'Nunsense' sings and dances its way into your heart at Muhlenberg

By Dave Howell Special to The Morning Call

''Nunsense,'' the classic musical comedy by Dan Goggin, has spawned its own industry, including five sequels (one is a drag version), television versions and even a museum.

In fact, it is ''required'' viewing for all Catholics, so if you have not yet fulfilled your obligation, you won't go wrong seeing it at Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre. And non-Catholics will enjoy it just as much.

''Nunsense'' takes the form of a variety show put on by five nuns of The Order of the Little Sisters of Hoboken, who must raise money to bury 52 sisters accidentally poisoned by the convent cook. They do ensemble numbers and take solo turns with song, monologues and dance.

Each harbors secret show business ambitions. Sister Mary Leo (Jessica Alex) wants to be a ballerina. Streetwise Brooklyn Sister Robert Anne (Meghan Witri) is tired of being just an understudy, as she vocalizes in ''Playing Second Fiddle'' and ''I Just Want To Be a Star.''

Sister Mary Amnesia (Melissa Frey) lost her memory when she was hit by a crucifix, but she regains awareness as she sings ''I Could've Gone to Nashville.''

The levelheaded Sister Mary Hubert, Mistress of Novices (Traci L. Ceschin) belts out the showstopping gospel number ''Holier Than Thou.''

Mother Superior Mary Regina (Pauline Cobrda) becomes less of an authority figure as she reveals her circus family past. Her sternness completely dissolves when she accidentally gets high from a locker room chemical.

The wide-ranging two hours also includes a short Western silent film (''Nunsmoke''), a cooking show satire, Sister Mary Leo's ''Dying Nun Ballet,'' a quiz with audience participation and a plethora of vintage Catholic school jokes.

The pretense is that these amateur nuns are less than talented, but director Bill Mutimer has too good a cast to not let them display great singing and well-coordinated dancing.

This likable group of crazies will make you miss your Catholic high school days, even if you never went to one.

''Nunsense,'' 8 p.m.Tuesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday (Family Day, one youth ticket free with each adult ticket) and Sunday, through July 1, Muhlenberg College, Trexler Pavilion, Baker Theatre, 24th and Chew streets, Allentown. Tickets: $32; $28, seniors; $17, youth. http://www.summerbroadway.org , 484-664-3333.

Dave Howell is a freelance writer.
Copyright © 2007, The Morning Call

FOCUS:  Times News - Theatre Review

Berg's 'Nunsense' sense of fun

By PAUL WILLISTEIN
pwillistein@tnonline.com

The Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre (MSMT) production of "Nunsense" is the kind of show you tell your friends about and then want to see again.

While Dan Goggin (book, music and lyrics) has made a cottage industry of poking fun at the sisters of the cloth, with various permutations of the original "Nunsense" (its 20th anniversary was last year), the play is not Catholic-bashing. In fact, while you don't have to be Catholic to enjoy "Nunsense," judging from those in the June 16 audience who said they were Catholic, it probably enhances the humor in this all-singing, all-dancing, all fun-sense musical.

It's a delight, with audience participation -- even prizes. There are touching moments, too, especially with the song, "Growing Up Catholic." Director and choreographer Bill Mutimer puts the nuns through their paces in a briskly-paced, two-hour show (plus intermission).

Vincent Trovato and his combo provide backup for the humorous patter songs. Scenic designer Edgar DuPont has affectionately recreated a parochial school hall stage ready for an 8th Grade production of "Grease," complete with soda fountain and bedroom. The stage setup alone provides several laugh lines.

Lighting designer Dennis Parichy cranks up the colors for a flashing-lights finale. Sound designer Shaun Burdick has managed to individually mike the cast without annoying nasal sound or feedback. You may wonder what costume designer Lex Gurst had to do other than designing habits for five nuns until you see the chaps and vests for the number, "I Could've Gone To Nashville."

The MSMT cast has excellent voices, and in "The Drive In," they harmonize like the Andrews Sisters. They also have superb timing, are good dancers and are great physical comediennes.

Meghan Witri is gawky and funny as a Brooklyn Bugs Bunny-voiced Sister Robert Anne.  Melissa Frey, with a voice that's Broadway-bound, is sweet and innocent as Sister Mary Amnesia. The scene where she sings and also voices a hand-puppet, is brilliant. Jessica Alex is bouncy and mischievous en pointe as Sister Mary Leo.

