Flight of Farce

Needham and Carlson work together beautifully, and they have the voices to carry off the brief but euphoric singing. Needham moves from anxiety to swagger as his character’s fortunes change, without losing his essential sincerity. Carlson has an even greater task in humanizing this clichéd figure of the Italian tenor, and by softening and deepening his performance gestures he creates a convincing and appealing character. NCRT often finds the sweetness and simple humanity in their productions, and that’s especially true for this delightful evening.

Renee Grinell’s direction is sparkling and wise: she speeds things along when appropriate (including a 90-second pantomime of the whole play just before the curtain call), but produces slower moments for character and emotion, and even some subtler comedy. Scenic designer Bill Cose and scenic artist Mark Fontaine seem to know their 1930s era Midwestern swank hotel décor, and the set is ingeniously workable for the inevitable hiding-in-the closet machinations. Marcia Hutson created the evocative costumes, and Calder Johnson designed the lighting.

The script is inevitably predictable at points, but there are some surprises and verbal wit as well as physical comedy. This is a fine production and a fun evening. Some tentative moments on opening night should disappear, as the cast gets comfortable with the pace and the complicated stage business. That’s important because as dependent on a sound mechanism as farce is, it becomes really funny when the actors lessen reliance on stock gestures and poses, and convey in the moment that their characters completely believe the situation, and are improvising their way out of it.

Lend Me A Tenor plays through August 9. In September NCRT will begin its 25th season, and one way it will celebrate this anniversary is with a new production of its very first show a quarter of a century ago: the musical comedy She Loves Me, by Joseph Stein, with songs by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (the same team that created Fiddler on the Roof.)

The season begins with the annual Shakespeare (The Merry Wives of Windsor) and features another musical — The Producers, by Mel Brooks. Mid-season, artistic director Michael Thomas will direct an evening of two one act plays: Beware the Man Eating Chicken by Henry Meyerson, and The Goat by Edward Albee. Despite their titles, the subject linking them isn’t barnyard animals, but human feeling in what NCRT bills as “An Evening of Comedy and Oddity.”

Rounding out the season are Tina Howe’s perennial favorite regional theatre drama, Painting Churches, and a contemporary comedy by Norm Foster, The Love List.

This weekend, Ferndale Rep’s Senior Theatre Acting Repertory (a tortured way of spelling out STAR) brings Dave Silverbrand’s comedy Make Mine Metamucil to the Eureka Theatre for two performances: Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.

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