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• "Lend Me a Tenor" comes to Parkland Theatre

Ken Ludwig’s 1985 play "Lend Me a Tenor," which debuted on Broadway in 1989, is coming to the stage in Champaign. The zany, fast-paced musical is part farce, part slapstick: “It’s the Marx Brothers meets the Three Stooges, with a little Bugs Bunny for good measure,” said the show’s director, Thom Schnarre.

Lend Me a Tenor begins with a potentially catastrophic mishap: Tito Merelli, set to play the title role in a Cleveland production of Verdi’s Otello, accidentally overdoses on sedatives, leaving him in a deathlike stupor. The stage producer decides that the show must go on and drafts Max, his "factotum, gofer and all-purpose dogsbody” (who happens to have an exceptional voice), as Merelli’s stand-in, hoping the audience will not notice that the masked actor is not the internationally famous star. Each of the characters tries to work a twisted situation to his advantage, and it is exciting to see who, if anyone, is able to get what they want. What ensues is a lot of door-slamming entrances and exits, innuendo and double-entendre.

The comedy hinges on a sequence of misinterpretations and misidentifications, which set up hilarious scenarios: for instance, when Merelli shows up late to the show, he and Max are each clueless to the existence of their double and both claim to be Merelli. Max’s fiancée, Maggie, throws herself at Merelli, her idol, though sometimes it is actually Max.

Rather than setting the play in 1934 as per the script, Schnarre has set it in 1938, allowing for a rounder, more feminine set design and more glitz and glamour all around. The costumes will incorporate rich materials like satin, velvet, and fur and jewel tones.

The eight-person cast is a mix of Parkland students and community members.