sakini (Joey Miyashima).

Fisby is at first put off by the quaint and primitive customs of the Okinawans — particularly when he is given a Geisha girl (Sandy A. Jensen) as a gift — but they grow on him, and soon he’s acting like a native.

This distresses his supervisor, the blustery Col. Purdy Wainwright (David Phillips), who sends an Army psychologist (Mike Brown; double-cast with Cody K. Carlson) to check on Fisby’s mental health.

There’s gentle satire in this play, mostly at the expense of ethno-centric Americans, who always assume their way is the best way. When none of the soldiers will buy the painstakingly crafted ceramics or other well-made trinkets of the Tobikians, Fisby has them start making the one thing he knows G.I.s will buy: liquor.

Few plays treat foreign cultures with as great respect as this one, which is especially noteworthy considering it was written in 1953, when reverence for the Japanese and their culture was not exactly at its pinnacle.

Yet, it’s not preachy or moralizing. The Okinawans are not put on a pedestal. They are shown to be at times silly, jealous and petty — in other words, regular people.

It’s exactly that kind of attitude that makes their culture come across as fascinating and dignified in this production, thanks also to clear directing from David Nieman and winning, honest performances from the lead actors.

Miyashima is charming as Sakini, who also narrates the play. An improvisational actor at heart, Miyashima could be seen on a recent night making fun of late-arriving audience members and winning over the audience right from the start with his easy-going manner.

Jensen, who has long been my favorite actor at Salt Lake’s Off Broadway Theatre, is a treat as Fisby. He has the wild energy and physical agility of Jim Carrey, but he’s able to reign it in when necessary and give an even, solid performance. His scene with real-life wife Sandy as the Geisha girl, distracting him while he’s on the phone with his supervisor, is hysterical. But even that’s just one gem of many in this good-natured, laugh-out-loud funny play that gently reminds us how much beauty there is in the world — beauty that we, to paraphrase Fisby, ought to be wise enough to leave alone.

After two acts of ho-hum, “isn’t-that-cute?” comedy, the Hale Center Theater’s production of “George Washington Slept Here” redeems itself with a third act that is hysterically funny and well worth the wait.

I’ve never seen a show make such a fast turn-around, but this one does.

Set in the ’50s, the Kaufman/Hart play is about Newton Fuller (Jim Gastelum), a businessman who gets tired of living in the city and buys a dilapidated old shack in the country that was supposedly once slept in by George Washington. His wife, the always-sarcastic — and boy does THAT grate after a while — Annabelle (Nancy Stewart Douglas) hates the idea but goes along with it, presumably so she can make withering remarks at her husband every time she opens her mouth.

The tension between the two is supposed to be funny, but the laughs are few and far between up until intermission. The house is practically falling apart, and the neighbors are all weird … but none of that amounts to much amusement, either. The script isn’t exactly laugh-a-minute to begin with, and the cast seems too eager to jerk chuckles out of you however they can.

The real entertainment comes in the final act. Visiting Uncle Stanley (LaMarr Nielsen) is unable to help the Fullers come up with the money they need to make the payment on the house, and the evil Mr. Prescott (Lyn Vickery), a British man with an accent not found in the real world, is going to foreclose.

Newton and Annabelle begin to despair, and it’s most amusing. Their solution? To drink, at 10 in the morning. Everyone who comes in is offered his or her own bottle, and soon we’re having a grand time. The tension between husband and wife was more uncomfortable than funny anyway; now that they’re in league (she’s fallen in love with the house, too), we can relax and enjoy their banter.

Nielsen is a saving grace as Uncle Stanley, fully committed to the part and making it more than just a bland stereotype of rich, demanding uncles. Gastelum’s Newton is also very likable. Even when the play is not funny, it rides well on his easy-going shoulders. Douglas, too, is good, once Annabelle stops being sarcastic all the time and starts being a real person.

Also earning many laughs is the Fullers’ precocious nephew Raymond (Bryce Ashdown). His outspokenness provides most of the best laughs in the second act.

There are some loopy interludes, mostly as time-fillers while the sets are changed, in which the cast lip-synchs to an appropriate song and dances around the stage like crazy people. Part of what makes the third act so good is that it is full of that kind of wacky sensibility, as if the cast has freed itself from the shackles of the humdrum script and is finally cutting loose.

Springville’s Villa Playhouse Theatre has put together an impressive production of Williams Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker,” with director Kathleen Nutt’s innovations doing much to keep the play fresh and alive.

Nutt has added angels to the story — pretty young girls who follow the protagonists around, helping them at times and comforting the family at other times.

There is also a great deal of peaceful music between scenes, adding to the overall tranquil tone of the play.

None of these additions are intrusive; rather, they add a deep feeling of hopefulness and earnestness.

Not that the play needs much embellishment. It’s based on the true story of Helen Keller (Breanne DeFreese), rendered blind and deaf by a childhood illness, and Annie Sullivan (Rebecca Connerley), the woman who taught her to communicate.

It’s a drama that is fascinating to watch, particularly in the scenes where Annie tries to make Helen understand that the symbols she’s been drawing on her hand actually mean something, that everything has a name. One gets a profound sense of the frustration the entire family must feel.

Robinne Booth is sympathetic as Mrs. Keller, a woman who loves her daughter but doesn’t know how to reach her. David Haenlein, as her proud, dictatorial husband, functions on one level, yelling everything with a Southern accent and punctuating most lines with a sharp jab of his finger. His scenes become tiresome as he rants and rails like some kind of demented Foghorn Leghorn character.

Connerley and DeFreese as Annie and Helen carry the show, though. Connerley’s strength and determination make Annie an incredible female role model, and the young DeFreese — even though she has no spoken lines — conveys a bright young girl who is trapped in a world she doesn’t understand.

The ending is dramatic and wonderfully satisfying. Even though history tells us that Annie would eventually succeed in getting through to Helen, it is no less sweet when we see it happen.

That all-American show “The Music Man” is performed with gusto, if not finesse, at the SCERA Shell Outdoor Theatre.

Truly a classic in American theater, “The Music Man” is about a small Iowa town that gets turned upside-down by a con man named Harold Hill (Matt Beck), who claims the town needs a boys’ band to keep the kids off the streets.

It’ll cost money, though, of course, and Harold plans to leave town before anyone realizes he doesn’t know one note from another. Trouble is, he accidentally falls in love with Marian the librarian (Rachel Shill Beck, real-life wife of the man who plays Harold), and he doesn’t want to leave after all. But can he stay to let the townspeople discover they’ve been had?

This show has many wonderful songs, “Ya Got Trouble,” “Seventy-Six Trombones” and “Till There Was You” among them. The Becks both have strong, gorgeous voices. Matt’s is rich and full, and Rachel’s opera training shines through.

A barbershop quartet (Loran Bingham, Steve Lundgreen, Roger Tuckett and Scott Wells) also makes for pleasant listening.

While the large cast performs with zeal, something is missing from the show. Opening night was plagued with microphone problems, and the prerecorded music often missed its cues. (Many of the songs stop and start so much that you’d almost have to use a live orchestra to get it right.) Perhaps these problems are what caused the show to seem mechanical, almost perfunctory.

Where many of the laughs should be provided by the bizarre townspeople — the blustery mayor, his pompous wife, etc. — the show misses a lot of opportunities.

Nonetheless, there are bright spots. The opening train scene is as imaginative as it should be, and the ladies dance committee’s “Grecian Urn” number is hilarious. Lara Z. Wells is good as the mayor’s wife; Matthew Williams (double-cast with Adam Steele) is adorable and energetic as Winthrop.

In fact, the energy young Williams uses as the lisping 10-year-old, as well as the over-the-top zest we see in his older brother, Spencer, as Tommy Djilas, is exactly what I’d like to have seen in Matt Beck as Harold Hill. This show lives and dies by the charm of its lead character, and while Beck has some charisma, he seems almost physically unable to keep up with the demands of the role. This is a fast-talking, one-step-ahead flim-flam man, and Beck is trying breathlessly to get all the words out.

Rachel Beck has a fantastic singing voice; as an actress, she doesn’t give Marian enough prim-and-proper to make her a suitable pre-feminist obstacle to Harold’s chauvinistic smooth-talker. She seems like just another giddy school girl smitten with the cool out-of-towner, like in so many other ’50s musicals — thus making the show seem as demeaning to women as all the others from that era, instead of being refreshingly different, like it should be.

Theater-critic complaints aside, this production mostly entertains. If the technical glitches are cured, it will be a solid show that, while perhaps not as great as its source material, is nonetheless a crowd-pleaser.

The joys and perils of married life are examined with unapologetic cheesiness and simplicity in Provo Theatre Company’s charming production of “I Do! I Do!”

It’s a small, intimate musical, with only two characters: Michael (Mark Gollaher) and Agnes (Emmelyn Thayer). We see their lives from the time they are married, through child-rearing, through pain and sorrow, up until they finally sell the house they’ve lived in the whole time and move to an apartment for old people.

Everything is light and fluffy for quite a while, with the characters singing songs like “I Love My Wife” and “Together Forever” (not the Mormon pop version). The lyrics tend toward the unsophisticated: “I love my wife, how will it end?/I love her as my lover, not just as a friend.”

Thayer’s voice is stronger than her co-star’s, though Gollaher manages well enough.

Then things get ugly. Michael, now wealthy from being the author of bad romance novels, has had an affair. Agnes eventually forgives him, after he expresses true remorse.

Several years later, Agnes announces she no longer loves Michael. This problem is solved, apparently, by his doing something thoughtful for her. (Being single, I do not pretend to understand the complex inner workings of married life. I do, however, think that my love for someone would not be rekindled by receiving a present. I am willing to be wrong on that point, though.)

The two best numbers come back-to-back. First, Michael sings “It’s a Well Known Fact,” filling Agnes in on the details of how men get more charming as they age, whereas women fall apart. She leaves the room, and he dances around smoothly with a dresser’s dummy, showing that Gollaher has some dancing skill and that Michael is absolutely full of himself.

Immediately following that is “Flaming Agnes.” Here Agnes decides that she, too, can go out and party like her husband does, and she dances around the bedroom fantasizing about it. Agnes stumbles about awkwardly, trying to convince herself that she can be as sexy and “with it” as her husband … and it’s at once manically funny and heartbreaking. Thayer plays Agnes as consistently sweet and wonderful — what man in his right mind would cheat on her?

It is her considerable winsomeness that carries the show, right up to the end, when she and Gollaher must play their same characters, but 40 years later. (Both play the age exceptionally well, by the way.)

“I Do! I Do!” feels a little too long, as the cute concept gets old after a while, and married people will no doubt enjoy it more than unmarrieds. Still, it’s harmlessly entertaining and occasionally downright lovely.

When you lack the capacity to love your fellow man, what is there to seek after? Power. “The Lion in Winter” explores that subject with black, calloused humor and an eye for finding the lowest traits of humanity.

It’s Christmas 1183, and the royal family of England is together: “What shall we hang? The holly or each other?” asks King Henry (Richard Elmore). And that pretty much sums things up: “The Lion in Winter” is a bitter comedy in which all members of the family hate each other relentlessly and delight only in hurting one another. (“That’s the most dreadful lie of all!” bellows the king. “I know,” answers his wife. “That’s why I saved it for last.”)

The only one who displays any honest love for any length of time is Alais (Stephanie Foster Breinholt), a French gal serving as Henry’s mistress. Everyone else manages to love someone for a few minutes — but it is fleeting, as they discover they can’t trust anyone long enough to love them.

Henry and his wife Eleanor (Leslie Brott), whom he has imprisoned in a castle because of her tendency to lead civil wars against him, have three living sons and three prizes to offer: the throne (once Henry dies), the hand of Alais, and the land of Aquitaine.