Pauline Cobrda is the wise, and wise-cracking Mother Superior, Sister Mary Regina. She's tough but tender and a little rough around the edges. Traci L. Ceschin is Sister Mary Hubert, the Mistress of the Novices. She's cherubic but sassy and gives as good as she gets. Cobrda and Ceschin cavort and needle each other like Crosby and Hope. Ceschin sings and dances a joyous "Holier Than Thou," which gets the audience on its feet.

"Nunsense" continues through July 1 in the Broadway jewel-box Baker Theatre in the Trexler Pavilion at Muhlenberg College, Allentown
Don't miss it. And tell your friends.

Muhlenberg infuses 'Fiddler' with new energy

By Myra Yellin Outwater | Special to The Morning Call

Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre's Charles Richter is at his artistic peak with his joyous, engaging and action-filled production of ''Fiddler on the Roof.'' Richter and his cast have infused ''Fiddler'' with new vigor, vitality, grace and humanity. As we watch Tevye and his family battle the political and social changes of early 20th century Russia, we feel a new empathy for these people and their problems.

Not only has Richter improved the narrative, but, with choreographer Karen Dearborn, he has transformed his stage into waves of rhythm as the dancers, particularly the males, sweep across the stage with lithe legs and agile bodies and re-create the tour de force high kicks of Jerome Robbins' choreography.

Kudos to Musical Director Jeremy Slavin, conductor Vincent Trovato and the professional orchestra who capture the beauty and haunting rhythms of this magnificent score. And to Curtis Dretsch, for his imaginative and visionary stage design, and lighting designer John McKernon, for his exploding palette of colored lights.

Dretsch's design is both lyrical and menacing. In the foreground are one-dimensional ramshackle cottages. In the background, hanging precariously in mid air, is the outline of a village street, an abstraction made up of calligraphic tracks reminding us that these Jews have a fragile hold on life and their existence is dependent on the whims of others.

The drama begins with the haunting sounds of the Fiddler on the Roof, played beautifully by Sharon Olsher. Then we meet Tevye, played by Bob Fahringer. Fahringer has both the physical presence and the singing voice to do justice to this role. Without resorting to the usual ''Jewish shtick,'' he conveys all of Tevye's humanity and self-doubts. When he talks to God, Tevye is humble and hesitant, as if he were talking to a better-off friend. But Fahringer also maintains Tevye's dignity in his often contentious relations with his scolding wife, Golde. And there is a charming sincerity in his struggles to be both an observant Jew and a loving father. When he sings ''Tradition'' and ''If I Were a Rich Man,'' his openly expressed emotions tug at our hearts.

Traci Ceshin as Golde also understands the duality of her character's nature -- her bluster and brusqueness and her sentimental interior. Her songs ''Sabbath Prayer,'' ''Sunrise, Sunset,'' and her touching love song with Tevye, ''Do I Love You,'' are high points.

There is a wonderful chemistry between Bill Mutimer's jolly, well-intentioned Lazar Wolf and Tevye. Their Bar Scene comes alive as the two come to a kind of understanding and sing ''To Life'' with joyous abandon. ''Matchmaker'' shows off the talents of Tevye's daughters, in particular, Rebecca Goldstein, Sarah Primmer and Joelle Kross. And Phil Haas is irrestible as the diffident, mousy Motel, who erupts into delight in ''Now I Have Everything.''

This ''Fiddler'' is truly a tribute to life and the joys of the theater.

Copyright © 2007, The Morning Call

Muhlenberg's 'Fiddler' a bittersweet triumph

By Paul Willistein, Focus section editor for THE PRESS

"Fiddler on the Roof," through July 29 at Muhlenberg Summer Music Theater (MSMT) has so many robust songs that you forget -- or at least I did -- that by its final end, Tevye and his family have been sent packing from their Russian Shtetl -- yet another Jewish diaspora.

In its third MSMT iteration, director Charles Richter carefully follows the path of this time-honored American theater classic. And so, yes,
with the Fiddler, real or imagined, trailing silently, our last image is of Tevye, carting all his earthly belongings, and with what's left of his family, walking down a long road toward an uncertain future and ... oblivion?

Thinking back on Tevye's kvetching about his daughters' suitors and marriages, to quote "the Papa" .... "on the other hand," they and their progenitors may be better off. The pogrom is in place. Anatevka is no longer home.

The MSMT production has it right, right down to the deconstructionist set by Scenic Designer Curtis Dretsch, which, as transformed by Lighting Designer John McKernon, turns from golden to orange to frostily blue, symbolizing the lyric of the show's concluding song, "Anatevka" and the lyrics "a stick of wood," as well as the set's clever turntable, representing a going 'round in circles by a people in exile.

