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SNAP! Productions to mount the Omaha Premiere of The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure
This is the perfect summer fare for any person who grew up reading “The Hardy Boys” mystery series or for those of you who are looking to spend two hours groaning with laughter as a good caper hilariously unfolds. Paul Boesing, currently residing in Omaha, and his writing partner, Timothy Cope, have crafted a delightful musical romp in which the only mystery those accomplished American teen sleuths, Frank and Joe Hardy, can’t seem to solve is that of their own sexual identity.
After a rash of burglaries against some of Bayport’s elite unmarried gentlemen “of certain mature age”, Frank and Joe are hired by wealthy philanthropist Cornelius Digby to guard “The Macedonia Cigar”, a piece of artwork the gentlemen recluse donated to the Bayport Institute of Art. When “The Greek Butt” (as it is affectionately named) is stolen Frank and Joe, along with their best chum Chet Morton and their steady gals Iola Morton and Callie Shaw, embark on an adventure that takes them from the worldly Mrs. Carstairs’ costume shop all the way to Ghost Island and Dead Man’s Cave! Return with us to a time when things were simpler and society was oblivious to diversity. Call it spoof, parody or social commentary, or simply call it a fabulous evening of music and comedy that will leave you singing “we like you just the way you are.”
Daena Schweiger will direct this musical comedy and is very delighted to have assembled a cast that includes Tim Vallier, Andy King, Joe Blackstad, Allison Wissman, Mallory Vallier, Gary Wallace, Barb Ross, Fred Goodhew, Liz Mulhern, Geoff Chenowith and Jeremy Gilmore.
SNAP!is also pleased to have staffing this show Liz Heim (Producer), Zach Peterson (Music Director), Melanie Walters (Choreographer), NancyRoss (Costumes), Adam Nathan (Set Design), Mark Cramer (Multimedia), JoAnn Goodhew (Stage Manager) and Brian Callaghan (Tech).
Buy your tickets now for this rollicking musical comedy. The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure will run from May 28 - June 21, 2009 at 3225 California Street.Curtain times are 8:00 pm, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 6:00 pm on Sundays. The Sunday, June 21st show will start at 2:00 pm. The theater opens a half hour before curtain time.
CAST (in alphabetical order)
Joe Blackstad——Chet Morton
Geoff Chenowith——Fenton Hardy
Fred Goodhew——Chief Collig
JoAnn Goodhew——Rude Person
Andy King——Joe Hardy
Jeremy Gillmore——A Lout, Coast Guard Captain
Liz Mulhern——Aunt Gertrude
Barb Ross——Electra Carstairs
Mallory Vallier——Iola Morton
Tim Vallier——Frank Hardy
Gary Wallace——Cornelius Digby
Allison Wissman——Callie Shaw
BAND
Keyboard——Zachary Peterson
Bass——Max Begley
STAFF
Director——Daena Schweiger
Music Director——Zachary Peterson
Choreographer——Melanie Walters
Producer——Liz Heim
Stage Manager——JoAnn Goodhew
Set Design——Adam Nathan
Properties Design——Rhonda Hall
Costume Design——Nancy Ross
Light Design——Todd Brooks
Sound Design——Daena Schweiger
Multimedia Tech——Brian Callaghan
Box Office——Liz Heim
Set Construction——Adam Nathan, McClain Smouse, M. Michele Phillips,Fred Goodhew, Tim Vallier,
Mallory Vallier, Barb Ross, Joe Basque, Jennifer Gilg,
Brian Callaghan, Daena Schweiger
Publicity——Todd Brooks
Video Production, poster, sound design, photos——Mark Cramer
SONGS
ACT I
The Skies Are Always Blue in Bayport——Frank and Joe
Boys Are Made For Danger——Frank, Joe and Digby
Boys Are Made For Danger-Reprise——Frank, Joe, Callie and Iola
Without A Clue——Callie and Iola
You Need to Tell a Woman From a Man—Aunt Gertrude
The Usual Suspects——Chief Collig, Frank and Joe
My Old Queen——Chet
Chums——Frank, Joe and Chet
Accessories——Mrs. Carstairs, Frank and Joe
The Drag——The Company
ACT II
The Plot Thicken——Frank and Joe
Uniform——First Coast Guard and Company
Dance With Me——Mrs. Carstairs and Digby
Straight and Narrow——Fenton and The Lout
The Usual Suspects-Reprise——Frank and Joe
The Brownie Song——Aunt Gertrude, Frank and Joe
Just The Way You Are——The Company
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Theater: There! I Said It!
