ASF: "Sherwood: the Adventures of Robin Hood"

After some weather related delays, prolific playwright Ken Ludwig's Sherwood: the Adventures of Robin Hood opened at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival last week. It's the third Ludwig play at ASF in less than a year, one that launched a kind of mini-repertoire that shares several actors and creative team members with the upcoming production of Hamlet that opens next month. -- And it appears to be an action-filled  comical audience pleaser.

The hero, Robin Hood, has been fascinating audiences for a long time, having been played on stage and both big and small screens by such notable figures as Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Richard Greene, Tommy Steele, Sean Connery, Cary Elwes, Kevin Costner, and Taron Egerton. -- He's the dashing figure who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor"; an iconic hero who fights for ordinary people whose very existence is being threatened by the rich and powerful.

Ludwig tells an often tongue-in-cheek version of the outlaw Robin [Ronald Roman-Melendez] and his Merry Men -- particularly Little John [Karak Osborn] and narrator Friar Tuck [Christopher Gerson] -- abetted by two "modern" women, Maid Marian [Ellen Grace Diehl] and Deorwynn [Regan Sims], each of whom can carry her own weight with the men, in their struggle against the nasty Sheriff of Nottingham [Tarah Flanagan], wicked Sir Guy of Gisborne [Christian Pedersen], and the flamboyant "would-be king" Prince John [Michael Doherty], who likes to take credit for everything, including quite a few lines from Shakespeare.

In it, Ludwig incorporates witty dialogue, clever disguises, assorted swashbuckling fight sequences, references to contemporary musical theatre, and some direct audience involvement in a big-hearted attempt to charm modern audiences; and it works through the combined efforts of the ensemble cast.

We all know from the beginning that it will end well -- it is, after all, a story that most of us have known from childhood. 

No doubt, we do need some diversion from the issues that bombard us every day, and director Laura Kepley wisely does not directly make references to them. Yet, it is near-impossible to ignore the correlations between what happens on stage and what is happening in the real world.

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.