Why not give each son one prize and let them all be happy? Because Henry doesn’t want his kingdom divided up.

Richard (Ty Burrell) is a strong, handsome warrior, and the oldest — a likely candidate for kingship, except Henry thinks he’s too much like his mother — plus, he’s Eleanor’s favorite, and Henry despises him. Henry wants the youngest son, the dunderheaded John (Russ Benton), to be heir. In the middle is Geoffrey (Jay Russell), a shrewd, smarmy tactician who wants the crown, too, but knows he can only get it by discrediting his brothers.

Elmore’s Henry is the title character, speaking in a roaring swagger and clearly revelling in his position of power. Russell’s Geoffrey is a snotty delight, communicating mostly with arched eyebrows and sardonic stares, and Burrell is strong as Richard (a character with more depth to him than you may at first think).

Benton, as John, sometimes seems too clownish and silly in a play that is otherwise quite dignified, even erudite, in its dialogue and demeanor.

It is Eleanor who is really the main character, and Brott plays her brilliantly. The scenes in which the facades come down and we see her for the broken old woman she is are achingly good. Every character in the show is without hope, but Eleanor personifies that despair. Brott’s performance is nuanced and affecting, making an already-worthy show into something truly great.

By the time you get to the end of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed with a by-the-numbers sensibility by Russell Treyz, you may have forgotten that most of the show really wasn’t all that good.

For the last act, in which the workingmen of Athens present their “Pyramus and Thisbee” play for the Duke’s wedding, is full of madcap humor and lunacy — the same kind of impassioned zaniness you’ll wish the rest of “Midsummer” had had, too. You may walk away thinking the whole thing was funny, when really it was just the last act.

The first four acts are light on humor, but when it does come, it comes with a sledgehammer attached to it. The third-act scene in which fairy-world intrusions have caused both Lysander (Gregory Ivan Smith) and Demetrius (Tim Redmond) to love the formerly hated Helena (Maren Maclean), much to the dismay of Lysander’s girlfriend Hermia (Didi Doolittle), is like a tiresome cartoon. There’s nothing but broad, uninspired slapstick, the show almost begging us to think it’s funny: “Please laugh! Look, a guy just fell down! Look, two guys accidentally kissed each other! It’s funny!”

Shakespeare’s script leaves it up to the production to determine who the main character is. This one sort of chooses fairy king Oberon (Ty Burrell) and his quasi-naked whipping boy Puck (Eduardo Rioseco), both played with animal-like agility and demeanor but with little flair otherwise.

The stand-out is Jay Russell. As Bottom — the weaver-turned-actor-turned-jackass — he minces about with slap-worthy over-confidence … yet you really like him. When he is changed back into a human again, he seems to have learned something during his stay in the fairy world. He is the only character in the entire play to exhibit anything other than a static personality.

Russell is also genuinely funny throughout, rising high above the lame antics of the four lovers, for example. His fellow mechanicals — Quince (Russ Benton), Flute (Brent T. Barnes), Snout (Matt Ramsey), Snug (Michael Fitzpatrick) and Starveling (Paul Hope) — work together to create a great ending to a mediocre show, with Snug’s performance as a lion and Snout’s turn as a wall being particularly amusing.

Their scene has slapstick, too, but with a difference: These guys are good at it, and it doesn’t seem forced or cloying.

Except for these few great performances and an imaginative costume design (Madeline Ann Kozlowski) and set design (Charles O’Connor), this “Midsummer” seems factory-assembled, slapped up on the stage with only moderate enthusiasm and minimum originality. If you’ve seen any other production of “Midsummer,” you’ve seen this one, too.

George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell” is an old British comedy full of British people doing British things: having tea, ordering manservants around, apologizing for everything, calling their lawyers “solicitors” — you get the idea.

This production is a colorful period piece where the accents are as much a part of the scenery as the quaint sets and authentic-looking costumes.

It’s a tale of courtship, naturally. (What else were comedies about a century ago?) A dentist named Valentine (Brian Vaughn) is invited to have lunch with a patient’s family, the Clandons. Dolly (Tyler Layton) and Philip (Jered Tanner) are upper-class brats, bred with the finest manners but apparently having forgotten them. They sit on desks, ask people how old they are, and do other unspeakably un-British things.

Valentine finds them amusing, but he especially likes their older sister, Gloria (Caroline Shaffer). She, however, is a disciple of her mother (Leslie Brott), who is opposed to letting “sentimentality” (i.e., emotions) govern one’s behavior. Things get messy when Valentine’s landlord, Mr. Crampton (Richard Elmore), also invited to lunch, turns out to be Mrs. Clandon’s ex-husband and the children’s long-lost father. Crampton is a growling old crank, but he turns out to be an old softie who wants custody of his kids again.

The second act is much better than the first, with funnier jokes and more amusing developments. None of the play is gut-bustingly funny, though; it’s what we call a “gentle comedy,” the kind that doesn’t wear you out with laughing too hard.

The acting ensemble is strong all the way around. Layton and Tanner are particularly wonderful as the grinning (leering?) Obnoxious Twins, butting in to everything and making all things their business. They are a breath of fresh air in a genre often full of stuffy characters.

There are some themes in the play that relate to life in 1999, but they are hidden deep. Much is made of women acting “modern” or “old-fashioned,” but this has little relevance for us now, as the play’s idea of modern behavior would strike us now as terribly old-fashioned.

“You Never Can Tell” is a pleasant, happy little comedy, heavy on dialogue, that moves slowly but keeps up a jovial, energetic spirit.

“King Lear,” one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, is bar none the best show at this year’s Utah Shakespearan Festival.

An exciting, enthralling story of familial love and personal ambition, the play has enough villains, liars and traitors to fill Congress. There is also reconciliation, though, and some touching performances from a few very solid actors.

A brief summary: Lear (William Metzo) and the Earl of Gloucester (Richard Hill), in parallel plotting, each disown the one child who actually loves them most, while embracing the ones who secretly plot their demise and want their land and power. Lear goes insane upon realizing his mistake, while Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund (Jonathan Gillard Daly), fulfilling every possible definition of that word, hands his father over to the evil Duke of Cornwall (John Pasha), who pokes out his eyes.

One rather beautiful scene is between the blinded Gloucester and his good son, Edgar, who does not reveal his identity. Sick at heart over having cast away good Edgar, Gloucester wants to leap from the cliffs of Dover and end his life. Edgar, forgiving his father’s mistakes, lovingly helps him realize the value of living, and the two continue on.

Lear is the star of the show, of course, and William Metzo is superb in the role. The character spends most of the play being insane, but Metzo gives us such a grand image of Lear in his pre-crazy scenes — an extroverted bon vivant, an exuberant man full of life and energy — that we are truly sad to see him degenerate.

He is briefly reconciled to his one loving daughter, Cordelia (Caroline Shaffer), but their time is short. The final scene, with Lear, howling with madness and agony, carrying Cordelia’s body onstage, is a heartbreaking, haunting image. The words are comparatively few (for Shakespeare), as Lear is insane beyond reason, but his primal yells are enough.

Also giving a good performance is Daly as the shifty, conniving, murderous Edmund. He is sly and weaselly in behavior and physical appearance, and he makes for a thoroughly despicable villain.

Jeannie Naughton and Tyler Layton are appropriately icy and spiteful as Lear’s ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan.

In fact, while a few weak spots can be found in a couple performances, they are not enough to bring down the show as a whole, nor are they worth mentioning. “King Lear” is a fine production, full of tragedy and sadness, but also with an uplifting feeling of hope and redemption.

You gotta hand it to the folks at the Utah Shakespearean Festival: They know what makes a good show.

For a Shakespearean tragedy, you need acting with depth and humanity. And for a 20th-century musical, you need showstopping song-and-dance numbers, nifty set pieces, and performers with enough energy to light the stage on fire. “Damn Yankees” delivers the goods, all right, particularly in the last area: Every performer throws himself into the show with utter abandon. Some of them are doing Shakespeare later that evening, but in the afternoons, they’re baseball players, hell-bound tramps, and the devil himself.

The show takes place in the ’50s, when people still liked baseball. Joe Boyd (George Judy) rhetorically suggests he would sell his soul if his beloved Washington Senators could win the pennant and defeat “those damn Yankees” for once. Mr. Applegate (A. Bryan Humphrey) — aka Satan — materializes and makes him an offer: He’ll make Joe 22 years old and a great baseball player, in exchange for his soul. Joe agrees, with the clause that he can change his mind anytime before the end of the season.

Applegate turns him into young Joe Hardy (Alex Lubliner), a strapping young man with a mighty singing voice who, sure enough, becomes the Senators’ savior. His success on the field and with the public alarms Applegate, though, who tries to keep him under his influence by means of Lola (Michelle Smith), a round-bottomed gal who we are led to believe is the finest seductress hell has to offer.

From the rousing opening number (in which the sports widows sing of their isolation for “Six Months out of Every Year”) through the end, the show is relentlessly entertaining, full of comical performances and boundless energy.

Heidi Ewart plays Joe’s wife, Meg, with a sympathetic (but not pathetic) exasperation. Her loneliness is even a little touching — as touching as the show lets it get — but you admire her pluckiness and optimism.

Smith is great as Lola, too, especially in her famous “Whatever Lola Wants” number. Singing with a fake Spanish accent (“Jew are so sessy when jew say that”), “Lolita” slithers around Joe’s locker room like an acrobatic slinky, drawing more laughs than leers.

But Humphrey steals the show as a devil who is not so fearsome as he is pesky, a bug-eyed sleight-of-hand magician who can control a lot of things, but not as much as he’d like to. Humphrey is a showman through and through, personifying what “Damn Yankees” is as a whole: very little humanity on the inside, but flawlessly entertaining and slick on the outside.

Though many were skeptical, “Troilus and Cressida” turns out to be one of the better shows at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, thanks to clear directing and a good ensemble cast.

The reason for the skepticism was that “Troilus and Cressida” is difficult to classify. It’s difficult to tell whether Shakespeare meant it as a comedy, tragedy, romance, or something else.

This production, in the hands of director Paul Barnes, turns out to be more comedy than anything, though a rather dark and nasty one.

It cannot be a tragedy, for there are no heroes. That absence of heroes is part of the ironic humor, as the play takes place during the Trojan War, which we’ve always been told was crawling with heroes. “Troilus and Cressida” shows it to be full of men who were just plain ol’ MEN: lecherous, deceitful and immature.

Hector (Michael A. Harding), for example, slaps his wife when she urges him not to fight. The great warrior Achilles (Matt Ramsey) lazes around his tent, refusing to fight until his gay lover Patroclus (David McNamara) is killed in battle, finally spurring him to action. All of the Greek men paw at and kiss Cressida (Tyler Layton) in a most creepy fashion when she is traded to them as a prisoner of war.

Anti-heroes, if ever there were any.

The war between the Trojans and the Greeks has been going on for seven years, but no one seems to take it very seriously. Instead, the men stand around importantly in their short skirts and pasty thighs, talking about tactics and doing comically insulting impressions of one another. Trojan Hector challenges the Greeks to send forth their best warrior for a duel against him, but it seems more like a cross-town football rivalry than a to-the-death battle — in fact, the Greeks invite the messenger to stay for dinner.

The “best warrior” is Achilles, but he ain’t goin’. Instead, the huge and stupid Ajax (John Pasha, earning many laughs as an oaf who has no idea he’s an oaf), is sent … and he and Hector wind up being friends.

In fact, no one ever gets serious about fighting until it gets personal. Troilus (Cameron McNary) is mad at Diomedes (Jason Manuel Olazabal) for apparently stealing Cressida’s affection; Achilles is mad at Hector for killing his boyfriend.

The war (the scenes of which are expertly staged, by the way) is basically just a big game for the boys to play, and they occasionally get their feelings hurt.

