by Kevin T McEneaney
PlaywrightKen Ludwig has written two dozen plays plus a few musicals. A Comedy of Tenorsoffers behind-the-curtain satire on hyperventilating tenors more immersed in their private lives than their public performances. The characters shower in their narcissism and their inclination to misconstrue reality. Director Diana Canova favors a madcap pace to magnify confusion, the central mechanism of the play’s plot that centers around the production of an opera by an American producer in Paris, played by Adam Battelstein, who is as nervous as a wealthy high school wannabe.
The world-famous gargantuan opera tenor Tito Merelli, played with vanity, gusto, bluster, introspection, and panache by Joe Harding, thrives on self-torment within his marriage, hobbled by memories of his youthful affair with a Russian diva, played with confident aplomb and wit by Barbara Disraeli. Wife Maria Merelli, played by Gillian Holt is forcefully effective as deluded, romantic, confused, and devoted to her husband, as misunderstandings pile up like misplaced scripts.
The burden of sanity falls heavily on the producer’s assistant, played by Sam Everest, who, without recognition, eats farce for a living while managing to retain his sanity. Novice Mimi Merelli, played by Sydney Mann with naïve and modest confusion, appears more real than the legends surrounding her. Carlo Nucci, played by Shawn Wodarska, comes across as the only sane person in the mental asylum of engorged theatrics, the only actor who doesn’t over-act with bumbling hysteria.
In this frantic comedy, everything that can go wrong nearly does, yet this is principally a comedy of misunderstandings; everything concludes with nothing going wrong at all, as all is well that ends well.
Costume design by Sue Haneman is pleasurably sane, and Keli Solomon’s set design is wittily spare yet sensibly effective.
The play, produced by Keli Solomon, runs in three acts, one intermission, for exactly two hours. This production at Theatreworks in New Milford runs through October 18. For tickets, call 860-350-6863 or online at https://theatreworks.us/
