The Winter Park Playhouse opened a fun, broad, silly musical last weekend called "Five Course Love" that will just run three more weekends before it closes... and I'm in the cast!
"Five Course Love" a quick, fun 90-minute musical where three actors play fifteen characters. The comedy is broad, obvious and wacky. Think Carol Burnett. I do my best to keep up with the other two actors, both of whom have terrific voices and great comedic timing. You probably know Michelle Knight from her recent lead roles in the Orlando Philharmonic / Mad Cow Theatre productions of Guys & Dolls (Sara Brown) and My Fair Lady (Eliza Doolittle). And you'll remember Chris from his role in the very successful 2010 Orlando Fringe show "The Great American Trailer Park Musical," which walked away with a slew of TheDailyCity.com Audience Choice Awards.
Performances Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and , Saturdays, Sundays & Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $35 regular or $20 for entertainment industry folks. Buy tickets here or call 407-645-0145.
Read the reviews below:
"What makes Five Course Love work so well are the small moments – the knowing looks, the sly comic takes, the singular vocal inflections and the precise character tics that director Edwards and his cast have invented throughout the proceedings. Versatility is also a huge factor in the show’s success. Watching the protean Knight morph from lusty cowgirl, to mafia princess, to Aryan dominatrix, to sweet senorita, to innocent bobby soxer, makes it hard to believe she is the same actress in each scene. Ditto with Baratelli’s hilarious renditions of various ethnic waiters and Norton’s transitions from jealous mobster to swashbuckling hero to empty-headed 1950s greaser."
-Orlando Weekly
The show owes a debt to “The Musical of Musicals: The Musical,” which spoofs musical-theater styles in similar fashion: A small cast playing multiple parts in several stories. The lyrics in “Musical of Musicals” are more clever — but aiming a little lower in the smarts department doesn’t make “Five Course Love” less funny. That’s obvious in the way Michelle Knight pouts and prances through “Gretchen’s Lament,” a little German number about how she wants her men to measure up. Yes, it’s an anatomical reference. And if you’re unclear about what she means, Knight and her riding crop will be happy to demonstrate. Christopher Alan Norton has the widest range, equally amusing as a nerdy loser in love and a dim-bulb Elvis wannabe. And he gleefully strides across the stage, flowing cape, as a Zorro-like Mexican hero. As for Mark Baratelli, he has that appealing desperate air of a clown, whether as an Italian waiter in fear for his life, or a German realizing his dominatrix girlfriend and his secret boyfriend have arrived simultaneously at his restaurant. And he has the most fun with the various cartoon accents employed.
-Orlando Sentinel
"...you may find yourself getting pretty fond of a trio of actors who are so committed that, well, they may wind up being committed. Norton, who appeared in Mad Cow Theatre’s Company, makes a terrific leather-jacketed greaser in a diner scene and dies a handsome, if protracted, death as the adulterous Gino; Baratelli, who is known more as an improv guy and a producer, brings angst to his Italian waiter and more than a touch of comic dementia to the German one. And Knight – who played Sarah Brown in the Orlando Philharmonic/Mad Cow Guys and Dolls and Eliza Doolittle in their My Fair Lady, and who has appeared on Broadway and toured in Jersey Boys – finds loads of silly sex appeal in all her characters and brings so much life to each one of them that you almost forget they’re just cartoons. Knight and her cohorts hold the key to Five Course Love: It’s the cooks who make the dish."
-Elizabeth Maupin
"The music is crisp, the songs funny and hummable and the performance as good as any we’ve seen. My favorite segment came in the Schaufinkle Klub, with Baratelli in lederhosen and Knight with her crop and bustier singing the Der Bumsen-Kratzentanz."
-Archikulture