And that seems to be the point, or one of them. It’s a man’s world, and the men keep screwing it up. The only characters to exhibit much sense for any length of time are the women, who are outnumbered 25 to five by the male characters in this play. Ultimately, this prideful, testosterone-laden method of doing things leads to unhappiness for pretty much everyone — but it’s not truly tragic, because everyone sort of deserves it.

As Troilus, McNary suffers from Leonardo DiCapriosis, an ailment in which a pretty-faced young performer is mostly very good but occasionally just sulks poutily while everyone else is busy acting. His scenes with Cressida are good, though, and Layton is marvelous. Her Cressida is beautiful and smart, the kind of gal you’d want to fall in love with. Her unfaithfulness with Diomedes, however, is unmotivated and strange — an anomaly which the play never explains, and which some commentators feels is a weakness in old Bill’s playwriting.

Cressida’s voyeuristic uncle Pandarus (Nick Toren) is amusing at first, but soon becomes overdone, a glaringly half-baked performance amidst many good ones.

The overall tone of this play is one of cynicism, almost satire. Right up until the last couple acts, we feel like it’s nothing but fun — and then things turn awful, and we realize this is no fluffy, light-hearted comedy. It’s dark, to be sure, but it’s the kind of dark that’s satisfyingly unsettling to watch.

A soft, subtle spotlight follows Lear everywhere she goes in BYU’s production of “King Lear.” It is a literal reminder that Barta Heiner, who plays Lear, is outshining everyone around her.

Her co-stars, most of them very good college actors, are still a few decades behind her in terms of experience, and the contrast is stark. (And a few of them, in the smaller roles, are actually rather bad.)

King Lear is supposed to be a man, of course. The printed program observes that Queen Elizabeth I often used male terms to refer to herself, thus justifying the switch. The casting of Heiner probably owes more to BYU’s notorious shortage of male actors than to a fondness for theatrical experimentation, but regardless of what inspired it, the decision turns out to have been a reasonable one. The setting is a wrecked, post-apocalyptic world — gorgeously realized by Doug Ellis’ set and Mary Farahnakian’s costumes — and Heiner superbly fills the role of a struggling monarch in a difficult time. She rages, commands, laughs and weeps with startling power. I hope she will take it as a compliment that in terms of old women descending into grief and madness, she is the best.

Lear’s evil daughters Goneril and Regan are played with poison and acrimony by Eve Speer and Kris Jennings. The good daughter, Cordelia, is Cyndi Ball Selim, and it is comforting to see that despite the onset of the apocalypse, there are still crimping irons to be found.

Among the men, the standout is Cameron Hopkin as Edmund, bastard son of Gloucester. This is among Shakespeare’s most fun villains, and Hopkin drips with conniving duplicity.

As Gloucester, Jon Liddiard is believable and at times gravely sympathetic. It’s unfortunate, though, that the lesson of “Three Sisters,” in which the slender Liddiard was ill-advisedly made to look portly, was not learned. He looked silly then, and he looks silly again now, in another chubby shirt.

Director Rodger Sorensen keeps things moving at a brisk pace, and the show barely feels like the 2 1/2 hours it occupies. But it is often hard to follow — the curse of performing Shakespeare for a modern-speaking audience. Passionate though the actors are, they do not always convey their meanings adequately. Intermission Saturday night was filled with audience members attempting to explain to one another what was going on. Barring any particular dumbness on the part of the audience that night, this can only be seen as a weakness in the production.

More troublesome, though, is the lack of emotional connection. Aside from a nice moment between Lear and Cordelia, and another one between Gloucester and his good son Edgar (Peter Biggs), there is little evidence that any characters even know the others, let alone relate to them. It’s as if a group of strangers showed up and began shouting and killing, all the while trying to convince us they’ve known each other for years. “King Lear” ought to add up to more than this.

Should you go? I cannot recommend the whole thing, but Barta Heiner’s performance is very good.

I’ll tell you the entire plot of “Damn Yankees”; don’t worry, it will only take a second.

Old Joe Boyd (Jeff Beck) would give anything to see his beloved Washington Senators defeat those “damn Yankees,” up to and including selling his soul to the devil (James A. Dale), which he does. The devil makes him into young Joe Hardy (Josh Christensen), a baseball phenom who single-handedly brings the Senators to the penant. Unfortunately, Joe misses his wife Meg (Diane Rosser Nebeker) and must decide between being young and famous forever, or being old and married to his true love.

As is the case with so many of the conveniently plotted musicals of the ’40s and ’50s (“Brigadoon,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” to name two), his big “decision” turns out to be moot, because he winds up having it both ways. Hoorah!

“Damn Yankees,” playing through Feb. 6 at Salt Lake Community College’s Grand Theatre, is by no means a brilliant show. The plot is simple (yet achingly drawn-out, thanks to the prodigious use of looooong dance numbers), the dialogue is less-than-snappy, and the songs are quite good, though no better than any of the other “classic” musicals from that era.

But the Grand Theatre’s production of it, to paraphrase one of the show’s songs, certainly has heart. The performers give it their all, and there are some winning elements that give the show some life and zeal, even as we’re getting bogged down watching the baseball players dance for about the millionth time (the Washington Senators, we are to believe, were about the singin’est, dancin’est team in the major leagues).

Christensen’s performance as the young Joe is quite good, full of squeaky-clean exuberance — and he sings like a pro, too. Dale plays the devil (who goes by the name of Mr. Applegate) with flamboyant energy, vamping his way through the afterlife with more whimsicality than evil.

Some very good dance performances are turned in by Christensen, the devil’s henchperson Lola (Stephanie Frogley), and a Joe Hardy fan named Eddie (Tomy Josef).

And there are some nifty special effects, too. Old Joe’s tranformation into Young Joe is pretty cool, as is Mr. Applegate’s trick of waving from one side of the stage and then appearing on the other side a second later.

All of this points toward a cast and director (Richard Scott) who are obviously enthusiastic about the project. The show seems rather quaint nowadays — you can tell it was written 40 years ago — and some of those musical numbers do slow things down. But overall, the show is harmless, entertaining fun — more fun, I’d say, than sitting through an entire baseball game.

This year’s edition of the venerable “Saturday’s Voyeur” franchise isn’t very funny, but it does have lots of swearing, if that helps you any.

Profanity can be funny sometimes, and it occasionally is here — but not enough to make up for the fact that the cynical parody of Utah society lacks punch as well as punch lines.

Based on everything from the “Little Rascals” films to Greek mythology, “Our Gang and the Zoodoo Voodoo Follies” is about a group of Mormon kids who think their “Zoodoo” club is the swellest club ever, and they want the world to know it. With the help of a shady demigod named Chubsy (Duane Stephens), they plan to host the Olympics — but first they’ll have to wine and dine the Gorgons.

They’re willing to do absolutely ANYTHING, though, to show the world they’re not as weird as everyone thinks they are, to prove that they can “do more than ride around on bicycles wearing cheap suits and nametags” (that’s the best writers/directors Allen Nevins and Nancy Borgenicht can do for a Mormon joke).

The club is led by the ambitious Mike Leavitt (Jonathon Phipps), with folks like DeeDee Corridini (Robin Ballard) and Jan Graham Cracker (Emily Sloan-Pace) in tow. Nosy reporter Peabody Vanocur (Aaron Swenson) eventually cracks the story, thanks to a tip from Chubsy’s slave monkeys Happy (Traci Brewster) and Tammy (Tamara Sleight).

Mitt Romney (Alexis Baigue) is played as a do-gooder Cub Scout, and Baigue’s singing voice is fantastic. Beating him for best performer, though, is Natalie Banks as Sweetcheeks Utah, an innocent little lisp-voiced girl who just wants to help her native land. Her “Davis County” song, in which she sings her life story, is hysterical — the highlight of a show desperately in need of highlights.

Part of the problem is that this year’s “Voyeur” is too narrowly focused. While there are passing references to a few other recent events (Leavitt’s “Envision Utah” thing, the dropping of fecal matter on houses, etc.), the Olympics scandal is center stage the whole time, and there are only so many jokes you can make about that.

Furthermore, the satire is frequently heavy-handed and, what’s worse, unclear on who the targets are. We know that the zoo the kids run represents all of Utah. But who are the monkeys, for example? The point is made that they knew what was going on the whole time, but no one would listen to them. Are they meant to be some downtrodden, under-represented group in Utah that everyone ignores? And is that who supposedly leaked the Olympics scandal to the press in real life? It gets very muddy, trying to combine all these symbols and prototypes into one parody.

There are funny moments in the show, but very few that are really clever or witty. And while everything seems to be building up to a point, it’s uncertain what that point is. What’s the message: that the SLOC shouldn’t have done what it did? Duh. Satire should skewer its targets in a pointed, humorous way; “Saturday’s Voyeur” just stabs them randomly without ever amounting to anything.

“Star Wars” parodies are timely these days, and Murray’s Desert Star Playhouse, that workhorse of good-natured ribbing, has slapped together a fluffy piece as amusing as any of them.

“Space Wars 1999: May the New Farce be with You” reuses a title from a DSP show of 1997, although the similarities end there. The older show was a parody of all science-fiction/space stories, with focus on a pre-scandal Salt Lake Olympics. The new one is strictly a parody of the first “Star Wars” film, though a few references to the new movie pop up here and there, too.

Luke Warmwater (Ed Farnsworth) is a sand farmer with a pet robot named Y2K2. Princess Ginger Spice Oregano (Trisha Ann Braunberger) — so named just because the Desert Star likes to throw in Spice Girl jokes whenever it can (and hey, who doesn’t?) — hides a computer disk in Y2K2 while fleeing the evil Empress (Chelsi Stahr), Garth Vulgar (Matthew Scott Nielsen) and their henchperson Billie Gates (Julie Ann Christensen).

This gets Luke wrapped up in the whole thing, and he solicits help from Odie Don Quixote (Scott Holman; played by Jack Drayton the night of this review), an old Jedi who carries a Yoda-esque puppet around with him everywhere. They hire Yon Soso (Steven Fehr) and his hairy pal Chewaua (Ricky Jason) to help them rescue the princess, there are light saber battles, and lots of people wind up falling in love.

This is a lightweight, harmless parody. There are only a few great jokes, though the Desert Star’s ever-popular chase scene format is intact, and the performances are good all the way around. Chewaua (pronounced “Chihuahua”) has a great musical solo, and there is plenty of good visual humor.

Ultimately, making fun of “Star Wars” is like hitting the broad side of a barn. This show hits the target, but not with as much “force” (pardon me) as we’re used to seeing at Desert Star.

What is impressive is the number of jokes stolen from other sources. There’s a line and even a song lifted from “The Simpsons,” and the “Star Wars Cantina” song takes most of its lyrics from a “Copacabana” parody that’s been circulating on the Internet the last several months. The Desert Star is quite capable of creating its own humor without stealing from others, and in a show that turns out to fairly average anyway, the theft here almost seems desperate.

Fans of the Desert Star (of which I am one) will not be too disappointed in the show, though it’s not nearly as memorable as we like them to be. First-timers should be reminded that it’s usually a little funnier, a little sillier and a little more inventive than this.

Shows should not be put in settings other than the ones for which they were written simply for the sake of being unusual. Fortunately, in Sundance Theatre’s techno production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” just enough sweetness remains to make the effort seem sincere, rather than just an example of random modernizing.

Director Damien Gray has set this musical telling of the classic fairy tale in a ’90s “rave” dance club environment. Much of the music has gone techno, and so has the dancing. A lot of the dialogue has been updated, too — a good idea, for surely if Richard Rodgers ever made a mistake, it was in omitting the word “dude” from his scripts.

(I’m being ironic. Please, put the phone down.)

