Lyric Arts leads off season with laughter and lunacy in ‘Leading Ladies’

With all the weighty matters in the world today, what better way to kick off the Lyric Arts theatrical season than a wonderfully silly slapstick comedy? Leading Ladies provides a perfectly zany world to escape into for a couple hours of high-energy fun.

The talented cast featuring all returning actors to the Lyric Arts stage takes the audience on a wild goose-chase best described as Shakespeare meets Three’s Company (a la Jack Tripper, Janet and Chrissy). If that initially sounds like a recipe for over the top cheese and English accents, then you’d be right… and wrong.

The second scene has Leo (Keith Reilly) and Jack (Matt Berdahl) performing a Shakespearean play at the Moose Lodge Monty Python-style. Don’t get scared off by the Shakespeare. Leading Ladies skirts the need to understand classical Shakespeare with plenty of humor and a wild ride of quick changes, mishaps and slapstick comedy. The show follows not quite wildly successful Shakespearean actors Leo (Keith Reilly) and Jack (Matt Berdahl) in their attempt to make a quick buck from an ailing millionaire, Florence (Martha Wigmore).

Leo figures it will be simple enough for he and his actor buddy to show up as millionaire’s long lost nephews only, they discover a bit too late, that the millionaire’s long lost relatives are nieces. Desperate for the cash and a chance to start over, Leo convinces Jack they can still pull it off, after all, they are actors.

I’m not sure what it is about men wearing dresses and bright red size 15 high heels, but it’s an affect that is sure to bring giggles. As the night wore on, I marveled at how easily Keith and Matt pulled off their feminine counterparts. The cheese factor in this show could have easily made it tedious but the energy and acting prowess of the entire cast allows the audience to mine something even deeper out of this show than belly laughs.

Appearing as the niece “Maxine,” Keith masterfully managed to portray a female character with depth and realism; perhaps his uncanny resemblance to a former French teacher I once had also has something to do with that. At any rate, Keith and Amber Reilly, as Meg, created a heart-warming friendship between two cousins as “Maxine” encourages Meg not to settle in love or life with lines such as, “It doesn’t matter where you start but where you end up.”

While Keith and Matt are busy transforming back and forth between male and female characters – in a way that had my head spinning but was so delightfully fun to watch – focused a lot of time on the characters rehearsing to perform Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This is symbolic as Leading Ladies offers themes found Twelfth Night such as mistaken identity.

Another impressive feature of this show is the heavy-duty physicality. From the moment they step on stage, these actors are using their entire bodies, jumping, twirling, hitting, kicking and really interacting and moving through the show. Every single actor brings so much energy that the entire audience gets drawn into this show in a way that really illustrates the power of live theatre. The action leaves even the audience breathless.

This show is fun, full of talented cast members who all deliver strong performances and leave me excited for what else is in store this season at Lyric Arts.

If you haven’t seen this one yet, get thee to the theatre at once. Shows run through Sept. 25.

A Little Bit About Mindy: Mindy Mateuszczyk is a journalist and editor with Minnesota Sun Press Newspapers and an active member of the metro area community theater world for the past five years. Previously, Mateuszczyk has lived and worked in the Boston suburbs, southern California, Salt Lake City and upstate New York. She has studied film, photography, theater, public relations, communications and journalism.