Hey— y’all hear? CPM is doin’ a show! Children’s Playhouse of Maryland is doing a show! So get ready to come and meet those dancing feet— on the avenue they’re taking you to—42nd Street (youth edition.) All the glamor, glitz, and glory of your favorite tunes, with all of the dusty treacle trimmed out for a succinct bullet (over-Broadway) point version of the iconic musical with a sensational score of tap-dancing youth ready to knock your socks off! Directed by Liz Boyer Hunnicutt, with Musical Direction by Charlotte Evans, and Choreography by Rachel Miller, this razzle-dazzle stage show will have you humming and tapping along to all your old favorite showtunes. You won’t want to miss it!
Technical Director Diane Smith, along with Lighting Designers Sammy Jungwirth & Tyrell Stanley, Scenic Artist Laura Miller, Costume Coordinator Lizzie Jaspan, and Projections created by SLShowTech Projections, craft a striking aesthetic that harkens back to the golden era of Broadway’s prime. The use of SLShowTech Projections allows the seamless, albeit dizzying, transition of locations all over yesteryore New York City— inside the backstage of a theatre or soda-fountain lunch counter to right out on the street. And Lizzie Jaspan’s costumes are spot on for the show’s era, giving the gals some truly glamorous looks, particularly once they’re ‘in show’ and the fellas nice, dapper, polished looks too. Everything fits together flawlessly when it comes to Smith and her design team cultivating the aesthetic for this performance. The talented youth featured in the production would shine well enough on their own but it’s especially impressive when they have scenery (especially high-tech digital stuff), costumes, and lighting cues to elevate their overall on-stage experience.
Musical Director Charlotte Evans does a fine job of bringing the ensemble together for the larger group vocal numbers, like “Getting Out of Town” and “Lullaby of Broadway” as well as, of course, the titular number. Evans possesses a powerful mastery of how to coax strongly blended and evenly-toned harmonies out of these talented young performers and the result is an aural delight. Evans work is also readily witnessed during solo features and duets with the outstanding principal performers featured in this production. Working alongside Director Liz Boyer Hunnicutt to ensure that the characters’ Hunnicutt has helped these young performers develop shines through not only in their spoken moments of dialogue and interaction but in their songs as well is a rare treat that audiences of CPM productions have come to expect; Hunnicutt and Evans alike live up to these expectations, soaring above and beyond them when it comes to quality performances from the children that they’re mentoring on stage.
42nd Street (youth edition) is all about the dancing. Choreographer Rachel Miller ensures that the audience is getting more than what they paid for when it comes to the energetic and excitable dance routines, particularly the opening number, especially when it comes to all of the tapping. You get a great score of tapping ladies (Emma Hammett, Sofia Alvarez, Molly Foggo, Grace Petrich, Emily Foggo, Elinor Bower) during “Go Into Your Dance.” It’s a wild routine that Miller ensures the girls deliver with heightened flare and splashy exuberance. “We’re In The Money” is another number with exuberant movements that really gets the audience clapping and delivering ovations through the routine. In addition to the aforementioned tapping young ladies, and all the principals who at some point or other join in the dancing, numbers like “Auditions” and “42nd Street” feature the entirety of the ensemble (Bailey Gomes, Brennen Peroutka, Christian DeBaufre, Katreese Wellons, Daniela Alvarez, Amelia Auvil, Kaitlyn Bell, Pablo Castro, Lilly Colon, Angelina Ferris, Rylan Hamburg) putting some pep in their step and moving all around to the beat of those dancing feet.
Many of those same ensemble members double up in quirky characters that populate their presence all throughout the performance. See if you can spy Bailey Gomes as the nervous Andy Lee, dance-coordinative assistant *the* Julian Marsh. Or the very matter-of-fact Mac, played with aplomb by Katreese Wellons, who is a stage-manager type, just trying to keep things running smoothly from auditions through rehearsal to opening night. (Isn’t it great when life imitates art imitates life?) You’ve got Christian DeBaufre as the rustlin’ hustlin’ cowboy-Texarkana-tycoon of sorts, who comes complete with that yokel accent as well as Brennan Peroutka who plays the lost-loving-ingénue-fella, Pat Denning, busy pining away over Dorothy Brock. (I think a lot of this side-plot and backstory gets edited out of the youth edition, but you get the picture easily enough wit his lovelorn looks.)
