BWW Reviews: Lots of Laughs in Play Club's LEND ME A TENOR

This month's Play Club offering was a reading of Ken Ludwig's masterful farce, LEND ME A TENOR. Sponsored by Sanders South Africa and presented in the cosy Sanders showroom at the Palms Décor and Lifestyle Centre in Cape Town, Play Club shifted gears from last month's mobilising dramatic piece, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF Steve Jobs, to a play that is crafted explicitly for the purpose of entertainment. While the cross-section of participants - including the audience members, who play a vital role in what is described as a book club for theatre lovers - was sadly somewhat less diverse than at last month's Play Club, entertainment was very much the order of the day at this reading of Ludwig's play by this most transient company of players.

One of the key features of Play Club is getting the conversation going between the assembled parties. This month's icebreaker, moderated by Drew Rienstra, asked both actors and audience members what celebrity had left them starstruck. As stories emerged about Nelson Mandela, André Huguenot, Bea Arthur and many others, one and all settled into the Play Club experience. With the reading set to begin, everyone was taken by surprise by a flash mob style performance of a genuine operatic aria by Johannes Slabbert. And thus, we were transported to the setting of the play, a hotel in Cleveland on a Saturday afternoon in 1934.

At the centre of LEND ME A TENOR is Max, an assistant to Saunders, the General Manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera Company. Max nurses dreams of becoming an opera singer, but he has never had a real breakthrough and lacks the confidence to make his mark. At the start of the play, we discover that Saunders is bringing out a famous tenor, Tito Merelli, to sing the lead in Otello, which is being presented as a fundraiser for the Company. With him, Merelli brings his wife Maria, who is fed-up with her husband's womanising. Unfortunately for her, women all seem to swoon at the sight of him, including Maggie (Max's girlfriend, who also just happens to be the daughter of his boss), Diana (a soprano who shamelessly intends to use her womanly wiles to get Merelli to advance her career) and Julia (a melodramatic old biddy who is the Chairman of the Opera Guild). This being a farce, chaos soon breaks loose when it appears that Morelli will be unable to sing the role due to an apparent suicide and Max has to impersonate him both onstage and off. Much hilarity involving mistaken identity, physical comedy and various modes of verbal humour (including some fine examples of double entendre and great sequences of witty banter) ensues, with a histrionic Bellhop popping in and out of the action as the situation itself plays out.

The reading was delivered by a cast of eight actors, with the stage directions being read by Chi Mhende. The company included Adrian Galley as Tito Merelli, Dan Barnett as Max, Laura Bosman as Maria, Tandi Buchan as Julia, Luella Holland as Maggie, Luke Tyler as the Bellhop, Candice van Litsenborgh as Diana and Andre Jacobs as Saunders. The actors all brought a wonderful sense of play to the table, with many passages of the play springing to life even without any of the physical staging that is inherently associated with farce. As one of the audience members commented later in the afternoon, this made for a brilliant 'theatre of the mind'. The afternoon was punctuated by two intermissions, one during the act break of the show and the second between the reading and the panel discussion that followed. Both featured delicious catering by Rococoa.

The panel for this edition of Play Club included director and UCT lecturer, Christopher Weare, and London's Italia Conti lecturer, Richard Wright-Firth. The discussion followed three distinct threads, respectively dealing with the play itself, the role of Play Club within the theatrical community and challenges related to audience development in the wider Cape Town area.

The discussion around the play itself largely dealt with everyone's favourite moments in the show and how good a piece of writing LEND ME A TENOR actually is. It really is only second to NOISES OFF when it comes to most this difficult of theatre genres to write and play. Indeed, an argument could be made that Ludwig's work is as finely constructed as the best Shakespearean comedies, making use and manipulating all of the key features that are found in that theatrical form. For me, what sets farces like LEND ME A TENOR apart from the also-rans is the brilliant balance between verbal and physical humour. The play is a piece that builds well from start to finish, knowing when to let the audience have a moment to breath and when to push through to the next big laugh. It is no wonder that the play found success in its original productions both on the West End (where LEND ME A TENOR ran for 10 months) and on Broadway (where it ran for 13 months).

The conversation about Play Club itself was thought-provoking. One audience member suggested that the format was an art form in itself, capable of standing alongside full scale theatre productions. I think the sentiment has merit, as long as the essential intimacy of the form is kept intact. I would question whether Play Club would transfer well to a much larger theatre space. Much of its appeal lies in the close contact between actors and audience and in the variegated cross-section of people that interact within this forum. The key mission of Play Club, to build a community of theatremakers and theatregoers, relies on that aspect of this kind of event.

Finally, the issue of audience development in Cape Town made for a heated debate amongst all of the parties involved. This is a tough problem to solve. How do we define "the audience" so as to be able to develop it? Some people suggested that the perception that theatre is for an elite group of people discourages people who do not define themselves by that concept from attending theatre. Others suggested that the problems were in the marketing of productions, in some cases when it came to the way that theatre managements connect with audiences. Another suggestion was that the solution lay in developing the youth market as the audiences of tomorrow, but that the challenge was located in how to make theatre a competitive option alongside Justin Bieber, films and television. The complex nature of this issue meant that this forum was one in which questions were asked, but not one in which any definitive solutions could be teased out. Still it is food for thought indeed, how theatrelovers on both sides of the curtain have a role to play in developing audiences for the theatre that is presented in our city.

Play Club's reading of LEND ME A TENOR was a highly entertaining experience and the discussion that followed was incredibly stimulating. As a play that deals obliquely with life in the theatre itself, it seems appropriate that the panel discussion started making us all ask questions about the various roles each of us play in the world of the theatre, be it onstage, behind the scenes or in the audience. Perhaps the best suggestion is this one: go see a show, and take a friend. And then talk about what you have seen. At the heart of the theatrical event is the tradition of communal interaction. Congratulations to Chase the Sun Productions for fostering this Play Club initiative, a space in which that kind of interface can occur.

LEND ME A TENOR was read for one night only Sanders South Africa in The Palms Centre in Cape Town. The next Play Club event takes place on 21 June 2013 and will focus on Bruce Norris's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, CLYBOURNE PARK. Tickets are available at Quicket.

Photo credit: Instagram/ChaseTheSun

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