This is a masterful production, with MSMT co-founders Richter, Dretsch and Musical Director Jeremy Slavin, working at the top of their form. One of the MSMT production's bonuses is the 15-piece orchestra which, under Conductor Vincent Trovato's sensitive direction captures (as do
the sweet clarinets and rich strings) the nuances of the Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) and Jerry Bock (music) score. Sharon Olsher, back for the third MSMT "Fiddler" as the Fiddler, is superb.

Choreographer Karen Dearborn, working from the original Jerome Robbins choreography, has created an enthralling "The Dream" and exciting "Wedding Dances." The Bottle Dance, with actual glass bottles balanced on four male hatted heads while performing Russian dances, must be seen to be believed.

Costume Designer Campbell Baird's some 200 costumes for the huge 50-some cast are astounding to behold in hues of browns, greens, purples and grays.

"Fiddler" boasts some fine leads, beginning with, of course, Bob Fahringer as Tevye. Fahringer wisely eschews the Zero Mostel imprint, opting for a more gentle and introspective Tevye. Fahringer is in superb voice for the big numbers, notably, "Tradition," and "If I Were A Rich Man," the latter rendered with cantoric intonations.

Traci L. Ceschin as a cajoling but caring Golde is well-cast opposite Fahringer. They're a believable couple, especially so in their wonderful rendition of "Do You Love Me?"

Rebecca Goldstein as Tzeitel, Sarah Primmer as Hodel and Joelle Kross as Chava, Golde and Tevye's three most eligible daughters, are in fine voice, especially for the klezmer-inspired "Matchmaker." Bill Mutimer plays Lazar Wolf as a misunderstood, rather than a bad man, an important choice. Neil Hever is a memorable Mordcha. Liz Wasser captures well Yente's humorous disposition. Phil Haas is a likable Motel. Nick Flatto is just right as left-of-center Perchik.

Richter's "Fiddler" is deeply spiritual, with the "Sabbath Prayer," instead of the more popular tunes, the production keystone, which, by the playwrights' design, follows "If I Were A Rich Man" and precedes "To Life."

That's why the Act Two's conclusion is all the more somber. The Fiddler knows the tune by heart. He's been silenced -- for now.

Tradition unfolds on Muhlenberg stage

'Fiddler on the Roof' set in Russia, but addresses prejudices worldwide.
By SUSAN KALAN
The Express-Times

When Nick Flatto says he knows the show like the back of his hand, he means it.

The Muhlenberg College sophomore talks about his current role as Perchik in "Fiddler on the Roof." The show, part of the on-campus Summer Music Theatre series, runs through July 29.

Ever since he first performed in a production of "Fiddler" as a sixth grader at George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J., this show has been dear to his heart, he says. As a senior at Bethlehem's Liberty High School in 2006, his role as Tevye in the school production of "Fiddler" garnered him a Freddy Award nomination as outstanding lead actor.

Flatto shares the Muhlenberg stage with Lehigh Valley community theater veteran Bob Fahringer, who plays Tevye. Flatto and Fahringer worked together in last summer's Muhlenberg production of "Carousel," as the Captain and Jigger. Both men also have worked Civic Theatre's stage with Traci Ceschin, who plays Golde in "Fiddler."

Fahringer, a 1977 graduate of Lafayette College, is an English teacher and drama coach at Catasauqua High School.

"It's my rookie Tevye," he jokes, meaning he's playing the role for the first time. "The show is physically challenging," he adds. "I'm on in nearly every scene, and they make me dance, too." He wears three to four layers of costume, and he sweats profusely.  "But the show is going really well," he says. "It's a hard-working crew."

As one of Broadway's classic Tony Award-winning musicals, "Fiddler" remains timeless with story lines dealing with persecution, poverty and holding on to traditions in a changing world. Life is especially difficult for Tevye, a dairyman raising five daughters in the Jewish village of Anatevka, Russia, in 1905.

Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein made Broadway history in 1964 with "Fiddler," the first musical based on the European Jewish experience. It was inspired by "Tevye, the Dairyman" stories written by master storyteller Sholom Aleichem. Muhlenberg theater professor Charles Richter, who directs "Fiddler," says it's interesting that no famous Jewish writers of the golden age of American musical theater ever wrote a Broadway musical dealing with their cultural roots. Richter says he had the opportunity in 1975 to see a German language "Fiddler" production at the famed Komische Opera in East Berlin, under Soviet Occupation.

