Zanna, Don't, a Minneapolis Musical Theatre production at Illusion Theater on 6/5/09
By: John Olive
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What churl wouldn't like a whiz-bang concoction like Zanna, Don't! (Minneapolis Musical Theatre, performing at the Illusion space in the Hennepin Center for the Arts, through June 21)? It's tuneful, campy, wildly energetic, relentlessly happy. The characters all but turn somersaults to make you like them. The show creates a mixed-up, topsy-turvy world in which boys fall in love with boys, and girls with girls. Everyone is happy in their homosexuality – until a boy and a girl kiss (in a play-within-the-show exposé about heterosexuality in the military) and then – Gasp! – fall in love.
Certainly there are things to complain about: the play wants to be taken seriously as an indictment of how our society mistreats gays and it falls flat. The boy-girl outlaws are fitfully and confusingly developed. They disappear before the story is over. Does the couple run off? Do they call their heterosexuality an unfortunate phase and put it behind them? We never find out. If coherence and thematic depth are what you're looking for, look elsewhere.
But, really, who cares? The thin plot is nothing more than a structure on which Zanna, Don't!'s auteur, Tim Acito – he does it all, book, lyrics and music – hangs a series of boffo musical numbers, 18 in all. There's the raunchy R&B of "I Ain't Got Time", the doh-si-doh exuberance of "Ride 'Em", the Village People high spirits of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (in which the singer, Ruf again, whips off his long black military leather coat to reveal a merry widow and fish-net stockings). Acito does lyrical intensity as well, as in the affecting "Do You Know What It's Like?" and the sweet "I Could Write Books". Based on the opening night crowd's cheering reaction, these songs went over extremely well.
The young MMT cast (in addition to Ruf: Andrea Alioto, Joseph Bombard, Anna Carol, Emily Brooke Hanson, Andrew Newman, C. Ryan Shipley and Alan Wales) tears into this material with never-let-go gusto. Their acting (aided by the smart direction/choreography of Steven Meerdink) is broad, buoyant, hyper-energized, but never self-conscious. Their singing is truly terrific, precise and on-target. There isn't a bland voice or a poorly staged musical number all evening. These performers are the real reason to see this show.
So eat a good dinner, then head up to the Illusion space for this potpourri. And leave your thinking cap in the car. You won't need it.
Tickets and more information available from http://www.aboutmmt.org/
Location Info:
Illusion Theater
Artist Info: Minneapolis Musical Theatre
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