At first, the changes make the show seem like a parody of “Cinderella,” not just a different style of presenting it. Characters are dressed in the outlandish get-ups of the kids these days, and a loud hip-hop fellow shouts with much aplomb that “the prince is having a ball!” The first number so overdoes the modernization, in fact, that one resents being pummeled with it. Being “experimental” (a theater term for “weird”) doesn’t automatically mean you’re being artistic!

Fortunately, the show gets a lot of the avant-garde out of its system quickly, and it settles into a nice, stylized groove. Monica Fawson’s short-haired Cinderella sings “In My Own Little Corner” beautifully, accompanied only by two pianists (Ryan Murphy and Dwight Bigler). Here the show tells us that it knows when it’s appropriate to mess around and when it’s not.

Carlos L. Encinias, astride a gallant skateboard and bedecked in silver, proves an able singer and dancer. His acting style, as well as that of Fawson, is one of non-acting. Their scene together at the ball, as they leave the crowd and go off on their own to talk and fall in love, is almost surreal. There is little character depth in the script to begin with, and even less in this production (Cinderella’s mistreatment at the hands of her stepmother and stepsisters is more implied than shown). Yet somehow, the Prince and Cinderella’s falling in love is captivating. It doesn’t seem stagey or dramatic or theatrical; it seems realistic and natural. All the glitter and pageantry of the rest of the show is noticeably absent as the two young lovers fall for each other in this very sweet, very romantic scene.

Later, a hip-hop shoe-fitting scene features some great dancing from the supporting cast, and some fine choreography from Sally Silvers. A jazzy number between the prince and his friend (Jesse Walker) is also entertaining. This is an unusual show, but most of its oddness is justified. Fans of the original should not be too offended by the changes, for they seem to have been made lovingly.

There are three things the local ComedySportz team has going for it: energy, ethusiasm and raw talent.

Comedy improvisation is not easy. It’s one thing for an actor to spontaneously come up with dialogue, character choices and plot conflicts; add to that the requirement that oh, yeah, it has to be FUNNY, too, and it becomes a whole different ball game. Often the focus becomes being funny, and the other elements — believable characters, a scene that actually goes somewhere — get left behind.

The concept of ComedySportz is simple: Two teams of improvisational actors (there’s an actress on the team, too, but it was all guys both nights I saw it) compete against each other to see who can do the funniest improvs. Points are awarded, based mostly on the audience voting, although the referee (also a cast member) can arbitrarily assign points as well.

The point system is a gimmick; no one really cares who wins, and the performers switch teams from one show to the next anyway. In fact, the whole show is gimmick-intensive. The “sports” thing permeates it, even down to beginning with a sped-up, disrespectful version of the National Anthem.

The point where the gimmick becomes a problem is in the fact that most of the games rely more on the premise than on the material. For example, “Blind Line” has the referee ask the audience for sentences, usually movie quotes, to be written on slips of paper. Then the cast members start a scene, occasionally picking up one of the slips of paper at random and having that be the next line. Obviously, the less appropriate the line is for the situation, the better; that’s why it’s funny.

But there’s the problem: THAT’S why it’s funny. It’s not funny because the cast members are doing anything clever with the scene, or because their characters are amusing; it’s funny because their dialogue is filled with non-sequiturs — which the audience provided.

Both times I saw this improv done — and this is typical of the scene-based improvs ComedySportz does — nothing really happened in the scene. It was just a few actors hopping around madly, interrupting each other, everyone trying to move the scene in a different direction, with little give-and-take among them.

Nearly everyone is trying so hard to be the funniest one up there — ironic, considering they’re supposed to be working as teams — that it’s tiring just to watch them. The high energy is fantastic, and it keeps the audience enthused; unfortunately, that high energy is often used in place of actual comedy.

Another problem is the group’s tendency to do “easy” jokes, particularly in the area of men falling in love. (Look! It’s two guys, and they’re FALLING IN LOVE! Isn’t that funny?!) The audience suggests doing a scene in “romance movie” style, and rather than the all-male cast doing something creative like talking about a woman who is not present, or having her be invisible, they go ahead and dress one of their own like a woman and have the others fight over her. Not only is it mildly creepy to see this done over and over again, but comedically speaking, it’s the easy way out. They’re cheap laughs, and the positive reaction from the audience only encourages them.

The group’s talents lie mostly in verbal comedy, not physical, probably because when you’re just speaking, there’s no way to overdo it, no way to try too hard. All six cast members were marvelous in a pun-filled joke-fest called “185,” with the jokes coming fast and furious, many of them extremely clever — and about the only time in the show where the audience really says, “Wow, how’d they think of them so FAST?”

Another game has the cast doing a one-minute scene in a straight-forward manner. Then, they have to replay the same scene, only with different accents, or singing it in a particular musical genre. This, too, showed talent, not just with the good accents they did, but with the clever ways they turned the scene around. (Originally, it was a hot dog vendor; when the audience suggested he do it with an Australian accent, he started selling “fried croc” instead.)

The team has a few stand-outs. Damian Dayton is the quickest, and often the only person in a scene to make anything happen. Rubber-faced Maclain Nelson is a fan favorite, and Daryn Tufts’ prior experience with the Garrens Comedy Troupe shines through.

ComedySportz IS funny. Uneven, inconsistent and occasionally amateurish, yes. But funny nonetheless. And with more practice, they’ll only get funnier. The talent is there; they just need more time.

Tuacahn’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is the largest production of “Joseph” you’ll ever see — but it’s SO big, it’s in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

In some ways, the large outdoor stage helps the show. A few jokes (including a comically large Pez dispenser) wouldn’t be physically possible elsewhere, and the Pharaoh’s house is genuinely impressive in its size and structure.

There’s also plenty of room for dancing, which is perhaps this production’s strongest asset. As choreographed by Derryl Yeager (who also directed), the large cast of dancers is talented and agile. Sometimes the dancing is very funny; sometimes, it’s just plain neat; it’s always well-performed.

In many ways, however, the large stage hurts the show. There is often too much going on at once, resulting in an audience that isn’t sure where it’s supposed to be looking — a fatal mistake for a comedy. For example, you’re liable to miss Rovin Jay’s great singing in “Benjamin Calypso” because you’re watching the cliff-divers in the background.

The show seems so intent on being the biggest, most dazzling production of “Joseph” you’ve ever seen that it forgets to just be GOOD. It’s not a show anymore so much as it is a pageant: It assumes you already know the story, the characters and the songs, and it tweaks nearly all of them.

There’s an extra rap number by three of the brothers, a “Stomp”-like percussion number, several extra children’s choir songs, live camels, a classic car — the list goes on. Some of these are fun, but some just make the show longer.

This production is a good half-hour longer than most “Josephs,” and the extra material is hit or miss. Pharaoh’s Elvis-impersonator scene is tedious, unfunny and seems as though it will never end, while the extended “Those Canaan Days” number, sung with magnificent Frenchness by Bill Surber and backed up by the brothers’ mock-ballet dancing, is a highlight of the show.

Nathan Balser is a great Joseph, with a fantastic tenor voice. Keith Weirich also stands out in his double role as a grief-stricken, dirt-flinging Jacob, and as a ’20s-style gangster Potiphar. The singing and dancing is top-notch throughout the cast.

It is rare in theater for bigger to really be better; the responsible parties here should have known that.

Strong, likable performances, stunning choreography and beautiful singing make Tuacahn’s production of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” a winner. The show benefits tremendously from the large outdoor stage of Tuacahn. A big stage just means more room for dancing — and dancing is what makes or breaks any production of “Seven Brides.”

The barn-raising scene, in which the eponymous brothers basically win the hearts of the women by dancing better than their previous suitors (it sort of makes sense in the show) is astoundingly well-choreographed by Melinda Larson. Men roll on barrels and jump over axes, and rare is the moment that someone is not airborne for one reason or another. It’s an incredible, dynamic scene.

Dianna Lynne Errico stands out as Millie, the headstrong gal who is tricked into marrying a mountain man just so she can cook and clean for him and his piggish brothers — and then accidentally falls in love with the guy after all. Errico has a gorgeous, clear voice that would melt butter, if the St. George heat didn’t melt everything already. The audience is behind her immediately, and her charisma and commanding stage presence could carry the show if it had to.

But it doesn’t have to, because she’s backed up by a cast thick with talent. Keith Weirich is strong as Adam, Millie’s husband. His voice is powerful, and there is substance and sympathy behind his oafish demeanor. We find his views on women to be unbelievably out-dated and stupid, but we don’t hate him — we pity him, and we’re glad when he sees the light at the end.

In other productions, this show often comes across as hopelessly sexist, particularly when Adam’s brothers kidnap the women they want and the hostages fall in love with their captors. But here, director Tim Threlfall has pulled such likable performances from his cast that this development doesn’t seem too outrageous. The brothers are so endearing in their earnest attempts to act like gentlemen that we can overlook the kidnappings as well-intentioned but wrong, rather than felonious and imbecilic.

Bill Surber, Nathan Balser, Matthew Herrick, James Mack and Jake Fry play the six brothers with gusto; the “Goin’ Courtin'” scene, when Millie teaches them how to behave around ladies, is abundantly charming. In that scene and others, the diminutive Fry, as youngest brother Gideon, uses a fine singing voice and soft-spoken demeanor to embody what the rest of the brothers one day hope to be: sensitive gentlemen who know how to treat a lady.

The SCERA Shell Outdoor Theatre is a fine venue for a slice of Americana like “State Fair,” playing there through Monday.

For if there is anything more American than the show itself — Rodgers and Hammerstein’s movie-turned-into-a-play about the 1946 Iowa State Fair — it’s bringing the family out for a picnic in the park, followed by a pleasant stage performance.

Our heroes are the Frakes, a farming family whose every summer revolves around the fair. Father Abel (K.C. Shaw) is entering his prize hog, while his wife, Melissa (Linda Williams-Van Orman), has her famous pickles and mincemeat. Their kids, Wayne (Seth Nelson Child) and Margy (Sofia Lee), each have beaus, but both find new loves at the fair (you can imagine that a state fair would be a breeding ground for young romance). Wayne meets a pretty singer named Emily (Erika Frischknecht), while Margy meets a bland journalist named Pat (Bryan Harper).

There is romance, betrayal, suspense and high drama as things unfold. Director Jerry Elison admits in the program notes that the show is “corny,” and while acknowledging a show’s shortcomings doesn’t necessarily make them OK, the corniness happens to work for this show. Perhaps you think you couldn’t possibly care less about what happens to a bunch of farmers at the state fair, but somehow, in the course of the show, you find that you actually do care about these folks.

There are some good dance numbers, choreographed by Mary Linda Thomas, and danced by a large, energetic cast. Mark Pulham gets the biggest laughs of the show as a food judge who gets drunk off Mrs. Frake’s brandy-laced mincemeat.

Among the major characters, Frischknecht gives a very polished performance as Emily, supported by her enthusiastic co-stars. Shaw and Williams-Van Orman are the foundation, though, as Mr. and Mrs. Frake — Mr. and Mrs. America, really. They have a cute charm that is unmistakable, particularly in their songs together (“When I Go out Walking with My Baby” and “Boys and Girls Like You and Me”).

It would impossible to dislike this show. This being community theater, some performances are uneven, and some are downright bad. But there’s a zeal that is plain to see, and the show itself is so unashamedly joyful and old-fashioned, one can’t help but smile at it.

Your average theater-goer is sure to find Springville Playhouse’s production of “Saving Grace” to be cute and funny. It ain’t exactly Broadway, but so what? Any play that dares to show a lead character wearing nothing but glow-in-the-dark “Star Wars” boxers must have something going for it.

