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Church Basement Ladies
Written by Jim Stowell & Jessica Zuwhlke
Music & Lyrics by Drew Jansen
Directed by Curt Wollan
Produced by Troupe America, Inc.
At the North shore Center for the Performing Arts
9501 N. Skokie Blvd.
Skokie, IL
Call 847-673-6300, www.northshorecenter.org
Tickets $38 -$44
Wednesdays at 2 & 7:30 pm
Thursdays at 2 & 7:30 pm
Fridays at 8 pm
Saturdays at 2 & 8 pm
Sundays at 2 pm
Running time is 2 hours, 15 minutes with intermission
Through September 27, 2008
Church musical flattens as it falls into cliché heaven
The 75 year old William Christopher (from Mash) must have been desperate for a gig when he signed on to play Pastor Gunderson in the awful musical, “Church Basement Ladies.” His song, “Song for Willie” was sung off key and off pitch. I felt sorry for the veteran actor since he has to do that 8 times per week! The sad news is that the rest of the five Equity actors were also terrible singers. This show would have been benefited with local Chicago talents. Our musical comedy players can sing and land their comedic scenes. These players struggled throughout. The play depicts Lutherans as anti-Catholic and narrow minded.
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This mind numbing musical suffers from a terminal case of hackneyed clichés about the ladies who cook in the basement of a Luther church in rural Minnesota in the 1960’s. This not so funny show has comedy situations that are repeated so often that they quickly become trite. The four ladies include a nasty, narrow-minded religious bigot head cook—a goofy and crude lady with a strange accent (think the movie “Fargo”)—a mother and college age daughter. Each of these ladies seem to have nothing better to do that cook for each church event. They sing a pastiche of songs such as “The Pale Food Polka” and “Dead Spread” as the horrible songs are mostly sung in four part harmony. The lyrics are so grabbled that I couldn’t understand them. No loss. The reverend come off as a silly buffoon. This show drags on for two hours of bad singing and cornball comedy. It is as if a group of ladies from an actual Lutheran church were putting on an amateur night and they ended up on the Skokie stage.
How this show ended up on a national tour defies explanation. I found nothing worthy of my attention in this entire show. On opening night almost half of the audience left at intermission. They were the lucky ones. Skip this turkey.
Not Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: September 11, 2008
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