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    Theater Review: Short North Stage Closes Season with Riotous ‘Wild Party’

    Short North Stage marks the end of a strong season with a fiery take on Andrew Lippa’s delightfully debauched ’20s-set musical The Wild Party (based on the poem by Joseph Moncure March), directed and choreographed with wit and charm by Dionysia Williams.

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    The Wild Party focuses on the volatile couple Queenie (Blaire Baker) and Burrs (Jordan Goodsell), as they can no longer sate one another’s appetites – and Burrs’ violence tips into terrifying. Queenie throws a party as a distraction and to put Burrs back on his heels, flooding their apartment with a succession of zany characters, led by Queenie’s old friend and sometimes romantic rival Kate (Lisa Glover) and her consort Mr. Black (Kendrick Mitchell).

    The party plays out on the best use of a Short North Stage signature, the multi-leveled stage, designed (as were the great, skewed period costumes) by Edward Carignan, with real action (double entendre mostly intended) happening up and downstairs, as well as the prime party locations of the balcony and bathroom.

    Williams uses every inch of this space, crowding it with dance, jittery motion, one-liners, and so many sight gags it bulges at the seams; she pitches it – and solidly lands – someplace between Mad Magazine and Hieronymus Bosch. I had a hard time knowing where to look in the first half of the first act. I needed to surrender to the surging river nature of the production, the way it ebbs and flows like a party, and once I did that I had a spectacular time.

    The characters here tend to fall into tropes. Having this directed by a choreographer pays off as Williams and her actors balance broad slapstick with sharp, subtle strikes that give each character a visual language of movement and establish the world with motion. The balance of exuberance and melancholy for those of us who spent sections of our lives drifting from party to party know all too well, get a powerful, technicolor display. That shift from the individual to the group and back also gets a stunning showcase with Jeff Fouch’s virtuosic solo take on “Jackie’s Last Dance,” a dagger in the heart to any of us who’ve put a record on and danced alone for its entire length as the party’s breaking down, though few of us have ever danced those feelings this well.

    With such a large cast – and only two people directly credited as an ensemble, everybody else has at least a feature – everyone gets some moments to shine. The exuberant company numbers – the gin-soaked commentary wrapped around teetering on the brink of “By Now The Room Was Moving,” the period dance-number pastiche “The Juggernaut,” and the hilarious read-through of the very funny writing team Phil (Jonathan Collura) and Oscar D’Armano’s (PJ Palmer) Bible-based musical “A Wild, Wild Party” – highlight the actors’ voices bouncing off each other, sliding together like silk and slapping against one another to throw sparks. These also sat me back in my chair and got me thinking about the use of handclaps in this production, as choreography and additional percussion, as a sense of community but also humanity, everything by nature being just the tiniest fraction of a second off, that makes that echo so thrilling.

    The smaller moments also pack a can’t-transport-over-state-lines punch as characters break into duos and quartets. Glover gets two jaw-dropping solos, the defiant introduction “Look at Me Now” and the devastating second-act opener “The Life of the Party.” Glover and Baker also shine jousting with one another, their sizzling chemistry lights up songs like “Poor Child” alongside Goodsell and Mitchell (which gets an intimate, chilling reprise from Baker and Mitchell alone). Glover and Goodsell’s energy and harmonies, two broken people finding each other, gave me chills on numbers like “Let Me Drown.” Rachel Hertenstein’s “An Old-Fashioned Love Story” brought the house down at the performance I saw.

    Baker and Goodsell’s relationship soars; the production doesn’t leave any question about what brings these people together but also what’s exhausted them. “Out of the Blue” and “What Is it About Her?” bookend the play with their two voices shaded and shifted. Baker also crackles with Mitchell on the rapturous “Come With Me.”

    In a milieu so besotted with music, the band has an extra challenge here, and music director/keyboardist Eric Alsford and his octet more than live up to the challenge – Alsford’s shifts from barrel-house piano to neo-romantic balladry track the action and shove it in the right direction when needed. TK Leonard’s trumpet cracks open and illuminates the action. The rhythm section of bassist Josh Newburry, guitarist Drew Steadman and drummer William Mayer have the kind of loose-limbed empathy vital to scoring the amount and variety of dancing we’re gifted with here and buoy the reeds section of heavy hitters Logan Moore, Tom Regouski and Billy Wolfe. A warning to anyone in the first couple of rows like I was, when I saw it, the show was mixed rock-concert loud which is something I generally liked and thought it was a boon to the energy of the piece but there were a few knock-it-out-of-the-park ballads where I wished I’d had the presence of thought to bring earplugs.

    The love everyone has for this piece shines through every moment of The Wild Party.

    It’s a dazzling introduction to Andrew Lippa’s language and to what Short North Stage brings to the Columbus theater community. It’s a fun ride with enough darkness to remind us all that every party ends, even when the main goal feels like surviving till the next party.

    The Wild Party runs through May 28, with performances at 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more info, visit shortnorthstage.org.

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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