You Give Love a Bad Name

I managed to catch The Wedding Singer at the Majestic this past Wednesday, and while my expectations for this Broadway Across America offering were low–the whole shebang looked like an excuse to make a buck–there were a few bright lights to be had, mostly in the casting. The musical itself–cobbled together from songs from the film and from an original score–is forgettable stuff,  and mainly populated by gags about ’80s rock groups and the film Flashdance. (The under-30 set is likely to be totally baffled by the Reagan zeitgeist in-jokes. How many Van Halen references can one body endure?) While winking at the audience is fine, a little bit goes a long way: Broadway’s current production of Xanadu knows enough to call it quits after 90 minutes, unlike The Wedding Singer‘s 2+ hours. This present production is a controversial one: it’s the first ‘first national tour’ to make the rounds with non-Equity (that is to say, non-union) actors, and it’s not exactly to San Antonio’s credit that we booked it. That said, the actors were absolutely the strongest part of the production: talented and spry and energetic, and, for the most part, all of 24 years old. Fortunately, The Wedding Singer can get away with a young cast, and I have to say, on the whole, this was actually a better production than this winter’s turgid Camelot.