Little Me

Summer Doldrums, The Break Your Leg Chronicles: Theater Reviews & Comments by Patrick Shannon, III

Tuesday July 17, 07
by Patrick Shannon, III, Ambush Magazine

Link to news article:
www.ambushmag.com/is1507/

Sugar Babies - an innocently risque valentine to burlesque - was produced at Le Petit Theater du Vieux Carre and directed with wonderful boundless energy (choreography - from precision tap to glowing Minstrel Show banjos - was created in exuberant period detail by Karen Hebert) and verve by Sonny Borey and Derek Franklin. It was a joy and wonder to behold. Trina Beck, Dane Rhodes, Bryan Wagner, and Karen Hebert illuminated the stage in just about their every scene as did the ever amazing Michael Sullivan, Bob Edes, Richard Hutton, and Robert Richardson.

Trina Beck, like Karen Hebert, was outstanding and beautiful, performing with grace, humor, and elegance and a lot of good comic timing. Her nicely naughty fan dance with lavender feathers and matching set and costumes was stunning. There were fourteen beautiful young women - the show’s chorines called the Sugar Babies, each and every one a goddess; and four very handsome men in a tuneful Gaiety Quartet, all proven talents of the local stage. Space does not permit naming them all; but kudos to each and every one.

This combo variety and burlesque show was a hugely successful work of show biz artistry, spectacular in every sense of the word as was Chad Talkington’s many many curtains and set pieces for the musical’s Gaiety Theater. The costumes by a coven of magic making designers, Roy Haylock, Regina Schlotzhauer, Linda Fried, and Cecile Casey Covert, were bright and spellbinding.

With Derek Franklin conducting a twenty piece orchestra and the
brilliant Joanne Dendinger at the piano, our ears enjoyed a really well centered professional vaudeville-burlesque Broadway musical sound.

However the many old burlesque joke and scenes did go on and on and on. This amazing show might have benefitted from a lot of editing in the second act. Cut out all the jokes and just keep in those amazing musical numbers. Sometimes a little goes a long way. In spite of this critique, one tired old word really does describes the production: FABULOUS!!