SNAP!'S ‘The Secret of the Old Queen’
By: David Williams
Omaha City Weekly
Issue: June 3, 2009
They are the fictionalized, well-scrubbed embodiment of an American ideal of masculinity who live in a time when gay meant happy and in a place where the bread is white, the picket fences are white and the spotless Formica tabletops are … well, at least off-white.
The Hardy Boys series, featuring a duo of teen sleuths who took a certain brand of argyle-splashed squareness and elevated it to the level of fetishism, has been in print since 1927. And now the wide-eyed crime-solvers take on new life in “The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure,” the hilarious romp from SNAP Productions over at the SNAP!/Shelterbelt Theatre.
Don’t confuse this musical with its campy cousins who give over the top treatments to familiar cultural icons. This production, with score and lyrics from Omaha composer/actor Paul Boesing under the direction of Daena Schweiger, plays it as straight as can be. Well, at least straight enough so that those who grew up in the heyday of the Hardy Boys popularity will derive double the pleasure from this homage to an earlier, simpler time.
Skip the differences. We’re better served to examine instead the similarities between the classic book series and this, its pseudo-campy spin-off.
Joe (Andy King) and Frank (Tim Vallier) Hardy are still the decidedly asexual detectives who, despite being of an age ravaged by raging hormones, give only nominal attention to their slightly Sapphic girlfriends Iola (Mallory Vallier) and Callie (a tap dancing Allison Wissman). The play kicks it up a notch by having the boys’ libido sparked only when the girls get duded up in pirate costumes for a gala ball, an event that gives Iola the opportunity to observe that “it looks like the whole town has come out” in a show laden with winked double entendres that keep the laughs coming early and often.
And, like the book, their omnipresent friend Chet, riotously played by Joe Blackstead, is an oddly effeminate, eternally peckish fellow. The pulp Chet is destined for art school while the stage Chet merely takes the character to a bolder, cross-dressing, falsetto-singing conclusion.
From the Hardy Boys lush harmonies in “The Skies are Always Blue in Baytown” to the cha-cha-chas of “The Usual Suspects,” Boesing’s mix of musical styles, complimented by Melanie Walters’ crowd pleasing choreography, keeps things moving in a show that is otherwise long at just over two and a half hours. Add an award-worthy turn by Barb Ross in a smallish role as an oversexed, patrician dowager, a sashaying Gary Wallace in a Marie Antoinette getup and some snappy video overlays by Mark Cramer and “The Secret of the Old to Queen” is one of those shows where it may be best to get your tickets early.
This production also comes with a delightful bonus. The diminutive Mallory Vallier may be small in stature, but there’s nothing small about her community theater debut as the spunky sparkplug Iola, she of the crystalline soprano and signature line of “There! I said it!”
Theater Review:
Vocals steal the show from jokes in ‘Hardy Boys’ spoof
By Kim Bousquet
Published: Thursday, June 4, 2009 9:49 AM CDT - Council Bluffs, Iowa Daily Nonpareil
OMAHA – It’s hard not to be charmed by the all-American good looks of Andy King and Tim Vallier, who play Joe and Frank Hardy in Snap! Productions’ “The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure.” The two are naturals on stage and their voices are great.
The girls in their life in this show, Iola and Callie (played by Mallory Vallier and Allison Wissman), are equally impressive vocally, making this musical spoof a good musical on its own.
The show basically follows these two teenage sleuths who are hired by the wealthy recluse Cornelius Digby (Gary Wallace) to protect the “Macedonian Cigar,” a prized artwork that’s about to be revealed at the town’s art center. However, the statue (also, comically referred to as the “Greek Butt”) is stolen and the boys scramble to find it as well as their missing chum, Chet (Joe Blackstad).
If you grew up reading the Hardy Boys mysteries, or in my case, Nancy Drew, you’ll find yourself trying to guess who is the bad guy. Is it the constantly chewing Chet? Or is it the new scruffy looking fellow in town (Jeremy Gillmore)? Perhaps it’s that loopy costumer, Electra Carstairs (Barb Ross)?
Director Daena Schweiger’s two-hour-and-40-minute musical is a bit longer than need be for a mystery of this sort, but it had its fair share of good laughs. The show is full of double entendres, sexual innuendos and homosexual references. A more judicial use of the jokes would’ve had a better effect, but the Sunday night audience I was in still laughed until the very end. There was a 10-minute intermission.
Jokes aside, the show ended with a feel-good message about acceptance.