The tapping quintet— Annie, Lorraine, Winnie, Gladys, Phyllis (played by Sofia Alvarez, Molly Foggo, Grace Petrich, Emily Foggo, and Elinor Bower, respectively)— all find little moments to develop their character voices, whether its piping up and putting in their two cents when it comes to telling *the* Julian Marsh what’s what, or having little giggles, which borders on lunch-time gossip, heading into that big tap routine “Go Into Your Dance.” The quintet is just darling and utterly delightful to boot!
Now that zany, over-the-moony, hammy honey Billy Lawlor (Max Ozbolt) is ‘the kid’ of Broadway. The darling little love-interest who hasn’t quite got his foot in the door but sure can sing and dance and will one day grow up to be a leading man? Max Ozbolt is delivering up pure method acting when it comes to this role (if you’ve seen this kid in anything else— either a CPM production, Cockpit in Court Jr., Beth Tfiloh Community Theatre, etc.— then you know he’s just waiting to literally grow-up into the age range of leading man because he’s got the triple threat of singing, dancing, and character acting well in hand.) With strong vocals and a plucky personality, he shines through duets like “Young & Healthy” but finds the smooth crooner balance for numbers like “I Only Have Eyes For You.”
While Ozbolt may be the plucky kid, you’ve got miles and miles of panache coming at you from Maggie Jones (Bella Comotto), the Broadway writer. Paired up with Bert Barry (Zachary Byrd) like some sort of book & lyrics creative dream-team, you get Byrd delivering some of the laugh lines while Comotto is making herself out to be a regular Sutton Foster. With a striking Trans-Atlantic accent that really speaks of those golden-era days on Broadway, Comotto delivers quirky one liners that just zip with exceptional comic timing and her stage presence is commanding; she knows what she’s doing, where she’s doing it, and why she’s doing it. When she sings, like during “Shuffle Off To Buffalo” or “Go Into Your Dance” that stellar and carefully crafted vocal affectation carries right into her vocals so that the character comes along for the musical ride. You’d swear you were looking at a time traveler with the creatively constructed patois and cadence of her textual delivery, even the way Comotto physically walks the character around the stage is a beacon from a time gone by.
Cold, calculating, and right on the money when it comes to being the Midas of Broadway directors, Sammy Jungwirth wears the role of Julian Marsh like a fancy cloak draped over his shoulders, ready for showcasing. His strong vocals carry numbers like “Lullaby of Broadway” with ease, and that line (if no other line sticks— it’s 100% the “…Allentown?” line) is divine coming out of Jungwirth’s mouth. He bristles like a proper Broadway director of the time and calls the shots like the big shot the character is meant to be. There’s even a slight tenderness to him when interacting with Peggy Sawyer (Emma Hammett), showcasing Jungwirth’s versatility as a performer, which is a nice change of pace considering how often the Julian Marsh character is left feeling rather static and two-dimensional.
Duel of the divas comes to town with 42nd Street (youth edition) and it’s a character and vocal showdown between Miss Dorothy Brock (Linda Tamia Brown) and Miss Peggy Sawyer (Emma Hammett.) Both girls have stunning vocal capabilities, both displaying similar yet unique ranges and musical styles. Brown rolls onto the stage as the ferocious and unyielding entitled Diva that anyone familiar with the show (or with Showbiz in general) knows well and she manages to convey her displeasure, anger, and general sense of arrogance with her whole body and facial expressions, not just with a loud voice (though Brown is plenty loud!) Hammett, playing the polar opposite in the demure, uncertain, and almost mousy Peggy Sawyer, still finds a way to make her stage presence exist and exist soundly despite the sheepish and shy characteristics of her role. Brown and Sawyer only share the one number— “About a Quarter to Nine”— which is a reckoning truce of sorts but their voices blend delightfully and smoothly for this song. Brown has pipes and ‘diva-tude’ that can be heard well during “Shadow Waltz” and “I Only Have Eyes For You” while Hammett delivers her songs with equal parts gusto, particularly when her character finally settles into her well-deserved confidence and knocks it out of the park with “42nd Street”; you feel utterly transported!
It’s the song I love the melody of— 42nd Street (youth edition!) And you won’t want to miss out on this exquisite experience, so come along and get your tickets before the whole gosh darn production shuffles off to Buffalo!
Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes with one intermission
42nd Street: Youth Edition plays through October 2, 2022 with Children’s Playhouse of Maryland in the Lecture Hall of the Administration Building at the Community College of Baltimore County Essex Campus— 7201 Rossville Boulevard in Baltimore, MD. For tickets call the box office at (443) 840-2426 or purchase them online.
