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Peer Reviews The Wedding
Singer Says "I Do" to Mindless
Entertainment Entire contents are copyright © 2007 A.S. Waterman. All rights reserved.
In its second production of the season, PNC Broadway Across America follows up its dreadful rendition of a fine Broadway show, Camelot, with a fine rendition of a dreadful one, The Wedding Singer. This musical adaptation of a 1998 B-movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore weaves a soap-opera story, about a 1980s C-circuit musician in love with a waitress engaged to a stockbroker, with forced humor based on dirty words sung by grandmothers and dumbed-down period guffaws, elongating the wait until boy finally gets girl and we can go home. Add to this a musical score as lame and forgettable as two-decades-old Top 40, and you have a recipe for a show that should have been left at the altar. What more can one say about a script in which the deus ex machina is a Tina Turner impersonator? How about, "I don't"? So far, the only constants in PNC's new season have been audience members huddled in their coats in a theatre that is always, always too cold. In sharp contrast to Camelot, in which a big-name star (the sadly miscast Lou Diamond Phillips) could scarcely stay on key, The Wedding Singer offers a cast of unknowns full of talent, charisma and stage appeal. Some -- notably Merritt David Janes as the lovelorn wedding singer Robbie Hart, and John Jacob Lee as androgynous rocker "George" -- give truly phenomenal performances. However, a fine performance of dreck is still dreck. Here's hoping that this very talented cast uses this show as a stepping stone to worthier material, and that PNC Broadway and the Kentucky Center remember their mission of bringing fine works of the performing arts to Louisville. ...and while they're at it, that they turn up the heat.
The Wedding Singer PNC Broadway Across America November 13-18, 2007 Posted November 14, 2007
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