It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play

Part of HappenStance Productions’ cachet is in staging solid crowd-pleasing entertainment, but a large proportion lies in choosing projects that agree with the Andiamo Novi upstairs theater that it’s occupied for a string of productions. With the Christmas season in full swing, and most favorite holiday tales requiring expansive casts and settings, the company now takes a winning scaled-down approach to a time-tested classic. With playwright Joe Landry’s It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, director Aaron T. Moore blends front-and-center character work with backstage magic, putting engaging new packaging on a story many viewers know by heart.

It may be 2011 in the surrounding Italian restaurant and martini lounge, but here it’s December 24, 1946, in the studio of Detroit City radio station WAND. The premise is efficiently established in a few deft strokes, as the sharply attired players welcome the audience to the live broadcast and entertain them with a handful of a cappella carols while making their last-minute preparations for the show. By the time the stage manager calls the countdown and the on-air light toggles on, it’s easy to believe the illusion, especially given the practiced professionalism of this ensemble. The broadcast itself is presented in a single block of three major acts, which are broken up by quick breaks and cute ads from laughable “sponsors.” In all, the show runs less than two hours at a single stretch, quite a bit shy of the original film's running time.

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Five Course Love

Within the first year of its inception, HappenStance Productions has found a home base at Andiamo Novi’s upstairs theater. Now the company brings its latest in a string of musicals, Five Course Love (book, music, and lyrics by Gregg Coffin), a bodice-ripper of an international buffet. Under the direction of Aaron T. Moore, this production plays up the campy, soapy humor of its premise and embraces the addictive appeal of the empty calorie, to delectably tawdry effect.

There’s rhyme and reason behind the paperback book each woman character (all played by Maren Ritter) is reading when we first meet her, but the production wisely drops the through line like a hot potato, giving each of the musical’s five distinct vignettes an agreeably self-contained feel. The scenes, all featuring a woman, a man (Patrick O’Reilly), and a facilitating waiter (Moore), tell stories of first meetings, infidelity, betrayal, and fighting for love; what they have in common is their passionate themes, their restaurant settings, and their unabashed unreality. Befitting a handful of silly capers, the actors play to the audience at every available opportunity, giving the show a cabaret feel ideally suited to the utter absurdity of these pulpy escapades.

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