By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The first ingredient in the recipe for whipping up a re-creation of an old-time radio show is a cast of characters. Not, mind you, just the dramatis personae, but the actors who will play those fictional roles.
The Lakeside Theatre Company does just that by bringing in some area theater regulars and spicing it up with WGTE radio personality Haley Taylor and the Australian punter from the UT Rockets football team, Bailey Flint.
This being a holiday show we start off with some Christmas music — a bit of Nutcracker from pianist Esther Nixon, an amiably gruff “Good King Wenceslaus” from Lane Hakel, a rousing “Deck the Halls” led by P. Andrew Casmus, all ending with an Aussie version of “Jingle Bells” by Flint. There’s also a bit of interpretative dance b Christmas Pixie Jessica Thompson.
This is more than theatrical tinsel, it introduces us to Casmus, who serves as our smooth announcer and Maxwell, a British butler, and to Hakel who gets cast as the play’s various heavies, including literally a character name Fat Mike. For his part Flint plays various pretty boy parts.
With the seasonal preliminaries out of the way it’s “airtime” at the Maumee Indoor Theater for Lakeside’s production of “Remember the Night,” which continues tonight (Friday, Dec. 6 at 8 p.m.), Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the theater’s rear auditorium. Tickets are $24 and $15 for seniors and students.
Director Mary T. Boyer, one of the founders of the year-old troupe, adapted the script from Preston Sturges’ radio script and screenplay. The conceit is we are watching a radio broadcast, so there’s only studio furniture and actors dressed in everyday, for 1940, clothes.
It’s Christmas time in New York City and our stylish heroine Lee Leander (Taylor) is trying on a bracelet, a trinket worth more than $5,000 — about $90,000 in current dollars. Our heroine clearly has expensive tastes. She’s not waiting for Santa, though. When she distracts the saleswoman (Melanie Miller), who is eager to make the sale, she slips away.
She doesn’t get far before the intrepid police force tracks her down trying to pawn the hot bracelet.
The district attorney (Hakel) needs to keep his conviction rate up, so he insists on calling in the assistant D.A. John Sargent (Nick Boyer) who is just heading for a visit home to Indiana.
His boss insists he delay his departure. This should be an open and shut case. A map-cap court scene ensues with the judge (Hakel, again) trying to keep an unruly court under control.
Lee is being defended by O’Leary (Martin Boyer), a gas bag who spins a fanciful defense centered on the belief that his client was hypnotized. Eager to hit the road, Sargent says he needs to bring in an expert, so he asks that the case be continued until after the holiday.
Lee, not having bail money, is beig led to jail by the matron (Sarah Bania-Dobyns) to jail until a soft-hearted Sargent makes arrangements with a bail bondsman, the aforementioned Fat Mike, to get her out of jail.
Now what has been a comedy, shifts into romance mode when Sargent and Lee, also from Indiana, head 760 miles west together.
So we go from fast-paced city to meet the rural folks in Indiana including Sargent’s mother (Melissa Shaffer) and his Aunt Emma (Mary Aufman). The tone shifts with the locale.
Without scenic elements, the show relies on the writing, and the actors’ delivery of those words, to fill in the atmosphere.
In Indiana the relationship between Lee and John takes a more serious turn. As they return to New York, “Remember the Night” turns serious. Sturges refuses to wrap the plot in for a tidy ending with a bow on it. That pulls the audience further in, and caring about what the new year will hold for the lovers.
