Grace Diviny, Staff Writer
This past week, the musical “A Day in Hollywood, A Night in Ukraine” came for three nights and a day to SUNY Oneonta that spanned from April 29th and 30th into May 1st and May 2nd Known for its comedic timing and one-act plays, the Broadway winning musical was written by Dick Vosburgh and Frank Lazarus, in which the first part is a homage to classic Hollywood movies from the 1930s, with the songs being based off of famous movie tunes. The second part of the play is loosely based on writer Anton Chekhov’s play ‘The Bear,’ and is presented in the style of a movie made by comedy troupe “The Marx Brothers,” where the characters ‘Samovar,’ ‘Gino,’ and ‘Carlo’ are based Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, and Chico Marx, three out of the five brothers.
Here at Oneonta, the show was produced by the Mask and Hammer Theater Club and was shown at the Goodrich Theater at Fine Arts, where cast member Sophomore Allison Benken, who played the hilarious Mrs. Pavlenko, told me that this production was one of her favorite ones to have worked on so far, especially one where she played multiple stand-alone roles.
“This is the first production I’ve done with two stand-alone acts. It’s also my first production with roles based on real people. I had the exciting task of playing a wide range of characters, and it really taught me the importance of actor homework.”
She also stated that she did her research into multiple classical Hollywood stars for the first act of the show to get a real sense of how to successfully portray them and their energy for the show, which she felt helped prepare her for her future theatre career.
“How could I attempt to play Jeanette MacDonald without really getting to know her first? What about Shirley Temple? Margaret Dumont? With the research aspect, on top of learning tap dance for the first time, my castmates and I put a lot of work into this show, and I hope it showed!”
With a small cast, Benken admitted that the process was very unique, with the cast starting rehearsal all the way back in February and spending time in early rehearsals with warmups to get everyone more comfortable with each other.
“We got to know the space, each other, and ourselves a little bit better, and I appreciated every second of it. The cast is very close because of it, and I’m grateful for that! It flew by fast, and with the show being at the end of the school year, so did the semester!”
And despite the challenges of a show spanning that long when it came to academic success this semester, Benken stated that academically speaking, an end of the year performance was not that bad for her, as she only took five classes this year when she usually takes six!
Freshman Emma Robideau was a crew member for the show rather than being in the show itself, which was admittedly a new change of scenery for her, but was ultimately rewarding in the end.
“This was my first time being on crew for a show, so my role preparing for the show was a lot different than I have experienced in the past. The cast and the crew all worked very hard preparing for the show and I am really proud to have been a part of this production! We rehearsed a lot over the past few months and the cast and crew put a lot of effort into the show outside of rehearsal time to prepare for the show.”
Overall, despite an eight-member cast ensemble, all of them put on a magnificent and hilarious musical performance, especially Tanner Griffin, whose comedic timing and portrayal as ‘Samovar’ made the crowd erupt in laughter. Bravo to the entire cast.
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