All Shook Up Brings the 50’s to Life in Mount Dora

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Opening the Sonnentag Theatre at the IceHouse‘s 67th season, All Shook Up, the Joe DiPietro musical features the love songs of Elvis Presley and characters and plot devices from “Twelfth Night” by William Shakespeare to Mount Dora. The plot was paper thin with characters that were stereotypes with no any depth. The show was a reason  to string together as many Elvis songs as possible. Love was the driving force for the action and the music with back up by a live band backstage was fun, fast paced and at times spectacular. The set designed by David Clevinger had a barrage of commercial images and scenes. It was much like the show with many elements thrown together with no single point of interest. I became frustrated by the many set changes which would force me to stop sketching as the theater went black.

A small Midwestern town’s  moral code is set by the Mame Eisenhower decency act. Then a roustabout (Fredy Ruiz) drives into town dressed like James Dean on a motorcycle. His motorcycle needs repair and Natelie, (Whitney Abell) the town mechanic is immediately smitten. She does everything she can to win the roustabout’s love and she doesn’t succeed until she decided to dress as a boy to approach him as a friend. The roustabout only has eyes for the exotic curator at the town museum (Carly Skubick) but she sees him as a brute with no culture. When she lets her hair down, watch out! Everyone in town seems to fall in love with the wrong person and then the show spins out of control to try and find balance and meaning in unrequited love.

Director, Darlin Barry, faced challenges bringing the show to the stage. The lead actor playing the roustabout wasn’t showing up to rehearsals so she had to do something. Fredy stepped into the roll from withing the cast of about 20 actors. When everyone including the ensemble are on stage dancing the stage is close to overflowing. I was made aware of this dress rehearsal by stage mom Kathy Wilhelm Witkowski, who’s daughter Corina was in the show. Corina introduced herself before the show and let me know that she had almost been in one of my sketches last year when I sketched the Buddy Holly Story at the Icehouse. She was on stage checking her cell phone on stage right and she walked back stage before I put her in the sketch. I kept my eyes open for her but she didn’t appear on stage until very late in the first act when she posed as a statue with five other women in the museum. It was a perfect sketch opportunity, and I penciled her in the sketch several times as a statue but couldn’t find a reason for showcasing a statue in the middle of the action that I had put in the sketch already. I had to erase her for the sake of the composition.

Sylvia, (Laurie Sullivan) who owns the local honky-tonk sang brilliantly. She courted Natalie’s widowed father Jim (David Coalter). Songs in the show include “Jailhouse Rock,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “One Night with
You,” “Love Me Tender”, “Devil in Disguise” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” A five-piece
band will accompany the singers with music director Justin Ward Weber on
keyboards. The music often bought back memories of working on Lilo and Stitch which incorporated many of these Elvis songs in the soundtrack.

All Shook Up is a simple fun summer romp. It runs July 18th to August 3rd.

Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. The show is already 85% sold out. Tickets are $20 for adults, $18 on Thursday and for seniors. Student tickets range from $10 to $15. For reservations or for more information, call 352-383-4616.

The Buddy Holly Story in Winter Haven

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Magically, Buddy Holly seems to return to the stage in Winter Haven Florida every year. He has performed live in 2012 and 2013. This year Andy Matchett is playing Buddy. I’ve seen him perform as Buddy Holly before and it seems a roll he was destined to perform. The drive down to Winter Haven turned out to be more of an adventure than I had bargained for. My GPS showed multiple accidents on I-4 so I took back roads all the way south through Kissimmee. It poured on the whole trip south. lightning flashed brilliantly etching shadowed scars in my retinas. It seemed like everyone knew this back route because the traffic on the country road slowed to a crawl. A trip that the GPS predicted would be an hour became two and a half hours.

I was actually quite impressed by Theatre Winter Haven (210 Cypress Gardens Blvd, Winter Haven, Fl) when I arrived. Although the facade was a sterile cinder block wall, the interior was spacious and there was room in the wings for some impressive set changes. I also liked that an art gallery was part of the theater complex. Art on display in the lobby showed that there were some skilled draftsmen in the town.

