Live Theatre Entertains Local Audiences

Academic theatre productions are coming fast and furious this time of year in Grand Forks.
Playing this Thursday through Sunday is Red River High School’s production of “The Hobbit” (nightly at 7:00 through Saturday with a 2:00 Sunday matinee).
UND’s production of “South Pacific” opened Tuesday and continues nightly at 7:30 through this Saturday on the Burtness Theatre main stage.

Central High School’s fall production, “And Never Been Kissed,” ran last weekend.

South Pacific

The Rogers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” is one of the most popular shows in American theatre since its 1949 debut and recent Broadway revival. Set at an island navy base during World War II, the show has become beloved for its popular songs, including “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Nothing Like a Dame.”

The plot works in the standard love-at-first-sight romance and plenty of comic farce with its restless young sailors and nurses. However it soon becomes a bit deeper than the typical musical-comedy fare, and remains as timely as ever with its exploration of love and racial prejudice, as well as ageism and political issues.

The show has been staged several times in Grand Forks over the past few years, with productions by the Crimson Creek Players, Thompson High School, and Red River High School. Now UND’s theatre and music departments are putting it on, but expanding the scope of its cast by including a number of non-students in roles of characters older and younger than college age.

The UND production is a very entertaining evening at the theatre. Besides having an attractive and versatile set, there is a good, solid cast directed by Mary Cutler of the theatre department, and some very pleasant voices coached by music director Anne Christopherson of the music department.

The main cast is strong, especially Julia Porter as navy nurse Nellie Forbush, along with David Adams as French plantation owner Emile deBeque, and Jared Kinney as marine lieutenant Joe Cable. Casey Paradies does a nice job as conniving sailor Luther Billis and Dorothy Keyser plays native entrepreneur “Bloody Mary” with obvious relish.
While the chorus of sailors could perhaps use a bit more work in spots, they perform well as an ensemble, and the chorus of nurses do a great job supporting Porter’s head nurse Nellie.

Fans of “South Pacific” and of musical theatre in general should find the UND production to be two and a half hours well spent.

And Never Been Kissed

Whereas Red River High School tends to perform the same well-known audience favorites (and perform them well) for new generations of students over the years, Central High School lately has been staging lesser-known, and perhaps less spectacular, but no less entertaining plays, injecting some welcome fresh material into the local theatre scene.

“And Never Been Kissed” had been a 1949 novel by Sylvia Dee (pen name for songwriter Josephine Moore Proffitt) and was adapted into a comic television drama and stage play the following year by Aurand Harris. The show is set during the late spring of 1929, a period when the original author was about the same age as her teenage protagonists.

The situation comedy hearkens back to a more innocent time, yet caricatures human nature in a way that anyone who has been a teenager can immediately recognize. In fact the play’s director Tanner Beauchman notes that the cast members insisted that the characters were not really very exaggerated from their own experiences.

Central High theatre veterans Sarah Hysjulien and Daniella Lima threw themselves wholeheartedly into the roles of 15-year-old best-friends Flory Patterson and Millie Myers, who take turns falling in desperately in love with the same boys, one after another (especially the amusing Chandler Cline as new neighbor Douglas Schaefer).
No less energetic were Hannah Diers and Mia Klaus as Flory’s perpetually annoying and precocious little sister Mavy and her best friend Betty.

Kristen Anderson brought appropriately contrasting maturity to her part as Flory and Mavy’s widowed mother, as well as a different kind of comedy relief along with Joel Braxton as her persistent suitor, the widower Mr. Peabody.

The whole cast obviously had a great time throughout the play, transferring their fast-paced, infectious sense of fun to the audience under Beauchman’s well-rehearsed direction. The actors even sounded like they knew what they were talking about as they threw out period movie star names like William Haines, John Gilbert, and Gloria Swanson.

“And Never Been Kissed” is a cute play that deserves wider circulation if casts can become as devotedly involved in the plot and characters as Central High School’s fun production last weekend.