As arguably the preeminent Broadway farce of the 1980s, interest in Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor” has rarely waned in the 22 years since it premiered
there. The Caldwell did a fantastic version a few years back, a musical version of the play premiered in West End in 2006 and a Broadway revival opened last year.
An old-fashioned slapstick comedy even for its time, “Lend Me a Tenor” evokes an inspired period nostalgia – it’s set in a Cleveland hotel suite in the 1930s – that makes it perenially popular for venues like the Broward Stage Door, which play to an older demographic.
The Stage Door’s season-opening mounting of “Lend Me a Tenor,” which runs through Nov. 13, seems at first to lack the zip and immediacy of that Caldwell production, as if all the players are one beat behind where they should be. But in Act Two, everybody is on-point and hilarious, and even the pickiest critic of farces should go home satisfied.
As in every production of “Lend Me a Tenor,” the story is pretty much secondary to the madcap antics of its characters. But for clarity’s sake, the plot concerns mercurial, skirt-chasing Italian tenor Tito Merelli (Ariel Frankel), who is arriving in Cleveland for a performance of “Otello.” A case of mistaken identity leads to Merelli’s wife Maria (Natalie Ramirez) leaving him. One thing leads to another, and eventually the nervous and fusty opera company assistant Max (Clay Cartland) is onstage singing Merelli’s part, wrongly assuming the bombastic tenor has given up the ghost.
Cartland is terrific is the play’s most demanding role; he has to play Max, then Max playing Merelli in full costume and blackface, and he excels in this character-within-a-character challenge. Sheira Feuerstein brings an amusing artificiality to opera diva Diana, parading around the stage like a preening mannequin.
But my favorite performance comes courtesy of Michael Douglass as Saunders, the opera company’s executive director, whose exasperated line readings and rubbery countenance recall the great “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star Colin Mochrie. Frankel is fine as Tito, if a bit miscast: He’s a rail-thin actor, and the part calls for a performer of Pavarotti-like girth, so all the lines about the tenor’s excessive overeating ring false.
For the most part, everyone hits his or her melodramatic, innuendo-laced pitch just right. Be sure to pay attention to the play’s fast-paced postscript; it may even be the highlight of the entire show.
“Lend Me a Tenor” is at Broward Stage Door, 8036 W. Sample Road, Margate, through Nov. 13. Tickets are $38 to $42. Call 954/344-7765 or visit stagedoortheatre.com.