This fast-moving, farcical excursion takes place in the New York apartment of Grace Larkin (Georgiana Deming), an extremely nervous young insurance secretary whose creepy boss Walter Chepple (Karl Young) has invited himself over for a drink. A telephone repairman named Alex (Jon Liddiard) shows up, but Grace thinks he’s a burglar. For vague reasons to be discussed later, Alex lets her go on thinking that. Then, for other vague reasons, the two pretend to be married when Grace’s sister Harriet (Kathy Young) arrives, along with her fiance, Gregor Vanitzky (John Gholdston, who, with his wife, Sharon, also directed the show). Is Gregor a Russian evangelist? Well, sure! Why not! Oh, and everybody gets drunk.

The show is heavy on plot and light on characterization; the plot, however, is extraordinarily (and quite unashamedly) goofy, full of head-scratchingly illogical developments and unmotivated action. When Alex gets wet, Grace’s solution is NOT to throw the supposed burglar out, or to call the police — but, rather, to put his clothes in the oven to dry. Then, when her sister shows up and wonders why a near-naked man is in the house and Grace is wearing a hula skirt (a creepy gift from the creepy Chepple), she decides the only logical thing to do is to tell her that she and Alex are married. “His clothes were wet” never seems to enter her mind as an appropriate explanation; neither does it ever occur to Alex to say, “I work for the phone company.”

According to the show’s press materials, the reason Alex lets Grace think he’s a burglar is that he’s concerned (and correctly) about Chepple’s intentions toward her, and he wants to protect her. Not only does this not come through in the performance, but even if it did, it still wouldn’t make much sense. Why would she be more inclined to let him stay (and thus protect her) if he’s a burglar than if he’s a telephone repairman? Only the play knows for sure, and the play ain’t tellin’!

Like most farces, “Saving Grace” is populated entirely by stupid people who lie all the time. Their ineptitude at creating believable fibs is rivaled only by their capacity to believe everyone else’s false-sounding whoppers. The lies get funnier and funnier, but even funnier is the fact that everyone keeps BELIEVING them.

The actors are energetic and committed to their characters. Deming is adorable and sympathetic as Grace, though she overdoes the nervousness, hardly letting up for a second, even when she’s drunk. And speaking of that, Young’s Harriet is one of the funniest drunks you’ll ever see, stealing the scene with some truly excellent physical comedy. But Liddiard is the best overall, bringing some realism and life to Alex and getting quite a few honest, non-shtick laughs throughout the show.

For a night of simple, uncomplicated laughs, “Saving Grace” is a winner. (Bad joke coming.) Its flaws are more than made up for by its saving graces. (Bad joke concluded.)

Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” that enduring, extremely British operetta full of fast rhymes and delightful wordplay, is given more than adequate treatment by the Utah Lyric Opera Society at Springville’s Villa Playhouse Theatre.

One of the few shows to survive more than a century with losing its charm, “Pirates” is the story of a fellow named Frederic (Gregory Oaks) who has grown up on a ship full of the most genteel, orphan-respecting pirates you could hope for. Upon his 21st birthday, his apprenticeship is done and he heads ashore. He takes his nanny, Ruth (Nannette Wiggins; double-cast with Linda Jacobs), along with him, but is angry when he discovers that, contrary to what she had told him, she’s not very pretty (he’s never seen another woman, you see):

FREDERIC: You told me you were fair as gold!
RUTH: And, master, am I not so?
FREDERIC: And now I see you’re plain and old.
RUTH: I’m sure I’m not a jot so.
FREDERIC: Upon my innocence you play.
RUTH: I’m not the one to plot so.
FREDERIC: Your face is lined, your hair is grey.
RUTH: It gradually got so.

So instead he falls for Mabel (Margo Watson; double-cast with Lisa Mortenson), one of a dozen or so daughters of Major-General Stanley (Benny B. Ashby; double-cast with Howard Ruff). Simultaneously, the pirates fall for the rest of Stanley’s daughters. To prevent them from stealing his girls, Stanley tells the pirates he’s an orphan, which plays upon their sympathies. But when they learn of his lie, hoo, boy, that’s when things start gettin’ zany!

Fantastic singing voices are the rule in this production, with nearly every principal character exceeding all expectations. A few stand out as especially fantastic, though, including Michelle Caswell as one of Stanley’s daughters, Edith, and Gregory Oaks as Frederic.

William S. Gilbert’s lyrics are ingeniously crafted, full of magnificent, inventive rhymes and sparkling wit, as in the exchange previously quoted. The problem, however, is that when the tempo gets fast, the cast begins to trip over the lyrics, hurrying toward the clever rhymes and not enunciating the words in between. This is particularly true in “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” whose very premise is that the puffed-up fellow can sing fast and rhyme well (“lot o’ news” and “hypotenuse,” for example) — but in this production, half the time you can’t understand him. The police sergeant’s song suffers similarly from poor diction.

Aside from that, and some lame running gags (I have never seen so many characters’ toes stomped on accidentally for the sake of humor), and a superfluous unscripted cameo by the show’s producer Ewan Harbrecht Mitton as Queen Victoria — aside from all that, the show is a surprisingly jolly, highly enjoyable treat.

BYU’s production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” a pleasant, amusing story of two newlyweds’ adjustment to each other, is full of energy, but has trouble getting itself off the ground and up to any great heights of hilarity.

Corie (Julina Newsome Hall) and Paul (Dallyn Vail Bayles) have returned from their honeymoon and moved into a tiny fifth-floor Manhattan apartment. (There’s no elevator, either, resulting in approximately 12,000 jokes involving people being really tired after climbing the stairs — what, is somebody making these people RUN? Or was everyone just really out of shape in the ’60s?)

Corie is a carefree, spontaneous, pixie-like gal with unending spunk and optimism. Paul, as you might suppose, is her polar opposite. He is grounded in reality and maturity, and he soon finds his wife’s boundless zeal to be tiresome.

This comes to a head when Corie sets up a blind date between her dour mother (Amberly M. Daines) and their zesty, vaguely European neighbor Victor Velasco (Jason E. Hall). The four of them go out for a night on the town that leaves Corie and Victor energized, and Corie’s mom and Paul thoroughly exhausted.

The is the cause of The Big Fight: Paul and Corie’s big blow-up that, two-thirds of the way through the play, is the first time things really get interesting. Paul gets the most laughs in the play anyway, thanks to Bayles’ high-tension, sardonic performance, and the fight scene is no exception. Hall holds her own as Corie, giving the character as much life as you could hope for.

Unfortunately, director Corey Ewan has made it so that rather than Corie and Paul both being in the wrong — he should lighten up, she should grow up — in this production Paul seems 100 percent right, and Corie just seems like an immature brat. There’s no reason for compromise; Paul is OK how he is, and it’s Corie who needs to change. The fight scene just underscores this, as Paul is driven to insanity by his wife’s astoundingly babyish behavior.

All of which makes Paul’s third-act attempts at loosening up seem superfluous, and even tedious. The play seems to overstay its welcome: If the fight scene is the climax, then the resolution is waaaaay too long.

There are some believability problems with the show, too. As much as I loved Bayles’ very solid performance as Paul, and as enjoyable as Hall is as Corie, I never really believed they were mad at each other. Similarly, Amberly M. Daines’ portrayal of Corie’s mother is sweet, but not for a second does Daines seem convincing as a middle-aged woman. And Jason Hall’s Victor Velasco seems hollow, too — he and Corie’s mom seem like characters on the stage with no people inside them.

This means there are some slow moments in the show. But overall, Bayles carries things along smoothly, with ample help from Hall, and the show is a fluffy, amusing diversion that will no doubt inspire some nostalgia in many married couples.

In its ongoing effort to bring us obscure comedies of the 1940s and earlier, the Hale Center Theater in Orem presents “Lo and Behold,” a harmless, unusual little piece about a guy who tries unsuccessfully to haunt his own house.

Milo Alcott (Fred Derbyshire) is a crotchety, reclusive author on a strict diet. Finally tired of not being able to enjoy himself, he eats a sumptuous meal that promptly kills him. The end.

Just kidding. He does die, but there’s more: He told his doctor, Robert (Mitch Hall), that when he died, he wanted his house to remain unoccupied. Why? Because HE wants to live in it, as a ghost, without interruption. Heaven and its social life aren’t for him; “Why should I be condemned to spend an eternity mixing with people I’ve successfully avoided all my life?” he says as grumpily and cynically as he says everything else.

So the ghost Milo returns to his house, where, to his great consternation, there are three other spirits already living. These are a few of the strangest characters you’ll see in a play anytime soon. There’s a boy-crazy Indian girl named Minnie (Thora Sutton), a ditzy Southern belle named Honey (Lynette Webb) (you can tell she’s Southern ’cause she calls everyone “Sugar”), and a flamboyant, mincing composer named Kenneth (C. Morgan Hanners).

As Milo fusses and fumes about his loss of privacy, his still-living former maid Daisy (Amanda Webb), who now is pretending to be his long-lost daughter, starts living in the house, simultaneously wooing Dr. Robert. She’s got a secret life, though, with Jack (Jake Suazo), an oily, meat-faced gambler who tries to blackmail everybody, as gamblers are wont to do.

The best scene in the show is when Daisy and Robert sit on the couch, each awkwardly trying to put the moves on the other. Honey, who knows all about goin’ a-courtin’, narrates for the libidinous but apparently inexperienced Minnie exactly what each of the two are thinking (the living people aren’t aware of the spirits surrounding them, of course). Fey composer Kenneth (who is amusingly campy throughout) is as titillated as Honey. Mysogynist Milo tries to talk some “sense” into Robert, but Robert can’t hear what dead people say, so it is to no avail. The scene is hilarious, with all the characters working together to play the comedic situation to its fullest potential.

Aside from that, the show is fitfully amusing, never gut-bustingly funny. It’s never dull, either, though; it’s just a quiet, simple comedy. The ending is abrupt, and none of the characters seem to have really learned anything — indeed, the three stereotyped spirits, for as quirky as they are, don’t add up to much, personality-wise — but hey, it’s fun.

At a recent performance, nearly every performer seemed unsure of his or her lines many times throughout the show. This often detracted from what could have been some good jokes; one can assume that with more performances under their belts, they’ll be more comfortable with the script.

If you already like the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel,” I’m not going to try to change your mind. Perhaps it pleasantly reminds you of a bygone era of musical theater when it was OK to sing a song whose only purpose is to express that “that was a very nice clambake.”

But if you’ve never seen it, let me warn you: It’s long and dull, it’s hopelessly sexist, its plot ranges from the convulated to the downright strange, and its main character is unlikable. Oh, and it’s being performed at the Salt Lake Community College Grand Theatre through June 12.

Billy Bigelow (Dan Larrinaga) is a carousel operator in 1873. He’s a shiftless, womanizing lout who is inexplicably popular with the ladies, in particular a sweet gal named Julie Jordan (Stephanie Frogley). They get married behind everyone’s back, including the audience’s, sometime between Scene 1 and Scene 2, and we learn that Billy, unable to either control his temper or tell Julie he loves her, tends to hit her instead. Julie tells her friend Carrie (Ashley Jarrett) that this is nothing to worry about.

When Julie announces she’s pregnant, the suddenly good-intentioned but still morally dim-witted Billy decides he’ll do anything to provide financial stability for his unborn child — including robbing a guy with the help of his bad-influence sailor friend Jigger (Jeffrey Owen).

Unfortunately, ham-fisted Billy gets himself killed during the robbery when he accidentally falls on his own knife. Carrie, knee-deep in subservience to her own thick-voiced husband Enoch (Tyler T. Oliphant), offers Julie the comforting words, “You’re better off without him.”

