Burns Park Players Swarm Through Grab-Bag Musical "Girl Crazy"
MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1997
THE ANN ARBOR NEWS
B5
ENTERTAINMENT
burns Park
By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
NEWS ARTS WRITER____
It was hard to tell who enjoyed the Burns Park Players’ production of “Crazy For You” more - the jam-packed Tappan School Auditorium audience or the 130 members of the cast.
That’s right, 130. Guest Director Jonathan Baker deserves all the credit, in the world for bringing in “Crazy for You” at its usual slick
Players swarm through grab-bag
REVIEW
and smile-filled 2 1/2 hours.
In the 1992 update of George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 hit “Girl Crazy,” stagestruck New Yorker Bobby Child (played by Carl Dahmer), who’d gladly forsake his family’s banking fortune to be a song-and-dance man. When his obtrusive mom (Nancy Bryk) sends him to Deadrock, Nev., to foreclose on a
theater, Bobby sees his chance.
Bad jokes are a part of the show’s goofy charm, and such exchanges as “If you were my husband, I’d kill myself!” “Quick, where’s a minister?” drew more laughter than groans at Tappan. It’s a measure of Baker’s attentiveness that the Bums Park cast remained in character even when the focus was on the central players.
The score included several numbers from the Gershwins’ “Girl
Grazy” (“Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm,” etc) as well as a dozen others borrowed from everywhere (“But Not for Me,” “Someone to Watch Over Me”). Sometimes the other songs turned into highlights: “Shall We Dance?” offered a soft-shoe-and-waltz duet by Bobby and hard-drinkin’ tough-talkin’ Polly Baker (Karen Dahmer).
The very obscure “What Causes That?” was the best-in-show number; in it, Bobby and follies impresarin 'Girl Crazy' Bela Zangler (Jeff Edwards) do Leslie Hennessey as Irene, Bobby’s a drunken “Duck Soup”-like pas de snooty fiance, who strutted through deux. Kudos to choreographer Su- her vocal showcase, “Naughty san Grady for guiding Dahmer and Baby.”
Edwards through this literally fall- Randy Milgrom delightfully oozed down number. Slime as saloon owner and villain
“Crazy for You" was fortunate to Lank, while Edwards was a comic have a true-life husband and wife as virtuoso as Bela. And cheers to set the show’s romantic duo. Sparks designer Marcy Vandertuig, whose clearly flew between Dahmers Carl sets included a Georgia O’Keefe-ish and Karen. The latter is a fine Manhattan skyline, and a purple tress whose skills seem better suit- sage-sunset mountain-scape right ed to non-musical stage work; right out of Frederic Remington.