"The musical has become a modern classic that transcends specific political or ethnic boundaries," Richter says. "It speaks to issues of family, prejudice, tradition, and change that continue to challenge all of us in significant ways."

Southern comforts
Down-home memories inspire team behind Muhlenberg's 'Pump Boys'

By Geoff Gehman | Of The Morning Call

Jason Edwards is having a homecoming to beat all homecomings. He's directing ''Pump Boys and Dinettes,'' a rock-country-gospel musical so true to his gas-pumping, fat-chewing rural North Carolina upbringing, he knew he'd be in it the first time he saw it. And he's doing it in Allentown, where 22 years ago, at the defunct Pennsylvania Stage Company, he debuted as Jim, the guitar-playing, singing, grandmaw-worshipping pump boy, in the first of 30-plus productions of a show he calls ''my bread and butter.''

Edwards' latest version of ''Pump Boys,'' which opens Wednesday at Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre, is almost a family reunion. Co-director Tina Johnson played waitresses in other Edwards-supervised productions. Eric Scott Anthony, who plays Jim, and CoCo Sansoni, who plays Rhetta, the vamping, respect-demanding, heart-of-gold dinette, have performed other ''Pump Boys'' characters. They're veterans of other down-home, Southern-bedrock revues -- ''Cotton Patch Gospel,'' ''Smoke on the Mountain'' -- where actors double as musicians. Last year Anthony played guitar on Broadway in ''Ring of Fire: The Songs of Johnny Cash,'' where Edwards sang ''Far Side of Jordan'' with Cass Morgan, a creator of ''Pump Boys.''

Musical director Vince Di Mura is the pianist-arranger of ''My Way,'' a Frank Sinatra cabaret that, like ''Pump Boys,'' has crisscrossed the country, visiting Muhlenberg in 2005. Growing up around his father's body shop in Middlesex, N.J., helped him prepare to play L.M., the nerdy pump boy who catfishes, squeezes accordion and dreams of squeezing Dolly Parton. He and Edwards have swapped stories of how L.M. and Jim remind them of their fathers and uncles.

Inspired by yarns and gossip at gas station-bars in the South, ''Pump Boys'' is a mostly sassy, occasionally sensitive day-in-the-life of four gas-station attendants and two waitresses along Highway 57 in North Carolina, a pit stop between the mythical Smyrna and Frog Level. The characters celebrate simple foods (spoon bread), charms (a farmer tan), civic virtues (tipping) and fantasies (serenading Dolly Parton). They make spectators feel at home by playing coffee-can percussion and raffling air fresheners in three scents: Christmas, skunk and bikini.

Edwards felt right at down home when he saw the 1982-1983 Broadway production of ''Pump Boys.'' He grew up, after all, in the one-redlight town of Weaverville, N.C. He pumped gas at his father's service station and helped his dad deliver motor and fuel oil in the mountains around Asheville. He fondly recalls drinking free sodas with gas-station regulars who welcomed a kid into the old-stove league of tales that were funny, funky and frank.

''Those were some sweet days,'' says Edwards, a lanky, friendly fellow whose semi-flattop haircut is a bristly butte. ''And that's partly why I thought, when I saw 'Pump Boys' for the first time, it was like they were talking about me, basically. I grew up pumping gas: That's what I did. Right then, I knew I'd do the show.''

Edwards also understood the characters' sporadic dreams of breaking out of their small town in their heads, mentally leaving life's blue route for the interstate. His father wanted him to take over his gas-and-oil business; the son had grander plans. ''I think my dad knew I wanted to play my guitar, see the country,'' he says, ''and get paid for it.''

Edwards' path toward ''Pump Boys'' began when he starred in the 1984 Off-Broadway production of ''The Ballad of Conrad and Loretta'' with Cass Morgan. Debra Monk, who with Morgan invented Rhetta and Prudie Cupp, the ''Pump Boys'' waitresses, liked Edwards enough to cast him as Jim in a ''Pump Boys'' she was directing for the Pennsylvania Stage Company and the American Stage Festival in Milford, N.H. He prepared by listening to the original-cast recording for a month and rehearsing for a mere three hours. He wasn't nervous; as he points out, he had known the ''Pump Boys'' style since high school, when he saw rollicking pirate musicals performed by ''Pump Boys'' co-creator Jim Wann, Morgan's husband.

Edwards had a good time in Milford. He had a great time in Allentown. Audiences gobbled ''Pump Boys'' like sweet potato pie. Edwards had a nirvana-sweet side trip to the Nazareth guitar factory that made his and his father's precious Martins. It was at Pennsylvania Stage that the Broadway producers of ''Pump Boys'' decided to hire him as Jim in the national tour. Within a year he had worked with four of the show's five creators.