Suddenly it’s 15 years later (in the play; in real life, it only seems that long). The Bigelows’ daughter Louise (Abby Kartchner), now all of 14, is about to graduate from high school. She’s been tormented all her life due to her father being dead and a thief. This is conveyed in a well-staged (but looooong) ballet number in which she dances with several guys who wind up turning on her. Billy is told he can come back to earth long enough to do a good deed — apparently, this one good deed will undo all the bad stuff he did while he was alive. So he visits Louise, gets frustrated and slaps her hand, then whispers to his wife and daughter that he loves them. They forgive his life of abuse and irresponsibility, and all is well; Louise remarks that the violent smack didn’t even hurt, and it is implied that this is because there was so much love behind it. The end.

If this plot doesn’t make much sense to you, join the club. Seldom have I seen such weirdness dispensed from one stage. I could overlook all the sexism, like Carrie’s sickening display in begging Enoch’s forgiveness (and him stubbornly refusing to grant it) after she is seen speaking to Jigger. I could overlook the numerous long dance numbers that serve no purpose other than to show that some of the actors can dance.

What I cannot overlook is a plot that takes so long to get going — at intermission, we’ve only reached Point 1 of a 10-point plotline — and then ultimately adds up to so little. I cannot overlook a man who abuses his wife and even reaches back from beyond the grave to slap his daughter, being foisted upon us as our “hero.” Yes, we are given one-sentence explanations of how he, too, was ridiculed as a child, and how he’s too macho to express his love verbally — but does that make up for it all? Apparently so. For Julie, just hearing him whisper from the Other Side that he loves her makes everything OK. Do you suppose redemption would have been so easy if it had been the wife asking for it from her husband? After seeing Carrie’s groveling to Enoch after committing a very non-heinous crime, I doubt it.

The production at SLCC does what it can. The singing is beautiful all the way through, coming from the pipes of some fantastic vocalists, and the acting is generally above-average. Jayne Luke’s choreography is well-done, too, though frequently superfluous. This is a very good production of a very bad show — no amount of directorial or acting talent could save “Carousel” from being the creaky, ill-conceived old thing that it is. Many so-called “classics” deserve that label; this one does not.

The trials and tribulations of LDS single adults are addressed with humor and compassion in “The Way We’re Wired,” running through May 29 at BYU’s Margetts Theatre.

The play is an ensemble piece, following the intertwining stories of seven singles in Indiana. A new guy, Andy (Jared Stull), a 41-year-old veterinarian, moves in and disrupts things when he starts dating the women in the group. He flirts with the self-described “skanky” Darlene (stereotypically written but three-dimensionally played by the wonderful Susan Kimberly Davis), then winds up very close with over-achiever April (Christina Davis). Callie (Emily Hutchison Geddes, perfect in this mousy, heart-wrenching role), who has recently escaped from an abusive marriage, doesn’t want to date, and the icy Amazonian Sandra (Phoebe Candland, also right-on as a businesswoman who convinces herself she doesn’t need love) turns him down repeatedly.

Stull’s likable, albeit somewhat bland, performance prevents Andy from coming across as a “player”: He’s just systematically seeking a viable candidate for marriage. We like the guy, even if we aren’t shown as much depth in him as we are the others.

And then there’s Katie (Susan Keller). The divorced leader of the singles’ group, she is also the leader of this play. She is sarcastic, intelligent and mature, and Keller is more convincing as a 30-something-year-old than anyone else in the cast. Katie is guiding her teen-age daughter Mindy (Alexa Scharman) through the pitfalls of romance with Darlene’s son Kyle (Kristopher Stout), while trying to make sense of her own life. She maintains that “the Andys of this world don’t fall for the Katies,” but she reluctantly goes out with him anyway (“Here I am laughing, and I don’t even like you,” she says after one of his jokes).

That date is pivotal, as it is where Andy explains his unorthodox views on romance. We’re “wired” much the same as animals, he says, and “love” is just a natural response to stimulus. Endorphins fire in our bloodstream, and we decide we’re “in love.”

In another key scene, the group sits around a campfire, taking turns inadvertently offending each other. (“Single adults without jobs are losers,” “Hey, I’m a single adult without a job!,” etc.) Here we see that for whatever else they are, all the characters are one thing: vulnerable. They are insecure about their lives and their single status. Some, like the frail and delicate Callie, are obvious about it; others, like Terrell the bowler (saved from a one-note “comic relief” characterization by Jeremy Selim), keep it hidden.

The play swings lamely at making the point that LDS singles shouldn’t be treated as outcasts, but ultimately never really addresses the issue. The only characters we see or hear about are the singles and their kids; for all we know, that’s all the social interaction any of them have. Why belabor the point that “singles are people, too,” when we haven’t been shown that anyone has treated them otherwise? If you want to deal with marriage-status prejudice, fine — but you’ll have to SHOW us that stigma, not just mention it in passing.

The play has plenty else to offer anyway. It’s a very funny comedy with some poignant moments, and each member of the ensemble plays his or her part with realism and dignity. The script, as it stands, may not have a long shelf-life — there are jokes about Viagra, Monica Lewinsky and Steve Young (alas, all of these are NOT mentioned in the same joke) — but its basic structure is well-crafted and thought-provoking. It’s a witty, smart, enjoyable production.

Tradition dictates that any review of “Fiddler on the Roof” begin with the word “tradition.” So here goes.

Tradition.

The Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley’s production of the sentimental Broadway classic is a strong one, vividly portraying the religious life of early-20th century Russian Jews in a way that is honest and real. Their customs are not made to seem quaint or out-dated, even though they are far removed from life in 1999; rather, one gains a profound respect for their way of life. This, no doubt, was the musical’s authors’ intention, and it’s rewarding to see it fulfilled.

The story, for those unfamiliar with it, tells of Tevye (Richard G. Wilkins, also the director), a hard-working dairyman with a wife and five daughters. Most of the show deals with the three oldest daughters — Tzeitel (Beth Arnold), Hodel (Claire Wilkins) and Chava (Bonnie Beus) — and their attempts to marry the men they love, rather than the men who have been chosen for them.

This is the source of much personal strife for Tevye and his wife, Golde (Melany Wilkins, also musical director). Tradition dictates that the father chooses whom his daughters will marry — and now he’s supposed to let THEM choose?

Richard Wilkins is marvelous, carrying the show on Tevye’s weary-but-undaunted shoulders. His interplay with Melany Wilkins as Golde would be hard to fake; the two are married in real life, and they have a chemistry that can only come from experience. The emotion of the show comes through vividly through their performances.

“Fiddler on the Roof” has the potential to get bogged down in all the musical numbers and sentimental dialogue, but this production avoids those pitfalls with solid acting across the board and strong energy from everyone involved. Even the music, though pre-recorded, sounds crisp and vibrant. The wedding scene is just one of several sequences that are thoroughly engrossing, almost cathartic.

A few stand-out performances are worth noting. Justin Utley as Fyedka, the Russian gentile whom Chava falls for, has one of the best singing voices in the cast. Linda Garay-Bramwell’s matchmaker Yente is a comic treat, right up to the end. And Beth Arnold, Claire Wilkins and Bonnie Beus do everything they can with Tevye’s daughters — the roles aren’t written with much depth, but the actresses play them distinctly and professionally.

Marilyn May Montgomery’s choreography adds a lot, particularly in the big numbers. How she gets that huge cast to maneuver around such a small stage is a mystery, but she does it, and the dancers keep things lively throughout.

A classic example of good intentions marred by a lack of acting resources, Off Broadway Theatre’s production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” is an uneven, but ultimately well-executed and good-hearted, musical farce.

It’s ancient Rome, and scheming slave Pseudolus (Eric Jensen) wants his freedom and will do anything to get it. His master, naive teen-ager Hero (Shawn Zumbrunnen), wants the beautiful woman he’s seen next door at the local brides-for-sale shop and will do anything to get her. He promises Pseudolus his freedom if he can get the woman for her.

Pseudolus, working behind the back of his more conscientious fellow slave Hysterium (Robert Bogue), lies and connives the courtesan, Philia (Michelle Egli), from the owner of the harem, one Marcus Lycus (Bob Bedore). This is a problem only when the girl’s rightful owner, greasy warrior Miles Gloriosus (Paul W. Draper), shows up.

Things get downright complicated from there, with Hero’s parents, lecherous Senex (Zac Zumbrunnen) and icy Domina (Kathleen Richardson) getting involved and the whole thing falling into a funny, farcical mess. There are mistaken identities, well-timed entrances and exits, and, that old staple, men dressed as women.

Jensen contributes much to the show. His Pseudolus is reminiscent of Bugs Bunny: fast-talking (sometimes too fast) and always in control of the bad guys, staying one step ahead of the frantic chaos pursuing him. Jensen is a fine comic actor, managing to milk a scene for its laughs without getting tiresome and without over-acting.

That skill of not over-acting is an important one, especially in a farce, where the tendency is to smack the audience in the face with your wackiness. Unfortunately, it is not a skill shared by the entire cast. Some of the supporting players — particularly one of Lycus’s eunuchs, whose name is not given in the program — practically scream “LOOK HOW FUNNY I AM!” with their mugging and prancing. Others occasionally fall into the same trap.

Richardson, while playing a minor role, is a stand-out as Domina, particularly in her “Dirty Old Man” number. Bogue’s Hysterium is a stressed-out basket case, and a very funny one. He generally improves any scene he’s in.

Shawn Zumbrunnen is appropriately handsome and earnest as the goofy-eyed Hero, and Egli is indeed “Lovely,” as the song says, as Philia.

The theater lacks a sound system; if you go, get seats as close to the front as possible.

The supporting cast is uneven, with some good moments here and there, and some embarrassing ones elsewhere. Sometimes the show seems only slightly above high-school theater level; other times, you see some sharp, professional comedy.

The latest pop cultural icon to get the Desert Star Playhouse’s loopy, satiric treatment is James Bond. The title, which you probably could have come up with yourself, is “James Blonde: Agent 7-Eleven,” and the show, which you also probably could have come up with yourself, is the Desert Star’s usual mix of obvious jokes and genuinely clever parody.

The plot is gleefully irrelevant, but we’ll summarize it anyway. Evil Dr. Maximus (yes, his first name is Gluttius, and yes, there are plenty of butt jokes), played by the fey Kenneth Wayne, has successfully killed each of the last few secret agents — Nos. 708, 709 and 710. Which brings us to the new guy, James Blonde (Ed Farnsworth), agent 711. (“How convenient,” remarks one character. When the audience groans, Maximus says, “Get used to it, they’re everywhere.” Indeed.)

With the help of his broad Chinese stereotype assistant Koto (Chad Wainwright), his henchperson Venus (Gayle Castleton), and his robot Anne Droid (Portia Early), Maximus wants to kill James Blonde. He probably wants to take over the world, too, I guess; I don’t really remember (and I just saw it two hours ago). Like I said, the plot is irrelevant.

Adding to the fun is Emma Singleton (Julie Ann Christensen), who trains Blonde and also falls in love with him; and their boss, the frequently-killed Mr. Kenney (director Scott Holman).

Christensen and Farnsworth as Emma and Blonde actually have a chemistry together, and they’re one of the most fun couples I’ve seen at the Desert Star. Farnsworth is handsome and goofy, imitating Austin Powers just a little too much, but generally an outstanding, solid actor for the lead role.

Holman is perhaps the most enjoyable to watch in DSP’s stable of actors. In all his roles, he seems to realize the intentional lameness of the script, and yet simultaneously fully commit himself to it. His “James Blonde” role is no exception. In a recent performance, he was supposed to rescue Blonde from hanging off a cliff. However, Blonde was clearly just lying on the floor, vaguely hanging on to a fake rock, and it didn’t look like he was even PRETENDING to hang off a cliff. Holman said, “I’ve got to save James,” and then, realizing that no matter how much the audience suspended its disbelief, there was no way it looked like James was in any danger, he ad-libbed, “…from this Floor of Death.” Perfect. Holman can be part of the absurdity as much as the next actor, but he can also step back and say, “Look, folks, I know it’s dumb, too. Let’s all enjoy it together.”

