Feature: Mash note to [title of show] at Richmond Triangle Players

Richmond Triangle Players' production of "[title of show]" was a delightful ensemble piece. Justin Amellio directed the Jeff Bowen/Hunter Bell show that won the 2011 Artsie award for best musical (a prize it shared with Barksdale's "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels").

The thoroughly meta comedy ran Off-Broadway in 2006 and improbably opened on Broadway in 2008. Bowen and Bell essentially chronicled their own process of trying to slap together an entry for a new-musical festival. Hunter and Jeff are two of the characters in the show; they bring in their friends and fellow performers, Heidi and Susan, to help them write the songs.

The foursome fielded by RTP was delightful--Dan Cimo as the outrageous Hunter, Chris Hester as the more straitlaced Jeff, Georgia Rogers Farmer as lively Heidi, and Lanaya Burnette as the sarcastic Susan (haven't seen enough of Lanaya in recent years).

But I have a story to add to my memory of this show. The Richmond Theater Critics Circle had voted to give "[title of show]" its shared Artsie. I had written a story announcing the award winners for the Times-Dispatch, which they were sworn to embargo until after the ceremony was over.

I was standing in the lobby full of gorgeous, well-dressed theater people waiting to enter the auditorium at the November Theatre when my phone rang. I realized it was the newspaper calling, so I ducked outside.

It was my editor. "We have everything ready to go for your story announcing the awards," she said, "except you left out the name of one of the winners." I thought for a minute, then it dawned on me. "No, no," I said, "that's the name of it right there--the brackets and the lower case "title of show". That's how it's written!"

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