Tongue n Cheek has a knack for joking in Fish Creek

[ad_1]

FISH CREEK, Wis. (WFRV) Seriously, Fred Alley was having a hard time joking.

His shows and songs are often overflowing with ironic fantasy. In the case of Tongue n Cheek, that’s pretty much all the way.

The key figure is an extremely hard worker. He struggles, connives, calculates, manipulates and maneuvers everything in order to get out of work. Plus, he’s the lousiest cook around.

You can’t not love George Sutter because he’s so ridiculous.

And town spiritual medicine practitioner Doc Johnson is right behind.

Tongue n Cheek would be a light show if it hadn’t been for verbal deception. Just around the corner is the next pun, the next piece of fractured logic, the next playful version of the English language, the next outrageous hype.

In Door County at the time, it was so cold in the winter that a man’s shadow froze in the barn door.

Some men haven’t caught a cold. They were too slow to catch the cold.

Some people don’t trust Doc Johnson at all. One of them said I wouldn’t believe him if he swore he was lying.

When Doc goes a-courtin, the no he hears comes in an elaborate form: you are looking for pears on an elm tree.

Being a small town, everyone has a knack for gossip, which travels like crackers on homemade tomato soup.

It all goes on and on, with the professional cast singing, dancing and acting like a storm and often playing an instrument or three. The orchestra of the show is a musician (Andrew Crowe) who plays eight instruments. The show opens and ends with a sort of makeshift tootin / trumpetin / drummin and the like marching band as it parades around the stage of the Peninsula State Park amphitheater, shaking the needles on the pines hovering all around.

The story is about couples. George Sutter (Dan Klarer) lazes in the kitchen and cleaning, it is a disaster every time his wife, Naomi (Lachrisa Grandberry) takes care of all the chores on the farm, starting with milking the cows. Doc Johnson (Isaiah Spetz) happily peddles his magic elixir, but loneliness sets in with the presence of Lorna (Jamie Mercado), who swears she won’t marry a man short, tall, thin, fat, old, young. , you get the picture. The Narrator (Anna Cline) directs happily and usually becomes a part of the action. It’s an excellent multitalented cast.

Isaiah Spetz, Jamie Mercado, Lachrisa Grandberry, Dan Klarer and Anna Cline. (Len Villain)

Tongue n Cheek is so many layers.

+ Its sparkling pleasure. Stupidity / idiocy ends up being romance. With her marriage in an uncertain state, Naomi is thoughtful and sings such beautiful lines that You pick a partner for the dance, close your eyes, and take a chance. The Narrator is also caught up in love, but it’s purely comedic in relation to Old Dave, an almost useless mule. Yeah, seriously, Fred Alley had a way to joke.

+ The style of the show may seem old-fashioned, but much of it is dense, tightly written, and expertly performed in a comedic / aural way. The trumpet-trombone-kazoo-voice number hits the mark.

+ Fred Alley co-founded the company, wrote, performed, sang and edited things with his imagination that not all kings ‘horses and all kings’ men could do. He passed away 20 years ago, at the age of 38. This show, his show, was the company’s first musical book; versus a review of chained songs, musicals from books have a story around the songs. That was in 1997. By bringing back Tongue n Cheek, the company is reintroducing today’s audiences into the ways of Fred Alley.

+ Jeff Herbst, artistic director of the Northern Sky Theater, directed the 1997 production of Tongue n Cheek. He also directs this production with full knowledge of the facts. There is an authenticity in the style and the aura and the overall tone brilliant.

+ Tongue n Cheek is shorter than recent Northern Sky Theater productions. It is also lighter. With so much weight over the past 16 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the light is more than pleasant.

***

Creative: designer Fred Alley; additional music Fred Alley, James Kaplan; director Jeff Herbst; musical director and arranger Andrew Crowe; manager Shawn Galligan; assistant stage manager Hayden Hoffman; costume coordinator Dan Klarer; lighting designer James Balistreri; sound designer Ben Warner

To throw:

Narrator Anna Cline

George Sutter Dan Klarer

Naomi Sutter Lachrisa Grandberry

Doc Johnson Isaiah Spetz

Lorna Thompson Jamie Mercado

Liner for Doc Johnson Hayden Hoffman

Duration: 70 minutes (without intermission)

Other performances: 7:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday until August 7

Info: northskytheater.com

***

ALSO: Live and in-person performances of Not Even Remotely at the Gould Theater through August 7th. This is the first time that Northern Sky Theater has presented two summer shows simultaneously and with the same departure times on the same dates in its two theaters.

LOCATION: The Northern Sky Theater (the former American Folklore Theater) performs in a scenic 800-seat amphitheater in Peninsula State Park near Fish Creek, Door County. The seats are on wooden benches, with cushions available in the premium seating areas. The stage measures approximately 25 feet by 45 feet and is irregularly shaped as two tall white pines grow in the middle of the stage. Other pines surround the fringes of the stage. The stage deck, unlike all stage walls, is made from recycled plastic, Northern Sky Theater artistic director Jeffrey Herbst said. Its waterproof. The deck held up really well. The rest of the scene, everything vertical is cedar that needs to be stained, treated, washed and preserved. We chose this type of material partly because we wanted something that wouldn’t warp and because when it rains on this material it actually becomes less slippery. With cedar, when we used to have it as a terrace, as soon as we had water on it, it was like an ice rink. The amphitheater is nestled in a forest and accessible by winding roads.

[ad_2]