Early has a good moment as her robot character sings “Nobody Does it Better” in a monotone; however, the songs in general in this show are lacking, with most of the original lyrics intact, and the few parody lyrics unimaginative.

Wainwright’s Chinese whipping boy Koto is irritating. The outrageous accent is so thick as to render the character unintelligible in many cases, and Wainwright seems intent on hogging the audience’s attention whenever possible, an attitude that carries over into the post-show Olio. He tries so hard to be funny that he usually isn’t.

Overlooking a few faults, the show succeeds at its major goal, to be funny. The Desert Star has become more consistent and reliable the last few shows; this one continues the streak of giddy, joyful entertainment.

While many shows lose their potency with age, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 50-year-old “South Pacific” seems fresh and alive in the hands of Pioneer Theatre Company.

Our story has Army nurse Nellie Forbush (played with charisma and grace by Leah Hocking) as a new arrival on an island in the South Pacific during World War II. There she meets middle-aged French expatriate Emile de Becque (the booming-voiced PTC mainstay Robert Peterson), whom she falls in love with.

In the meantime, Lt. Joseph Cable (John Cudia) arrives with a mission in mind: He wants to hide himself and another man on a nearby island to spy on the Japanese. Emile is an obvious choice because he knows the area so well, but he won’t go: With his love for Nellie, he has too much to lose.

The show is more than a simple love story, though. The subject of racism is addressed, which alone makes “South Pacific” noteworthy, for how many other shows — a musical, even! — in 1949 were dealing with such a volatile and serious topic? (Answer: not many.)

Peterson is powerful as Emile, playing the role with great authority and dignity. He’s the kind of actor/singer who would have been highly valued on Broadway in the days before microphones, as he no doubt could have been heard in the back row without electronic assistance. Hocking does more than her share as Nellie, too, carrying the show along smoothly and generally being the highlight of any scene she’s in.

The show is marred (and made longer) by an awkward, semi-creepy subplot involving Lt. Cable. Local trinket-seller Mary (the sweet Emily Yancy) sets the handsome Cable up on a date with her young daughter Liat (Francine Wong), with the hopes that they will fall in love. This they do in a matter of 30 seconds, despite a heavy-duty language barrier and a height difference of more than a foot. It is implied that their relationship becomes intimate, and Mary eggs the whole thing on — a little weird, and, more importantly, virtually unrelated to the rest of the show. The subplot goes nowhere and proves nothing; it almost feels like padding in a show that is a little too long already.

Bill Cohen is funny as the Harvey Fierstein-like scheming seaman Luther Billis. Richard Mathews and Max Robinson, both always reliable, are solid as the commanding officer and his assistant, respectively.

Songs like “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Bali Ha’i” and “There is Nothing Like a Dame” are classics in musical theater, and they have earned that distinction. The music is altogether excellent in this show, with James Prigmore conducting the live orchestra and Hope Clarke choreographing two or three energetic dance numbers.

George Maxwell’s lush, gorgeous set is worth mentioning, too. Maxwell manages to top himself with every show he does, and this one is beautiful.

“South Pacific” is charming, almost enchanting, and the cast here performs it passionately. Young and old alike should enjoy this show, one that has endured the test of time.

The great English writer Oscar Wilde is full of characteristic wit and dignity when his first trial begins in 1895. By the end of the third, he is broken-down and penniless, completely devoid of hope or happiness — but then, maybe he never really had either to begin with.

That, in a nutshell, is what happens in “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde,” playing through May 16 at Salt Lake Acting Company. Almost all of the play takes place in court, with a versatile ensemble cast playing numerous roles and speaking most of their dialogue directly to the audience, rather than to each other. It’s almost a documentary in that regard, a feeling that is enhanced with the actors frequently citing the biographies, newspapers and court records from which their dialogue was taken.

This could be distracting, but it’s not. The very static stage picture, with almost no movement and with most characters simply staring straight ahead could also be tiresome, but it’s not. Keven Myhre’s keen direction and a top-notch group of actors make this very difficult show come to life — evidence that sometimes real life need not be embellished upon to be interesting.

Oscar Wilde (Kurt Proctor) is the plaintiff in the first trial, suing Lord Queensbury (Robert Ormsby) for libel after Queensbury publicly accused Wilde of being a sodomite. Wilde winds up having to back off when the “libel” is proven true — he was as gay as they come — and all that evidence is used by the British crown to take action against Wilde in a second trial. This time, Wilde is the defendent, on trial for “gross indecency” — the Victorian-era terminology for homosexual acts, which were illegal in 1895.

That second trial results in a hung jury, but a third one has Wilde convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. By that time he has lost his long-time friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Carl Nelson), as well as his previous fame and notoriety. He is truly a broken, sad man.

Proctor plays Wilde impeccably; he looks and talks exactly the way one would expect him to, with perfect grammar and a quick, satirical wit. He plays the courtroom for laughs at first (“I have never given adoration to anyone but myself,” he tells a lawyer who asks if he was in love with another man), but by the end is humbled and humiliated. It’s a vivid portrayal.

The supporting cast members are excellent in their various roles. The show drags now and then, especially near the end of the second trial, but the cast generally keeps the pace up quite well.

If there are faults in the play, they are these: The people who oppose homosexuality are caricatured, played as quite obviously the “bad guys,” with a Kenneth Starr-like zeal for salacious details. This is the playwright’s prerogative, of course, but a play this mature seems like it should be above such stereotyping.

Also, the play presumes the audience already knows how great a writer Oscar Wilde was. It is essential to understand that if we are to be sympathetic to his great downfall, but the play itself does little to establish it.

Still, the show is a fascinating depiction of a most interesting set of trials. The court’s judgment of homosexuals serves as a metaphor for the way society judges people without truly understanding their circumstances.

“Bye Bye Birdie” has not aged well, but the SLCC Grand Theatre’s production of it, running through May 1, is an energetic, rollicking treat.

Set in 1959 (one year before it actually premiered on Broadway), the musical was meant as a parody of the rock ‘n’ roll idols of the day and the sort of madness they inspired among young people. Rock star Conrad Birdie (played with great oily dumbness by the talented Mark Gollaher) has been drafted into the Army, thus meaning the end of his career, as well as that of his manager/songwriter Albert Peterson (Dave Evanoff). But Albert’s long-suffering girlfriend/secretary Rose Alvarez (Jeanette Puhich) has an idea: Choose a fan at random, and have Conrad give her a “goodbye kiss” live on television just before he goes. The ensuing publicity — not to mention the record sales for the “One Last Kiss” song Albert will write — will be huge.

The lucky girl is one Kim MacAfee (Elizabeth Thornell) of Sweet Apple, Ohio. Kim is 14 going on 25, feeling quite mature after having been “pinned” by her beau, the rather dull Hugo S. Peabody (Geoffrey Hemingway). She’s excited to have Conrad and company staying at her house before the Big Kiss, but Hugo is jealous. Rose gets jealous, too, when Albert won’t commit to marriage (that’s all women wanted in ’50s musicals) and won’t take measures to get his pushy mother (Wrae McCarthy) out of his life.

“Bye Bye Birdie” was probably fairly hip when it first hit Broadway, but several jokes go over the heads of today’s audiences. There are references to Peter Lawford, Gene Raymond, The Shadow, and Sammy Kaye, and a joke in which you have to know that Henry Luce was the publisher of Time magazine. These references weren’t obscure in 1960, but they are now.

But the story is gentle and light-hearted, and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’ songs (“Kids,” “Put on a Happy Face”) are still as toe-tapping as ever; I can guarantee some humming in the car on the way home. There’s some humor in them, too: Listen to the lyrics as Conrad sings his incredibly stupid “Honestly Sincere” (“When I sing about a tree/I really feel that tree,” etc.).

Puhich is a dynamo as Rose. The character is supposed to be of Spanish descent — the subject of not a few awkwardly unfunny barbs from Albert’s mom — and Puhich is not even close, but it doesn’t matter. She has a fantastic singing voice, belting out every song like it’s a show-stopper. Evanoff sings and dances with the best of them as Albert, but even he is no match for the magnificent Puhich.

Wrae McCarthy and Spencer Ashby play characters with great comic potential — Albert’s mom and Kim MacAfee’s dad, respectively — but both actors tend to drag their lines out, speaking unfathomably slow, missing some good laughs in the process.

The large cast of teens is peppy and enthusiastic, and the show moves along swiftly, thanks to a very fast stage crew moving the many set pieces on and off speedily.

This is a family show, full of fun and merriment and some very enjoyable music.

“Saturday’s Warrior” fans and detractors, unite! The sequel, “Star Child,” is really bad.

“Star Child,” like its LDS-themed predecessor, starts out in the pre-existence. The overly enthusiastic Chuck Baker (played by the overly enthusiastic James Royce Edwards) and his non-descript best friend Larry Clayton (Robert Lemon) are about to be born in the same hospital. At the last minute, though, Larry’s plans are changed, and he’s born to a non-LDS family in Russia. Chuck promises he’ll find Larry and teach him the gospel.

Well, unfortunately, Chuck himself winds up either not a member, or an inactive one (we’re not really told). He’s therefore not likely to find Larry, nor does he have much chance of marrying the strait-laced Marie (Kim Butterworth), to whom he was betrothed in the pre-existence. In fact, she wants nothing to do with Chuck, and is quite vexed that he has followed/stalked her to BYU.

Elders Kestler (Brian Neil McFadyen) and Greene (Jeff Stevens), fresh off their missions (portrayed in “Saturday’s Warrior”), show up at BYU to find wives. The shallow Kestler’s main criterion is beauty, and he finds it in Marie, who rebuffs him. Kestler and Chuck meet and discover they both have girl troubles, and Kestler realizes it’s the same girl. So he hatches a plan: He’ll convert Chuck, send him on a mission, and steal Marie. Chuck converts, goes to Russia, finds Larry, comes home. There are marriages, death, lots of singing, yada yada yada.

What made “Saturday’s Warrior” work was that it had some catchy tunes, some memorable songs, and some genuinely sweet moments. It was also a novelty, playing with the idea of the things we’ve forgotten from the pre-existence.

“Star Child” has none of that. The writer/lyricist is the same (Doug Stewart), but Gaye Beeson’s music is forgettable and unimaginative. As for originality, it’s strictly been there, done that, with very few innovations in this sequel.

The plot is lame, contrived, sexist and insulting. Nerd girl Mitzi (Christina Holling) feels worthless because she’s never had a date — but when Greene falls in love with her, she becomes beautiful (and doesn’t have to wear glasses anymore, either, for some reason). The message? You’re not a worthwhile woman unless you’re married and pretty.

It’s not even the LDS ideal that a woman is not complete, eternally speaking, without a husband; that notion would have been fine. But this is just your basic old-fashioned “women aren’t valid until they’re married” thing. Watching the BYU girls throw themselves at the maddeningly self-centered and slap-worthy Kestler is disgusting; seeing him go the entire show without ever really learning his lesson, or getting what he deserves — he does get slapped, but not enough — is even worse.

Which brings us to the characters. Our two main “heroes,” Chuck and Kestler, are two-dimensional and — what’s worse — annoying as hell. Both are played smugly and over-the-top, though in different ways: Edwards’ Chuck is embarrassing, while McFadyen’s Kestler is irritating. They ham it up big-time, getting nary a laugh between them.

Kestler’s insane plot to send Chuck on a mission as a means of stealing his girlfriend is actually a bright spot in the show. It’s so outrageous, so jaw-droppingly misguided, that you get a taste of how fun and wacky the show could have been. But it’s quickly ruined by a song-and-dance missionary discussion that involves Kestler and Greene giving Chuck the hard sell, all the while dancing around disrespectfully with pictures of the Savior.

