"It's all about the doors," says Joe Deer, director of The Human Race Theatre's upcoming production of Lend Me A Tenor. "When a door opens, you know someone's coming through it, and it's always the very worst person it could be." Worst for the characters, that is - best for the audience.
There are six doors in the set of Ken Ludwig's Tony-winning farce about the incredible things that go wrong with the Cleveland Opera Company's 1934 gala fundraiser, and one or more of them is bound to be opening, closing or, mostly, slamming pretty much all the time. In front of the doors, there's a zany chain-reaction of mistaken identity, double entendres, innuendoes, and just plain goofiness, as anything that could go wrong does so with a bang.There are bodies that aren't really quite dead, and plenty of moments when the characters wish they were, when opera manager Saunders brings the world-renowned tenor Tito Morelli, aka Il Stupendo, to town, setting off the mayhem.Deer has assembled a cast made for merriment. Chicago-based Richard Marlatt, as Il Stupendo, and Human Race Resident Artist Tim Lile, as Saunders, are on their third time around as a guffaw-inducing team at The Loft - the first two being the hilarious productions of The Underpants and Moonlight and Magnolias.Photos by Scott J. Kimmins
Claire Kennedy and Aaron Vega
Tim Lile
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