Civic Light Opera’s ‘Desert Song’ offers escapist entertainment
Published 8:01 am Friday, February 22, 2008
Our president beats his drum for war. The stock market is anybody’s guess. Civic Light Opera is singing in the desert.
It’s a crazy world we live in.
Or is it?
CLO’s current “The Desert Song” comes out of the tradition of “Kismet” and “The King and I” and other musical romances that offer audiences escape in times of uncertainty. A mini vacation in a faraway place doesn’t sound half bad these days, don’t you think?
“Song” is a safe, sparkling sojourn in Morocco at a time when The French Foreign Legion was there, circa 1920. It boasts haunting melodies suggestive of shifting dunes and desolation, music by the legendary Sigmund Romberg as brilliantly re-arranged by Music Director, David Maddux. Scenic designs by Jeffrey Cook body forth those melodies with lush, green oases, palatial gardens and the implacable, burning sands of the desert by day and its lonely, moody, starlit skies at night. Also, costume designs by Jeffrey Aney and Deborah Sorenson ornament Spanish Arab dancing girls and a jewel turbaned emir.
Music and staging are definitely among the show’s highlight along with high adventure, a colorful parade of exotic, one dimensional characters, fairy tale love and uproarious comedy by Howard Stregack and Kathryn Schoolcraft.
Stregack and Schoolcraft freeze-frame goings on time and time again. Theirs is a vaudevillian connection. Stregack is the mousy war correspondent who runs, and Schoolcraft is his, ordinarily mild-mannered secretary who chases. They banter, they posture; their one liners are threadbare clichés but all the more delicious because they are so perfectly delivered. This is corn from the get-go and hilarious every ridiculous step of the way.
Fred Sederholm takes on the admittedly perplexing role of The Red Shadow, a kind of masked marvel who leads a raiding band of renegade Arabs half the time and a sniveling dandy who trips and stumbles and bungles his way around French military headquarters the other half of his time. Sederholm is far funnier as a fop than imposing as a commander of cutthroats. A more physically formidable presence would be more satisfying.
Amanda Brown has Sederholm’s heartthrob puts across a convincing, spirited Parisian socialite bored with polite society and yearning for the passionate love of a desert fox. Also, her singing voice soars above all others.
Jackie Edwards gets you laughing to yourself as a barefoot, Arab hellcat and throwaway of the arrogant French captain, Fontaine, as played by a smug, snooty Charles Crowley. Edwards is a hoot.
John Kobasic’s French General is Sean Connery incarnate. The hair matted chest and mean and meaty face of Joe Peterson, terrify. He is Red Shadow’s second in command but could easily double for one of Bin Laden’s bodyguards.
Overall, the case has its moments. But it is feel and mood of the setting they populate that does the trick. This is entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Guaranteed for what ails you. Well worth the price of a ticket for folks of all ages.
