Lindsey Corey and Alex Jorth set off on a 50-year odyssey in Ido! I Do! from Pompano Players (Photos by Amy Pasquantonio)
By Britin Haller
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Michael and Agnes (last names unknown), but don’t worry about checking the registry for a blender, or worse yet, a waffle maker, and don’t bother pulling out your formal attire from the back of the closet, because it’s not that kind of wedding.
In fact, it’s just the beginning of I Do! I Do!, and before this two-character, sixty-year-old musical is over, we’ve privy to not only the bonding of a man and his wife, but a honeymoon night, the birth of both children, the launch of his successful career, each of them having a mid-life crisis, and their eventual downsizing to a smaller home. In other words, fifty years of the highs and lows of a typical marriage. If they make it that far.
This critic had never seen I Do, I Do! before now, and neither had Director Andy Rogow, but hot off his widely successful version of The Fantasticks, he jumped at the opportunity to be part of bringing to life another musical written by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones. Andy Rogow succeeds here as well.
There’s nowhere to hide when there are only two roles, and so each actor must be at the top of their game. The story is clever enough, but the score is the real thing here. And with a fabulous-sounding live band, led by multi-Carbonell winner Eric Alsford behind them, local theater favorites Lindsey Corey and Alex Jorth, act, dance, and sing their way through five decades.
We’re never told what time period we’re in, but according to the book, we open around the turn of the century, the 1900s that is, and since we get mentions of items such as cod liver oil, and a slumber helmet (used to keep a woman’s tight hair curls in place), this is likely the case.
Agnes is a virgin, and between their dialogue and the long nightshirt Michael dons, we figure he likely is too. A sweet moment ensues when they have to choose sides of the bed for the first time, and before you can say, “Here comes the bride,” Agnes is pregnant, then pregnant again. But all is not perfect in this relationship because Agnes soon comes to realize that the man she pledged her troth to is a big baby who somehow makes everything, including her labor pains, all about him.
While Agnes (Corey) does laundry, Michael (Jorth) rides his son’s tricycle. While she tidies up, he dances with a giant teddy bear. He can’t keep track of his personal things, and she must do it for him. He corrects her grammar and insults her intelligence, and cooking. He tells her, in the song “A Well Known Fact,” that women after forty go to pot, but men grow more attractive. While she’s rearing his two kids, he’s massaging his fragile ego with a younger woman who finds him “irresistible.” Michael is a pompous ass who reads Tolstoy, for goodness sake.
Agnes on the other hand, is simply precious, and anyone would be lucky to call her their wife. But as she shows us, she has a strong will, and eventually any doormat will fall apart if walked on long enough.
Perhaps it’s because Michael is such a smug, unhelpful husband (and yes, we know it’s set during a time when spouses had well-defined roles), but Agnes carries the marriage in the beginning, and Act One belongs to Lindsey Corey. She touches us during “Something Has Happened,” a very pretty love song to her baby, makes us laugh while imitating her husband’s chewing noises in “Nobody’s Perfect,” and gives it her all in “Flaming Agnes,” an exaggerated, and so fun and funny, burlesque number meant to show that she’s had enough of being Michael’s better half. We’re rooting for her, and by the time she sings the gorgeous ballad “What is a Woman,” we’re completely sold.
It’s impossible, however, to feel sympathy for Michael’s narcissistic pathos, and so by extension to enjoy the actor playing him, and Alex Jorth becomes the villain of the piece. But when Michael finally becomes a better husband in Act Two, Jorth endears himself to us, and by the end, we want to hug him. That takes talent. His big solo number “The Father of the Bride” where he laments his daughter’s choice of a spouse is met with laughter and applause.
In the much more pleasant second act, Jorth and Corey have a blast, and some nice soft-shoe dancing, in “Where are the Snows?” a song about aging with a first line “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” attributed to a poem by Francois Villon. They sound marvelous together on several duets, have a great time with a sax and violin in “When the Kids get Married,” and offer us loads of cuteness in “Someone Needs Me.”
There are a lot of impressive names and talent included behind the scenes as well. Amanda Lopez is the show’s choreographer. She gives us a little jazz, tap, ballet, soft shoe, on the bed, off the bed, and Michael’s signature move with his wife, which starts out happy, but ends in an awww moment in the play’s final scene.
Claudia Smith is the scenic designer who wisely uses two curtained picture windows through which we see displays like fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and confetti during the wedding of their daughter. Lowell Richards is the lighting designer which is no simple feat as this production relies on a lot of carefully coordinated spotlight work.
Costume Designer Penelope Williams was tasked with recreating the time period of the early 20th century. She delivers with notable looks for Michael such as his long velour smoking jacket, and for Agnes such as her ballgown, long black gloves, and bling, to her “Flaming Agnes” feather boa robe. Note to Williams, on the night we attended, this robe was losing its boa hem at the bottom. Hopefully, someone has sewn this back on by now.
Elizabeth Guerra did a lovely job with props, so much so that patrons were seen getting a closer look at the beautiful vintage items on Agnes’s dressing table. The “God is Love” pillow holds a lot of importance, and it would be wise to lock it up between performances. Furniture is of the era, an antique hope-chest, nightstands, and a dresser. But no piece is more important than the marital mattress set because I Do! I Do! is based on a Tony Award-winning play by Jan de Hartog called The Fourposter, and for the most part takes place in the bedroom, where the focal point is, as its name implies, the fourposter bed in the center of the stage.
Theaters are known to be places of strong spiritual energy, and we can’t be the only ones who considered the symbolism of one of the four bed posts falling off a little into the second act. Like someone was blessing the show and wishing it well. But why did it take so long to take care of it? Besides the piece of wood being in a very precarious place on the stage, and needing to be repeatedly stepped around, the audience was in limbo because our minds were elsewhere. It probably didn’t take as long as it felt for (finally!) Corey to pick it up and put it in the hope chest, but cast members, please for all that is holy, if something like that happens mid-scene, stay in character and react immediately. For all our sakes.
I Do! I Do! burst on the scene in 1966. Written exclusively for Broadway legends Robert Preston and Mary Martin (later Carol Lawrence and Gordon MacRae took over), the show played for over five-hundred performances and was nominated for seven Tony Awards (Preston won for Best Actor.) Popular with dinner theaters around the country, it even ran in Minnesota for over two decades with a couple who fell in love and got married during the show.
The original cast album was a success, and actor/singer Ed Ames (Mingo in TV’s Daniel Boone), had a major hit with his cover of “My Cup Runneth Over.” It was nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys, but lost to The 5th Dimension’s ultra-hit “Up, Up and Away.”
So, if you like entertaining musical theater, I do, I do think you should RSVP to I Do! I Do! before all the rice gets tossed, and the bouquet gets thrown for the final time. As Michael would tell you, it’s not Tolstoy, but then it’s not meant to be.
From the Are You Kidding Department: Curtain was at 7:00 pm, but at 7:10 pm audience members were still casually strolling in and choosing their own seats like they were in a movie theater. “What about over there, Bob?” one lady asked in a loud voice. One poor usher got so exasperated that they literally waved them off and went back into the lobby. All the while, Lindsey Corey and Alex Jorth waited for their cues. Moral of the story, be on time, people.
Britin Haller is a mystery author and an editor for Turner Publishing. Her recent short story “So Many Shores in Crookland” can be read in the 150th issue of Black Cat Weekly. