Excellent! Very Good Good Fair Poor

Rating: (0 votes)

Maltz presents its latest offering

By Sarah Stover

JUPITER - Fun is not "that elusive something" in the latest production at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre.

And in the end, neither is a boyfriend.

The theatre premiered its production of Sandy Wilson's "The Boy Friend," the week of Dec. 3. The play is about a rich heiress attending a finishing school in Nice, France, pretends to have a boyfriend until she finds the real thing in a messenger boy..

There was hardly an empty sat in the theater at the Dec. 6 showing, and with good reason. "The Boy Friend," described in the playbill as "a loving spoof on 1920s musical comedies filled with happy flappers, jazzy music and joyful dance numbers," transported the audience to that era with its costumes and choreography. The trip to a European finishing school for well-to-do teenage ladies, where the audience met a range of characters, was an enjoyable one.

The play, which launched Julie Andrews' career when it debuted on Broadway in 1954, is based around the love story of Polly Brown and Tony Brockhurst.

Polly, played by Natalie Hall, is forlorn because her father is a millionaire and he is worried that any boy who dates his daughter is only after her inheritance. She tells her nosy friends who are a walking conglomerated hen house that her boyfriend is coming to take her to the big carnival in town. The only problem is, there is no boyfriend. Or is there?

When Polly's outfit comes for the event, it's fate. Tony delivers her dress and they fall in love at first sight. The two are delightfully happy until Tony runs off when his parents, Lord and Lady Brockhurst, show up looking for him. As it turns out their relationship started on a lie. Polly told him she was a secretary so he would not feel bad about being a messenger boy, but they both come clean later in the show, and with both coming from wealthy backgrounds, there are no other pretenses for the relationship: it's love.

Ms. Hall and Mike Frankey, who plays Tony, play their parts with panache and make a believable couple as Mr. Frankey's Tony clings to Ms. Hall's Polly.

The main characters are not the only ones feeling the love. Polly's three girlfriends also have adoring boyfriends, and her father who comes into town reunites with a former flame in the school's headmistress, Madame Dubonnet, whom he knows as "Kiki." Susan Cella playing Madame Dubonnet solidifies the setting with the best French accent among the cast and a sex drive akin to "Golden Girls"' character Blanche Devereaux.

The only area where the play falters is accents. It is set in France, yet only Ms. Cella maintains her accent throughout, even as she sings her numbers "Fancy Forgetting" and "You Don't Want to Play With Me Blues." It is possible that the other girls could be from America, but Tony is supposedly English, and yet there is hardly any hint of an accent from the United Kingdom when Mr. Frankey says his lines. Even his parents, played by Dick Decareau and Anna McNeely, do not seem to have accents. However, the audience hardly notices thanks to the endless fun of the play and the impressive dance moves by the cast, which can be attributed to the work of Denis Jones, a Broadway choreographer. The dances include the tango and Charleston. The cast performs them so well some audience members were caught replicating the moves as they walked to their cars at the end of the night.

The excellent costumes can be attributed to Jose Rivera. Even if a guest did not know what era the show was set in, they could easily guess given the hats all the ladies wear, the flapper-style dresses and the one- piece swimsuits worn by both the girls and their beaus in a beach scene.

Andrew Kato, the theatre's artistic director, made a wonderful choice when he opted to show "The Boy Friend" in December to give audiences something else to select from instead of the typical winter productions, such as "The Nutcracker."

It is a fun-filled, two-hour show that will leave audiences wanting to dance the Charleston or two-step with their boyfriend on the French Riviera.

"The Boy Friend" plays through Dec. 23. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, with another showing on Saturday at 8 p.m.

The Maltz Jupiter Theatre is located at 1001 E. Indiantown Road. For more information or tickets, call (561) 575-2223.