The show is Co-Produced by Dr. and Mrs. Robert Cassell and Marilyn Riggs. Over 50 years ago, the man who changed the face of popular music
tragically died in a plane crash at age 22. The Buddy Holly
Story tells the story of the three years in which he became the world’s
top recording artist with a show that features over 20 of Buddy Holly’s
greatest hits including ‘Peggy Sue’, ‘That’ll Be The Day’, ‘Oh
Boy’,‘Everyday’, ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘Rave On‘ and ‘Raining In My Heart’.

Buddy Holly was someone who passionately knew what he wanted in his music and life. He met Maria Elena (Hannah Corlew) because she worked as a secretary at his recording label. From the moment he met her, he knew he would marry her. Five days later, he did. He truly lived like every day might be his last. Rehearsals and recording sessions were at times playful and exhausting as he strived for the perfect sound. His band, The Crickets (Marcus Brixa, Kemp Brinson and Josh McNair) grew disgruntled with the endless retakes.

The end of the show featured a high energy concert with Buddy, Richie Valens (Alex La Torre) who had some amazing hip moves, and The Big Bopper (Tom Mesrobian).  The entire ensemble was onstage for this high energy concert. It was a winter concert and there was a blizzard outside. After the concert these three performers would board a plane which was destined to crash. The music came to an abrupt end and a lone microphone stood in a spotlight. After the show, the director had notes for the cast. He said, “We have a good show, it was a good rehearsal, some things need to be gelled, touched and massaged.”


Driving home, the music was still echoing in my head. I drove past ancient MacDonald’s arches and then  neon restaurant signs that hearkened back to the 50s. There was nothing to remind me of the present. I was driving through the twilight year of 1959. Then the black country road erased all visual clues. The road curved and grass blurred past my windows in the headlight’s gleam. I had to trust that I could navigate each unknown curve at 50 miles per hour. It would be so easy to slip of this thin thread into the void.

The Buddy Holly Story runs from July 18 through August 3rd. Tickets: $24 Adults, $21 Students

The Buddy Holly Story

Posted on by Thor

Andy Matchett, of Andy Matchett and the Minx stars in this production at the Ice House Theater, (1100 N. Unser St. in Mount Dora). I can’t imagine another performer who could so easily step into Buddy’s shoes. The role seems custom made for Andy. The Buddy Holly Story tells the story of the three years in which he became
the world’s top recording artist. The show features over 20 of
Buddy Holly’s greatest hits including “Peggy Sue”, “That’ll Be The Day”,
“Oh Boy”, “Not Fade Away”, “Everyday”, “Rave On”, “Maybe Baby”,
“Raining In My Heart”, Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”, and the Big Bopper’s
“Chantilly Lace”.  ‘Buddy’
Holly’s music and story have been shared live with many more people than the real Buddy
Holly ever had the chance to perform to. The incredible legacy of the
young man with glasses, whose musical career spanned an all-too-brief
period during the golden days of rock ‘n’ roll, continues to live on.

I went to sketch a full dress rehearsal run through of the show. As actors got dressed, Whitney Abell sat stage right fingering her iPad. Soon all three of the actresses, the back up chorus, were ready for mic checks. The band went through their mic checks and perhaps an hour went by before the director called out, “Places!” An actor shouted back, “Thank you places!” The red velvet curtains closed and then re-opened. The primary conflict in the show was that country music radio stations didn’t understand Buddy’s music. They wanted to mold him into a country music star. When Buddy and the Crickets performed live at a radio station they switched up the performance and started playing their brash rock and roll. The stations phones lit up. During the rehearsal, the play came to a halt when power to the mics was lost on stage. One of the musicians joked, “We should rename the show, Buddy Holly Unplugged!”

The final number performed was “Rave On!” Midway into the song, the music just stopped and the theater went black and silent. A single spotlight illuminated the now deserted microphone where Buddy had been singing.  On February 3rd, 1959, the man who changed the face of popular music tragically died in a plane crash at the tender age of 22. Also on the plane were, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens’. That was the day the music died. In the darkness the entire cast bowed their heads. The show bounded back with an encore performance by Buddy with the lights blazing. At the end of the song, Buddy raised his fist in the air shouting, “Tell all your friends Buddy Holly is back in town!” This awe inspiring show will run from
January 18th to February 17th with evening shows on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday nights with matinees on Sundays and select Saturdays. Some shows are already sold out, get your tickets now!