From Audition to SHE LOVES ME at Hackmatack

Members of the Hackmatack Playhouse cast who opened this week in "She Loves Me" looked very different in March when they vied for a role during auditions at the South Berwick Community Center.

There was, for instance, University of New Hampshire freshman Mai Hartwich who, to calm her nerves during her very first professional audition, alternated between holding her breath and exercising her voice with gutteral grrrrs.

Then moments later, Sarah Flagg, a 25-year-old music student at University of Southern Maine, emerged from her appearance before the casting panel worried because she had flubbed a line, but hopeful no one noticed.

Mike Buck, a recent graduate of University of New Hampshire, was relatively relaxed, having tried out at Hackmatack last year.

"I just tell myself I'm ready. I can do this. There's a reason you are here," said Buck, 21, who drove to the auditions with Hartwich, reassuring her along the way.

Apparently there was a reason for all three of them to be there. All were ultimately cast in "She Loves Me," a Tony awarding-winning musical set in a 1930s European perfumery.

Hartwich and Flagg were put in the ensemble and Buck was cast as Sipos, a rather lovable man in a leading role. Hartwich's pre-audition exercises apparently worked - she is also in the ensemble of Buddy and is playing Luisa in Fantasticks, which is a lead.

Buck said he was been thrilled with the informal reviews so far of his character in "She Loves Me."

"It really was rewarding having all these people come up to me and say you did a great job and were so believable as an older character," said Buck.

Each year as many as 100 people audition for Hackmatack shows, according to Crystal Lisbon of Dover. This year, about a third of these people were cast, coming from as far as North Dakota. Some are cast in several shows, others appear in just one role.

Director Danielle Howard of Dover noted that these actors were a natural fit.

"Mike plays Sipos so easily because he is in fact a big friendly guy," Howard said. "And Mai and Sarah, with their talents for singing and musicianship, were natural fits for the multi-faceted ensemble roles."

Flagg loves the ensemble role, which allows her to frequently switch characters.

"in the first act alone I'm like four different customers," she said "Getting to do that is really fun and the songs the ensemble are in are pretty great."

Howard cast Laura Cantwell, another UNH student, as Amalia Balash, the leading lady of "She Loves Me."

"It's not always easy to make a selection from a line-up of talented actors, but the group chosen for 'She Loves Me' works together so well, it is almost as if they came in as a theater family."

"She Loves me," which follows two shop clerks who respond to a "lonely hearts advertisement and has a score by the composers of "Fiddler on the Roof", will show through July 1.

The second show of the Hackmatack season, "Buddy, the Buddy Holly story," opens Wednesday July 5, and follows Buddy Holly through his rise to fame and onto his tragic death. "Steel Magnolia," opening July 26, tells the story of a group of gossipy southern ladies who meet at a small-town beauty parlor in Louisiana. The last show of the season,"The Fantasticks," which opens Aug. 16, was last done at Hackmatack 45 years ago and was chosen as part of the theater's 45th anniversary celebration.

For tickets or more information, go to hackmatack.org or call 207-698-1807.