Alley Theatre’s ‘Lend Me a Soprano’ is a rollicking good time

The world premiere of Ken Ludwig's twist on his own 'Lend Me a Tenor' is a fast-paced screwball delight.

By Chris Vognar for the Houston Chronicle

For something that seems so superfluous and care-free, farce is incredibly difficult to pull off. The timing must be precise, from the synchronized door-slamming to the pregnant pauses where the laughter must fit just so. The tone must arrive at the perfect point of comedic artifice. The frenetic pace is taxing. Watching the cast of Alley Theatre’s “Lend Me a Soprano” take their curtain call at the end of the play on opening night, one question kept running through my mind: How do they go to sleep after this?

The world premiere of Ken Ludwig’s show-must-go-on show is a screwball delight, fast, furious and consistently funny. Reworking his own tried-and-true comedy “Lend Me a Tenor” with an effective gender reversal, Ludwig has created a showpiece of controlled chaos, relentless but deceptively thoughtful in its dissection of performative ego and pride. Mostly, however, it’s just a dizzying amount of fun.

The year is 1934, and the folks behind the Cleveland Grand Opera Company are nervous. Their star soprano, Elena Firenzi (Alexandra Silber), is running late; when she finally shows up, diva attitude and growling husband (Orlando Arriaga) in tow, she proves to be a tempestuous problem. She does, however, take a liking to the mousy but tenacious Jo (Mia Pinero), even giving her what turns out to be a very fateful singing lesson.

Plot summary isn’t just beside the point here; it’s nearly impossible. There’s a suicide that isn’t and a pair of libidinous suitors (Jo’s lukewarm fiancé Jerry, played by Brandon Hearnsberger, and a dim Dutch tenor, played by Steven Good). There’s the irreplaceable administrator (Ellen Harvey) responsible for making the trains (and sopranos) run on time, and the flighty chairwoman of the opera board (a scene-stealing Susan Koozin). By the second act there are two Elenas, occasioning a madcap roundelay of mistaken identity and no small amount of sexual frisson.

All of this is confined to one set (designed by Klara Zieglerova), a posh hotel suite bristling with kinetic energy. Characters pop in and out, hide in closets and a bathroom, dash in and out of the bedroom. The whole enterprise has a Marx Brothers energy; you half expect Margaret Dumont to rise from the grave and make a cameo (she was, after all, in “A Night at the Opera”). Director Eleanor Holdridge keeps everything humming along, harnessing the inspired madness, keeping it under just the right amount of control.

There’s something delicious about an (elite) regional arts company lampooning the doings of a regional arts company. Koozin’s chairwoman of the board flutters about like Norma Desmond, issuing pronouncements about this and that, spreading eccentricity in her wake. Harvey’s demanding, can-do booster frets at the possibility that the board will be eating bad shrimp backstage. Elena Firenzi is the biggest thing that has ever happened to the Cleveland Grand Opera Company. If the show doesn’t go on, catastrophe will rain down. These are the stakes that set “Lend Me a Soprano” in motion, the urgency behind the ample laughter.

Of course, it’s also just a singing, door-slamming, bed-hopping whirlwind of a good time.