By 1987 Edwards felt a bit pumped out. Needing a new ''Pump Boys'' adventure, he requested, and received, a chance to direct the show for the first time. He cast his sister Linda, who had played a ''Pump Boys'' waitress in Chicago, in the production in Flat Rock, N.C., near their home turf.

The Flat Rock production was a big hit, catapulting Edwards into productions throughout the South. In 2002 he returned triumphantly to Flat Rock in a new show, ''Jim's Garage,'' a sequel to ''Pump Boys.'' This time he played the boss of four singing mechanics, including a woman, and a secretary who yearns to be a pin-up queen for grease monkeys.

Whenever Edwards directs ''Pump Boys,'' he tries to keep it authentic to characters and creators. He gives his performers pretty much the same advice that Monk gave him during his first production. Feel free to be silly and sad. And remember the rural Southern tradition of speeding in slow motion, as if your brain is 110 mph and your body is 110 in the shade.

''These characters are not hillbillies,'' says Edwards. ''We're not poking fun at them; we're celebrating them. It would be very easy to play 'Hee Haw' here. I refuse to go there as a Southerner.''

Di Mura agrees with Edwards, even though he grew up above the Mason-Dixon Line. The dinettes and pump boys, says the musical director, ''are polite even when they're crazy. And they don't worry, which is something we should all learn. There's something beautiful in the simplicity of their music, too. It's not about virtuosity. It's about taste, and the beauty of sound.''

Di Mura could be Edwards' Northern cousin. Both share service-station backgrounds and pump-boy relations. Di Mura's L.M. plays piano side saddle because that's the way Edwards' L.M.-like uncle played the blacks and whites. The quirky relationship between the outgoing Jim and the ingoing L.M. reminds Di Mura of the quirky relationship between his ingoing uncle Joe and his outgoing father Jim. It was Joe Di Mura's job to pick up the ringing telephone at the body shop in Middlesex. It was Jim Di Mura's job to actually answer it.

Sansoni wasn't raised around a gas station. But she's filtering her waitressing experience into the character of Rhetta, who tells men ''be good or be gone'' and who mourns the secrets she can't tell her sister Prudie, fellow owner of the Double Cupp diner. Tough and tender, Rhetta reminds Sansoni of professional waitresses who mothered her while she schlepped meals at a Mexican restaurant in Colorado Springs.

''They were mostly divorcees in their 40s who had kids and lived in trailers,'' says Sansoni. ''They never got ruffled; they had a decent feel for what life was all about. They watched out for me; they took care of me.''

Like everyone in the Muhlenberg production, Sansoni savors the ''Pump Boys'' message to slow down and smell the fried okra. ''We have been conditioned to believe we have to be upwardly mobile to be happy,'' she says. ''This show pares it all down. These people are happy with their relationships and adventures. They know it doesn't take much to be content and have more than a little joy.''

Adds Edwards: ''It doesn't matter whether you're in New Jersey or North Carolina or Missouri, there are these places where you can relax and just be yourself. They're places you can trust -- like the barbershop.''

Another sanctuary, it seems, is the club of musical actors. During a group interview for this story, Edwards and company treated each other like long-lost pals during old-home week. Di Mura and Edwards learned they both performed at the Flat Rock Playhouse -- Edwards in ''Jim's Garage'' and Di Mura in ''My Way.'' Anthony compared notes with Sansoni about appearing in the white-gospel musical ''Smoke on the Mountain.'' After ''Pump Boys'' ends in Allentown, Sansoni will head to the Arrow Rock (Mo.) Lyceum Theatre for ''The Homecoming,'' the third part of ''Smoke on the Mountain
The vets of Southern music theater have rallied around Di Mura, a ''Pump Boys'' virgin. Trained classically, he is a cabaret musician-arranger who composed spoken-word jazz operas with Nuyorican and Vietnamese poets. Yet, for as long as he remembers, he's heard the voice of his father telling him he should play country. When Vince finally did, at the Ryman Auditorium, the country mecca in Nashville, he felt his dad's ghost laughing with delight. Jim Di Mura is probably roaring at the Allentown ''Pump Boys,'' which will be his son's public debut as a singer, accordion player and tap dancer.

Di Mura views his new tasks as merit badges for a road warrior. ''You know, what we do for a living is acquire accomplishments,'' he says. ''But that's not why we do this. We do this because we love it.''

geoff.gehman@mcall.com

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