I have now seen Lend Me A Tenor at least three times. The 1986 Ken Ludwig farce continues to be quite popular. The audience last night loved it. It’s kind of odd watching the third production of a light comedy in less than ten years. It’s not like watching the same comedy film that many times, obviously. The actors are different. The pacing varies between productions. Various elements of production are different from one staging to the next. Obviously, every staging is being driven by the same script, though. The variations on various elements can allow interesting things to happen between different productions of a complex, serious drama. New insights can be gleaned for different ways of perceiving different elements of different ends of the plot. With light comedy, though one isn’t getting much variation on depth, though.
What hit me last night about halfway into the show was that I wasn’t laughing. At all. But I was enjoying the show anyway. Going to a light comedy again done by a different group of people again ends up feeling more like a music concert. You go to hear a familiar band perform and you seldom expect to hear anything new. You’re not expecting to fall in love with a new song. But that doesn’t mean you’re not enjoying it. I’m reminded of what it’s like going to a production of Spamalot--nearly everyone in the audience is laughing a few beats before any given punchline, but they’re still enjoying it. Well-written comedy is well-written comedy. You go to the show. You hear the same jokes. You’re not laughing. That doesn’t mean you’re not having a good time.
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Everybody has their own end of the thing to hold up. Rick Pendzich plays the comic nice guy he plays so often . . . in a play that also requires him to explore his musical theatre ability. He’s great in the role. Drew Brhel is in excellent form as a beleaguered figure of authority desperately trying to make a single evening’s opera work. He’s got a nice handling of the comedy. He’s hitting the punchlines at interesting angles. Steven M. Koehler has a tremendous stage presence as witnessed in a number of productions with the Skylight Music Theatre recently. Here he’s playing a towering legend of contemporary opera. Koehler may not look like a huge, imposing figure onstage as here he’s mustering a tremendous amount of inner will and authority. If anyone can make themselves look a few feet taller onstage through sheer force of will, it’s Koehler. Rana Roman plays his wife. There’s a great sense of will and inner strength about her as well. She’s got an interesting kind of a gravity onstage that’s a lot of fun to watch. She’s very petite, but thanks to the right kind of comic intensity, the light just sort of...falls into her onstage. Alexandra Bonesho plays an active, vivacious enterprising, young stage actress. Bonesho makes quite an impression here in that respect. The role could come across as being kind of flat and superficial. (It has in the past.) Bonesho takes what might feel kind of like a stock character from farce and turns her into someone with much more strength and assertiveness.
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's production of Lend Me A Tenor runs through April 10th at the Broadway Theatre Center's Cabot Theatre. A review of the show runs in the next print edition of the Shepherd-Express. For ticket reservations, call 414-291-7800.
