Wetumpka Depot: "Escape to Margaritaville"

You don't have to be a Jimmy Buffett fan to have a cracking good time at the Wetumpka Depot's production of Escape to Maragritaville. 

Thanks to insightful and prolific director Kim Mason, a terrific on-stage band led by Music Director Davis Whitfield, lively choreography by David Grant Harms and Adrian Bush, clever set pieces by Dana Alldredge, colorful costumes coordinated by Jenifer Hollett, and a multi-talented 18-strong acting ensemble, the two-and-a-half-hour production's energy is infectious, and culminates with many audience members singing along to Buffet's familiar tunes.

Plot is not this musical's strongest point. Three entertainingly predictable love stories lay the groundwork for stringing together many songs from the Buffett catalogue. -- A meet-cute between Tammy [Kaitlyn Lawless] who is having a girls trip to a tropical island [in part to escape from Jeff Glass as her demanding chauvinist fiancé Chadd] where she meets the hotel's bartender Brick [Caleb Beard]; a long-term testy relationship between the feisty hotel owner Marley [Taylor Finch] and JD [Jonathan Yarboro], a local drunk who has a few secrets; and one between Tammy's practical friend and scientist/environmentalist Rachel [Maggie Rowe] and the hedonist hotel nightclub singer Tully [Tony Davison]. 

There's never any doubt that these couples will work out their differences by the end. Opposites often do attract, and the play serves as a gentle reminder that people who resist change might miss out on valuable relationships, that we are frequently too quick to measure people who believe differently by our own standards, and that if we try to understand "others", we might learn about ourselves as well. 

All the principles are in good form, and are abetted by a fine-tuned ensemble who dance and sing with gusto.

Escape to Margaritaville is bright and cheerful, a welcome antidote to a chaotic present day, and though the lengthy denouement serves merely to fit in a few more songs, the smiles on audience faces are a clear indication that the messages have been received. Good show!

Millbrook: "Doublewide, Texas"

Tagged as a "Southern-Fried Trailer Park Comedy!" authors Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten's  Doublewide, Texas is director Cheryl Phillips's current offering for the Millbrook Community Players, Inc.

Filled with an assortment of eccentric characters living in or nearby a small trailer park community facing either annexation into a local township or losing their property, they band together to thwart those attempts and demonstrate that even the downtrodden can overcome corporate greed by relying on family, good sense, and righteousness.

Considering that so many people today, especially the poor and powerless, fall prey to the rich and powerful, there are lessons to be learned, even through a raucous comedy.

Formulaic in structure, and with every character's oddities in full view, some clever dialogue propels the outrageous plot's twists and turns. Ms. Phillips's ensemble cast inhabit the redneck silliness with uninhibited glee. -- Many of Millbrook's reliable veterans take the stage: Vicki Moses. Karla McGhee, Rae Ann Collier, John Collier,  and Michael Snead are joined by Blair Berry, Mary Owen Wright, Shannon Hokum, and Josh Register to deliver brashness, bewilderment, cross-dressing, sexual innuendo, and a few surprises along the way.

On a set that hardly replicates a dilapidated trailer park [lengthy scene changes take us to a few locations that take place elsewhere], the numerous episodes push the mayhem to a satisfying conclusion.

We need a bit of levity today, and Doublewide, Texas fits the bill.