By John Quinn
The headline is a well-known quote in comedy circles. These "last words" are attributed to theatrical types ranging from actor Edmund Gwenn to playwright George Bernard Shaw. Whoever it was, he was on to something. In comedy, as in death, timing is everything.
Dennis Wickline Productions closes its 30th season with "A Musical Salute to Vaudeville and Burlesque," an original comedy first performed by the company in 1981. Playwright Wickline directs his own script, accompanied by musical director John Dickinson, the original composer. The play is a tribute to an era of entertainment doomed by movies and stripper bars. The comedy segments are variations on the themes of immoral – ahem – IMMORTAL shtick made famous by comics like the Three Stooges and Milton Berle. (To my Millennial readers: I leave Googling Berle to you as an exercise.) The bits are as corny as Kansas in August; the score a pastiche of old-fashioned tunes.
The time is October 1929. The place is the fictional Markhoff Theatre, a Midwestern vaudeville house. We meet the mixed bag of characters who make Markhoff's their home for eight shows a week. The players are Ed Schneider, Samantha White, Miranda Tully, Ed Thomas, John Arden McClure and Sharron Nelson, who doubles as the choreographer of the production. The artistes they portray are a hapless lot, and it's not long into their "show" we get an idea just what may have killed vaudeville.
The first act ends in a thunderclap – the stock market crash leaves the theater without an audience. Markhoff's is to become a house of burlesque. It's the same theater, same troupers, but skimpier costumes, bawdier bits.
Is "A Musical Tribute" funny? Oh, yes. There's a good choice of material in both script and score. Could it have been funnier? Oh, yes, because in comedy and death, timing is everything. Broadway Onstage is the home of the patented TeeVeeStage Presentation System and the company chose to run the Marx Brother's film "A Night at the Opera" on the monitors before the show and at the intermission. That film is monument to the art of comedy. It also gets my vote as funniest film of all time. It would be a rare company indeed who could look polished in comparison.
In order to get the flavor of vaudeville or burlesque, an actor must toss overboard everything he knows about acting. If a dramatic actor "sells" his role like the snob behind the counter at Lord & Taylor sells ties, the vaudevillian is as pushy as a Kirby vacuum salesman. Lines aren't spoken, they're barked. Gestures become gesticulations. Songs are belted, even if you can't hit the notes. You step down to the footlights, fearless, and with authority. The routines have to look, not like they're being done for the first time, but for the umpteenth time. And the last is like unto the first; it's timing, timing, timing!
Raucous and randy, "A Musical Salute to Vaudeville and Burlesque" kept 'em rolling in the aisles opening night. That bodes well for Broadway Onstage's upcoming 31st season.
REVIEW:
'A Musical Salute to Vaudeville and Burlesque'
Broadway Onstage Live Theatre, 21517 Kelly Rd., Eastpointe. Friday-Saturday through May 14. $16. 586-771-6333. http://www.broadwayonstage.com.