The songs were well written and with many able and talented singers on cast, they sounded great. They weren’t as funny as some of the one-liners and comedic situations, but they were good. One I liked a lot was about how good of chums Joe, Frank and Chet were. It featured a goofy dance from the guys. Another song number featured a nice tap-dance routine that drew cheers from the audience. Melanie Walters was the choreographer.
Producers smartly had a two-man band (Zachary Peterson, keyboard, and Max Begley, bass) to give the show a wonderful live feel to it.
*
There was nothing special to the brown set, though the look matched the drab drawings found on the cover of those Hardy Boys books. The costumes by Nancy Ross were great, especially King’s and Tim Vallier’s boyish outfits that seemed straight out of the 1940s. And the costumes used for the art center’s costume ball were fun and elaborate.
The show runs through June 21 at 3225 California St., Omaha. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., and Sundays, 6 p.m. The June 21 show is at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, adults, and $12, students, seniors and TAG members. All tickets on Thursdays are $10. For reservations, call (402) 341-2757 or go to www.snapproductions.com.
Arts & Entertainment Editor Kim Bousquet can be reached at (712) 325-5736 or by e-mail at kbousquet@nonpareilonline.com
Queen Me
Hardy Boys delivers parody with panache
by Warren Francke - Omaha Weekly ReaderThe title and the venue let you know what to expect from SNAP! Productions The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure. If that’s not enough, the phone message promises parody.
But, just in case we didn’t get it, two nearby audience members found every gay double entendre laugh-out-loud funny, so there was little danger that we might miss a single reference to “rising to the occasion” or any other priapic allusion. Laughter can be contagious or it can squelch a milder reaction.
That would have made for a rather long evening: you quickly get the core comedy and the book by Timothy Cope soon seems belabored. Thank goodness three other points (please, not phallic ones) went a long way toward saving the show.
Most importantly, several songs and lyrics by Paul Boesing, now an Omaha resident, were very appealing across a wide range of musical styles. Two lovely ones, “Doing the Drag” and “Dance With Me” mixed with such parody patter as “Chums” and “Boys Are Made for Danger,” and a rousing closer, “We Like You Just the Way You Are.”
Then there was a delicious performance by Barb Ross as Electra Carstairs, a highly entertaining take on a rather lascivious lady. Her pairing with Gary Wallace as one possible “old queen” (the other being a little yellow car) was especially appealing when they shared the “Dance With Me” number.
The third saving feature came from the video production studio of Mark Cramer. His opening footage of the Hardy Boys, Andy King as Joe and Tim Vallier as Frank, flying through a storm in a vintage airplane, then parachuting to safety with Disney-like birds landing cheerfully on their shoulders, set just the right spoofing tone for the musical that followed.
Video returned in Act Two as the boys aimed a speedboat for Ghost Island in search of the stolen Macedonian Cigar, an erect stogy portrayed as a valuable art object. The lads, described as “those accomplished teen sleuths,” eventually solve the mystery as various false identities are revealed.
While those three highlights did the most to compensate for the tired jokes, others helped. Joe Blackstad’s comic treatment of Joe Morton, the Hardy Boys’ “chum” who likes to “buff the old queen” (the car in this case), held up well.
Vallier and King captured the gee-whiz innocence of the boy detectives, and both Allison Wissman and Mallory Vallier did the same for their purported girlfriends as all four struggled with the mysteries of their sexual identities. The choreography of Melanie Walters worked, whether with duos or big ensemble numbers, adding some impressive tap turns by Wissman and Jeremy Gillmore.
Minor roles proved to be a mixed bag, but Liz Mulhern as an almost operatic Aunt Gertrude stood out. The set design was almost nonexistent, but director Daena Schweiger kept cast and crew busy carrying set pieces on and off stage.
The script seemed to work best when it parodied the boys’ earnest dialogue such as “We thrive on peril, don’t we, Frank?” And it’s always fun to make fun of artificial exposition by packing a simple declarative sentence with all sorts of unlikely biography. Toss in a few cliché lines like “As God is my witness,” and that leaves only the original complaint: too many takes on the same old joke.
The lyrics, on the other hand, did not wear thin, having a good time with such rhymes as Joe “has nerves of steel,” but “doesn’t know how I feel.”
The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure runs May 28-June 21 by SNAP! Productions at 3225 California St. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 6 p.m., except Sun., June 21, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, $12 for students, seniors and TAG members, $10 on Thurs. Call 341.2757 or visit snapproductions.com.
04 Jun 2009
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