Stewart clearly wanted to convey a nice religious message with this show. But the script is weak and riddled with problems (we won’t even address the doctrinal errors), the songs are mostly bad, and the whole thing reeks of someone trying to re-hash his initial success without doing anything new. Add to that some unlikable stock characters and some sub-par acting, and you’ve got yourself a mess.

The Hale Center Theater in Orem is fond of doing Cecil B. DeMille-sized productions on its tiny stage, and the results have generally been successful. The latest attempt is “The King and I,” and though the show lacks some of the magic and charm that is supposedly inherent in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hoary old “classic,” it is mostly entertaining and fitfully amusing.

It’s the 1860s, and a widowed young Brit named Anna (M’Lisa Hansen) gets a job in Siam, teaching English to the king’s several dozen children and his almost-as-numerous polygamous wives. The king (Rex Kocherhans) is a gruff fellow, and he doesn’t exactly take a shine to Anna’s head-strong ways and feminist views, especially when she keeps bugging him with the fact that he promised to build her a house to live in while she’s there. (This is, like, a MAJOR concern of hers, or I wouldn’t even bring it up.)

Well, Anna starts to win the king over, especially when it’s reported that he’s a barbarian and she helps him convince the visiting Sir Ramsey (Vic Groves) that he’s not. How does she do this? By making all the Siamese (i.e., “strange”) gals dress up and act like Europeans (i.e., “normal people”), of course. They even perform a little play they wrote, based on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that manages to make offensive farces out of both Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel, as well as East-Asian culture. Hooray for Europe; boo for all other cultures; that’s the message of “The King and I.”

Finally, there’s a reasonably happy ending, though with more death and mayhem than the numbingly tranquil two hours that proceed it might lead you to believe.

Hansen plays Anna with admirable pluck and fortitude, with “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” best showcasing her strong stage presence and fantastic singing voice. Kocherhans’s king is cryptic and aloof, but also rather endearing, and the many kids are as cute as kids get.

Beautiful Natalie Hill and hunky Jason Celaya play Tuptim and Lun Tha, two ill-fated star-crossed lovers, with charisma. Their singing voices are also top-notch.

At two hours and 40 minutes, the show drags a bit, particularly with more than a few lengthy songs that just don’t hold up very well anymore — like “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” a paean to self-delusion that encourages folks to PRETEND they’re happy as a way of actually BECOMING happy (“When I fool the people I fear/ I fool myself as well,” etc.).

Mary Linda Thomas’s choreography is at first clunky, but thoroughly redeems itself with the aforementioned “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” thing. That whole scene is weird and culturally insensitive — did I mention some of the characters even have caricature African-American masks on? — but the avant-garde dancing done by the talented performers (Lindsay Killpack and Shelly Tucker among them) is notably good.

Director Syd Riggs has done a number of excellent shows for Utah County, and while “The King and I” is not the best of them, it’s not the worst way you could spend an evening, either.

Light, frivolous and monumentally silly, Pioneer Theatre Company’s production of “Rough Crossing” is a delightfully fluffy show with no moral, no message and no character development.

In other words, it’s a great night at the theater.

Playwrights Sandor Turai (Timothy Nolen) and Alex Gal (Michaeljohn McGann) are on a ship bound for New York, where they will premiere their new show, which they are still writing. On board with them are the show’s pompous and dim-witted leading man Ivor Fish (David Staller) and beautiful leading lady Natasha Navratilova (Ann Kittredge), between whom there has been some sexual dalliance — a problem, considering Ivor is married and Natasha is engaged to the play’s musical composer Adam Adam (Robert J. Hamilton), who is also onboard.

The writers and the composer happen to overhear some frank talk between Natasha and Ivor, and of course Adam is devastated. To make everyone happy again, Turai devises a plan wherein Natasha and Ivor will present a scene they’ve written for the play, and the scene will contain the dialogue that the others overheard: They weren’t actually fooling around; they were merely rehearsing this new scene they’ve written!

This being a farce (albeit a relatively uncomplicated one), things don’t go according to plan. Landlubber ship steward Dvornichek (Max Robinson) gets in the way and causes trouble — but he also cures writer’s block for the playwrights and everything turns out OK in the end.

“Rough Crossing” was written by English playwright Tom Stoppard, currently up for an Oscar for writing “Shakespeare in Love.” And like Shakespeare (the subject of not a few Stoppard plays), Stoppard is fond of the “play-within-a-play” format. “Rough Crossing” is pretty clever about the whole thing: The play Turai and Gal are writing on the ship actually takes place on a ship, and its plot occasionally parallels the lives of the people onboard with them. They complain about how the first few minutes of their play do not reveal enough information to the audience, which becomes hilarious as the audience realizes that the same could be said of “Rough Crossing.” The play manages to make fun of itself by making fun of the bad play Turai and Gal are writing.

Of further amusement is Adam, who has an unfortunate speech impediment that causes him to be slow in answering questions. Usually, by the time he answers a question, a second one has already been asked, and his response appears to be concerning the second one — which leads to some very funny double-meanings and misunderstandings.

Again, the play-within-a-play thing: Adam’s poor timing prevents him from playing the lead in Turai and Gal’s show, but his poor timing — actually very good comic timing — makes him an outstanding character in “Rough Crossing.”

And so it goes. Stoppard has a knack for writing plays that are at once broad and silly, and yet which also contain brilliant wordplay and dialogue. (How many “dumb comedies” use vocabulary words like “mollycoddle,” “abeysance” and “petulant”?) It’s the best of both worlds.

All six cast members plays their parts with utmost comic ability, making this an excellent production of an excellent play. James Wolk’s smashing set design is also worthy of mention.

It doesn’t look promising: The abstract set pieces made of welded metal, the fact that BYU’s Margetts Theatre is often home to “experimental” (read: “weird”) plays.

The fact that you’re about to watch Homer’s “Odyssey,” for crying out loud.

Then the jazzy music starts, the narrator comes out smartly dressed in a pantsuit and sunglasses, and Zeus strides onstage bellowing into her — yes, her — cellphone. This is not your father’s “Odyssey.”

Director Eric Samuelsen, who made the obscure Danish comedy “Erasmus Montanus” accessible on this very stage last summer, has succeeded again, this time with a story that is more famous, but still unfamiliar to many.

“The Odyssey” follows the journeys of Odysseus (Cristian Bell) as he heads home to Ithaca after fighting the wars described in “The Iliad” (to which “The Odyssey” is a sequel). Along the way he is shipwrecked (losing his clothes in the process — at any other college, Bell would be buck naked; here he gets to keep a tiny pair of Spandex shorts), almost devoured by a Cyclops, and lured into bed by many a lustful goddess.

Meanwhile, his wife Penelope (Rachel Rawlins) sits and frets in Ithaca, warding off aggressive suitors who somehow have the run of her house and are fond of pestering the servant ladies. The first act ends with Odysseus’ return to Ithaca; the second act shows him getting revenge on the boorish suitors via killing them.

Bell is the only cast member to play just one role, and his Odysseus is sympathetic and likable. He is upstaged, however, by the talented crew of nine actresses who play the 30-odd other roles, including the male ones. Little attempt is made to have the women look like men; Zeus and others are still called “he” and “him,” even though the people playing them are quite clearly women.

The ensemble’s standout performer is Jannah Ferguson. Her characters all zing with energy, and her facial expressions — easily seen in the small Margetts Theatre — give each god and goddess she plays real personality.

Also noteworthy are Dianna Lynne Errico (who plays Zeus with flair), Jennifer Conway (her male characters satirize that gender perfectly), and Rachel Rawlins (whose role as sweet Penelope is almost surpassed by her turn as the disgusting Cyclops).

Though a few modern elements are used, this is not a modern telling of the story. Traditional robes and masks are often worn, and the language of Robert Fagles’ translation is not especially modern (but neither is it archaic). No attempt has been made to have the unfathomable traditions of the ancient Greeks seem realistic to us.

It would have been easy to make this a parody of Homer’s “Odyssey”; trust me, mocking is easy. And it wouldn’t have been too hard to make it a faithful, erudite show that only the most high-falutin’ audience members would have enjoyed. This production is somewhere in between: It respects Homer’s work without bowing down and worshipping it, as some literature professors would have you do. Liberties are taken: There are several random accents tossed in (Poseidon is Jamaican, for example), Helen looks like a Geisha girl, “ambrosia” is represented by Hershey’s Kisses, and the women who find the naked Odysseus on the beach are giggly caricatures of the teen-agers you’d see in a “Titanic” audience.

And yet, none of these variations indicate an attempt to dumb down the story. They do make it more accessible to ’90s audiences, but you still have to pay close attention to keep all the characters straight. It’s not exactly Homer’s “Odyssey,” but it’s not quite Homer Simpson’s, either.

Furthermore, the changes don’t detract from the story’s theme. At its heart, this is a story about a man who just wants to survive the world and get home again. For all its ancientness and foreignness, the story delivers this idea loud and clear.

“The Odyssey” is quirky and odd, artistic and aloof — and yet somehow down-to-earth, too. It doesn’t pander to the audience, nor does it condescend. It occasionally falls into the “weird just for the sake of being weird” rut, but not often. Overall, the play tells a story with humor, creativity and conviction.

Gillian Hellman’s 1934 play “The Children’s Hour” is about a spiteful child who, angry with the headmistresses at her girls’ school, seeks revenge by claiming to have evidence they are lesbians. This lie effectively shuts down the school and ruins the teachers’ lives.

I could say a lot more about the plot and still not reveal everything said in the various commentaries in the printed program for BYU’s production. One by director Laurie Harrop-Purser and Theatre & Media Arts Department Chair Bob Nelson, in particular, apparently seeks to stave off the complaints that the play deals with homosexuality — probably a necessary measure, unfortunately, and one that will likely do no good — and in so doing gives away what might have been an effective last-act twist. Also, dramaturg Amy Jensen’s essay makes reference to a “tragedy.” Bottom line? You’ll enjoy the play better if you wait until it’s over to read the program.

Spoiled, cruel Mary (a coldly evil Erin Chambers) has been punished enough by matronly Karen Wright (Lesley Larson) and extra-matronly Martha Dobie (Christina Davis) to get fed up and head home to Grandma Tilford (Karen Baird), who is blind to her granddaughter’s juvenile delinquency. To avoid going back to school, Mary concocts a story that Karen and Martha are lovers. Chaos ensues, complicating things between Karen and her fiancee, Joseph (Robert Gibbs).

Hellman always insisted the play was about the devastating effect of lying, and not about lesbianism. Fine, but this leaves the moral as: Lying can ruin lives. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but so what? That’s not much of an assertion. One question about this play is whether it’s still relevant in the year 2000, and it certainly is — but only in the sense that a play about the Law of Gravity or the ill effects of drunken driving or any other already-accepted truth would be relevant. Do people really need to be told that gossip can be damaging? And if they do, does “The Children’s Hour” make them think about it any more deeply than an Aesop’s fable would?

Troubling within the play is the ease with which Mrs. Tilford believes Mary’s outrageous statements. One wonders how someone not predisposed to disliking Martha and Karen could so readily pass along such damning stories about them.

Mary’s schoolmate Rosalie (Allyson Edwards) is roped into the lie, too, but for a childish reason that makes for an awfully slippery thing to hang the play’s action on. Whether it’s inherent in the script or a fault of this production, it simply doesn’t ring true.

The lead actresses exude dignity and propriety throughout, though the maudlin final moments force them to come across like husky-voiced soap opera divas as they take turns collapsing to their knees and sobbing. The play’s many good moments almost counteract the frequent awkwardness and melodrama, but not quite.