Anyone who attended the recent play A Tough Act To Follow put on by the Broad Street Players came away with a sore stomach. The play, which is based in the post-vaudeville 1950s New York Broadway scene, combines a humorous plot, a healthy dose of slapstick, colorful characters, and plenty of one-liners that kept the laughter rolling inside of the Stonington High School auditorium.
“We did really well and the crowd was wonderful,” Stonington High School Drama Director Linda Allen said. “They were receptive and they got the jokes which was really great because they made a lot of references to different plays.”
While more than 40 students auditioned for a part in the production, Allen’s cast consisted of 17 students, seven of whom were seniors, with sophomore Pat Kelley starring as the tricky but amiable agent Leo Mintz. Liz, Mintz’s sarcastic secretary, was played by senior Hannah Stewart, and senior Bridget Saluk portrayed Bebe, the office gopher. The mild-mannered but intimidating gangster Louie DeMarco was played by senior Jeremy Christian, and junior Amanda Calobrisi was Christine, the beautiful yet humble starlet.
Written by Pat Cook, A Tough Act To Follow tells the story of Leo Mintz, a once big-time Broadway agent, who has fallen on hard times and has resorted to representing an assortment of C- and D-rate acts. The list of wannabes includes Lydia, an aspiring ventriloquist with a smart-alec dummy, Maxie, a punch-drunk boxer, Adelaide, a teenage roller skater who recites poetry, and Christine, a young starlet with no discerning talent being pushed on Mintz by the mob. Allen explained why she chose the play.
“I’ve had 16 to 20 kids in a play before but it’s hard to come to rehearsals and have one line,” Allen said. “So what I was looking for, and this is why this play really appealed to me, is that each one of these kids got to develop a little character, and they had moments that they could really be recognized on stage. It wasn’t a one-liner where someone was just the policeman in one scene, they could all say, ‘I was the professor,’ or ‘I was Inga,’ so it was really what I was looking for; it kept everyone involved.”
As the curtains parted for the opening scene, the audience was greeted with the nonstop zaniness that would continue to prevail throughout the entire play. With Mintz’s secretary, Liz, on the phone with a client, the office is filled with would-be performers including Lydia and Adelaide just waiting for their chance to prove their worth to Mintz. As each “entertainer” practices their acts aloud, Liz tries emphatically to quiet the room but to no avail as chaos breaks out and everyone begins pitching their acts to her all at once while she struggles to hear the person on the phone.
“It’s all of these things just happening at once and it’s really adorable,” Allen said, “and Leo tries to accommodate everyone of course so it gets very funny at times. My lead is Pat Kelley, he’s only in 10th grade and he stepped up to the bar and did a great job… For me the tough thing is getting all of these kids together. We only got to practice for two hours a night for eight weeks, so it is a challenge to put together an ensemble because it has to meld. But I was very impressed, they really pulled it off, they were a unit. They had three nights of a high-energy, well-performed play. They hit their cues, they were funny…they tried the New Yawk accents and they had a lot of one-liners and zingers and everybody laughed.”
Allen explained that while the play went off without a hitch all three nights, what the crowd didn’t get to see was the dedication and hard work that each and every student involved poured into the production. Allen also credited the parents for their help and support.
“One of the hardest things at Stonington High is that we don’t have a lot of kids to pull from, it’s not a large population,” Allen explained “These kids that do theater for me are in crew, in tennis, they play golf, you know, they’re swamped, they take AP classes, and so it says a lot that they care enough to do this drama program because they don’t get any credits for it. They get nothing for this except the pride and accomplishment of being on the stage. So that’s what I feel really good about, you can’t say enough about these kids.”