| Lane Hakel (left) with Zach Lahey in ‘Lend Me a Tenor’ (Photo: Andrew Weber/Sentinel-Tribune) |
Everything in the comic farce "Lend Me a Tenor" relies on Max, the opera company director’s
assistant.
And as soon as Zach Marshall Lahey makes his entrance as Max in the current Black Swamp Players
production, it’s clear from his oversized horn rims and his twisted, bemused expression that the actor
has things well in hand however topsy-turvy his character’s world gets.
And topsy turvy hardly begins to describe the slapstick antics unleashed on the First United Methodist
stage starting Friday night.
Max and his boss the uptight Saunders (Guy Zimmerman) are in a tizzy from the start awaiting the star of
the company’s gala performance of "Otello."
The great Tito Merelli has yet to arrive, and the final rehearsal is about to begin. Max has been
assigned to bird dog the star, steering him clear of women and booze.
But when Merelli, played with gusto by Lane Hakel, arrives with wife Maria (Anne Kidder) in tow, he’s in
no shape to rehearse, his various indulgences having caught up with him.
Both he and Maria are in shape to battle with Maria jumping on a bed while hollering at her husband.
Matters only get screwier from there.
Merelli ends up dead … or at least Max and Saunders think so, and Max must, under the cover of
black-face and a wig, must go on in his place.
The cast relishes in the zany antics.
Lahey provides the center of gravity as the dweebish Max, who finds his passion while impersonating the
opera star.
Hakel’s Merelli is a peasant at heart who has never missed a performance. Kidder matches his intensity in
their exchanges.
This is the kind of script where if the wife facetiously accuses her husband of planning to carry on with
two women, the audience can be assured in the second act two women will indeed be cavorting in his hotel
room.
Those two women are Saunders’ spoiled daughter Maggie (Sara Swisher), who is kind of engaged to Max, but
longs to have a fling, and the sultry soprano Diana (Anne Clark), a serial flinger, who’ll make any
advances necessary to advance her career.
Zimmerman’s Saunders is similarly single-minded, intent that the show even without the star must go on,
and the money must come in regardless of the obstacles, which he blithely assigns Max to solve.
Becky Hansen shows that the seemingly staid, society lady Julia, the head of the opera guild, would be
more than willing to let her hair, and garters, down for the star. But then so would all the female
characters.
Merelli’s fans aren’t only female though. Dan Cota’s bellhop makes a nuisance of himself, as he barges in
singing at times on any pretext, in hopes of meeting Merelli.
Under the direction of Bob Hastings, the slapstick and innuendo are unrelenting, hardly giving the
audience a break from laughing.
