The Great American Melodrama is used to cooking up confections of drama, music, and dance with its stellar ensemble of professional actors. The current production at the Melodrama is a delectable celebration of everything culinary; from fast food to a five-star experience, it’s all on the menu.
The venue has long been a bastion of live theater on the Central Coast, offering productions of great plays, followed by some kind of vaudeville review. While the plays are always wonderful, the vaudevilles cap out the night with a fun energy, playing to the strengths of the Melodrama’s ensemble cast by including singing (often in harmony and a cappella), dancing, fast costume changes, slapstick, and spontaneity.
The current production embraces such energy and fun with An Evening of Comedy and Music: A Culinary Cabaret. The night includes three parts, starting with a vaudeville review that explores various aspects of food and drink. Next comes a one-act play set in a restaurant. The set closes with another fantastic food-themed review.
The best thing about the Melodrama’s reviews is that the crew members usually write the skits themselves. This gives the talented and skilled actors a chance to branch off in any direction, taking inspiration from the stock of costumes, props, and set pieces they have stored away.
The Culinary Cabaret warms up nicely on a stove of comedy and music. Mimicking a TV “greatest hits” album commercial, the actors take turns doing impressions of favorite artists performing food-inspired parodies of hit songs. Impressions aren’t easy, but they’re just another tool in the bag of Melodrama tricks.
Anyone familiar with the Great American Melodrama will remember a kind of Golden Age the theater enjoyed with Chuck McLane, Bree Murphy, Katie Worley, and music director Jordan Richardson. While many of these actors have moved on, a crop of young, spirited, and talented artists has taken up the torch. The chemistry mixed by current cast Kat Endsley, Crystal Davidson, Bethany Rowe, DJ Canaday, Steven Freitas, Phillip David Black, and Alex Sheets crackles with a spontaneity that keeps the audience laughing throughout the whole production.
One skit, as an example of the pure amount of skill the ensemble wields, is a food channel farce, featuring a singing family of cooks. All the singing in this skit is a cappella and stuns the listener with the amount of harmony, momentum, and even word painting used to help convey cooking, all while dishing up a flawless choreography.
The show is punctuated by a few intermissions that include some of the tasty concession stand fare served up hot by the actors themselves. Though this is one of the usual attractions to the Melodrama, the fact that this production’s theme is food makes it all the more fun. Don’t forget to tip and enjoy the clever thank you song the cast will croon from behind the counter.
The one-act play sandwiched by the two reviews is a hilarious farce set in a British restaurant, where the owner is more concerned about the outcome of a restaurant review than the happiness of his regular customers. Watching the owner get more and more wound up is enjoyable, especially when he starts tripping over himself to serve the critic.
The last part of the show brings the gusto, saving some of the best skits and songs for the end. At one point, the actors actually sing while accompanying themselves with instruments. Guitars, banjo, and mandolin lay the foundation for some fun tunes that show how multitalented everyone at the Melodrama truly is.
The show ends with a dessert featuring a parody of one of America’s favorite musicals, Grease. This last morsel includes puns upon puns, morphing Rydell High School into the Frydell Culinary School and Rizzo into Rizzoto. It serves as a perfect complement to a night of deliciously funny, fast-paced, and quality live theater.
Arts Editor Joe Payne enjoys live theater almost as much as he does food. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 6-13, 2013.