Playwright: book by Becky Eldridge & Amy Petersen, music & lyrics by Andy Eninger
At: Single Box Turn Productions at Live Bait Theatre, 3941 N. Clark St.
Phone: ( 773 ) 935-2747; $15
Runs through: Aug. 13
The outlook isn't auspicious for the Elyria—Ohio, not Shakespeare—High School marching band. Their trumpet and second clarinet are terminally horny. Their third clarinet is a gothchick who dabbles in sorcery. Their piccolo is a Mennonite experimenting with the secular life. Their trombone wears a chain-mail undershirt and their flute wears a back-brace. Their lead baton-twirler is pregnant. Their Drum Major frets over his grandmother, while their bandmaster laments his thwarted career. Furthermore, the football-happy school board is prepared to cut funding for the arts at the next meeting.
Single Box Turn Productions, the band behind this 'Halftime Musical', is not without its own obstacles. The parade grounds at Live Bait measure a cramped 25 X 30 feet, all stadium personnel—musicians, athletes and cadre alike—are portrayed by a mere sixteen actors, musical accompaniment for both the score of original songs and an array of full-cast field drills is foleyed in from the tech-booth, and the house curfew requires this late-night show to drop curtain by midnight.
But the transformation of a motley crew of misfits into an empathetic, precision-trained team is a can't-fail scenario. For every juvenile giggle introduced by authors Becky Eldridge and Amy Petersen, along with composer and GayCo veteran Andy Eninger—a dowager ( played in drag by Ed Jones of Scarrie: The Musical ) dying of a 'sick pussy', for example—we get such inspirational homilies as, 'If you can't find the rhythm and you don't know what to do/just listen to your heartbeat 'cause the music's in you'. And the choreography—Paula Stein's dance and Mik Erwin's march—so accurately suggests its respective genres that our imaginations easily supply the necessary aural and visual scope.
'You've Got To Use What You've Got' advises Band Geeks' catchiest ditty, and in the end, this hard-working, deftly-focused ensemble delivers an exuberantly uplifting spectacle not unlike the music it celebrates. See for yourself whether 'Eye Of The Tiger' performed with a full fuckin' brass section doesn't have YOU cheering your favorites on to victory!
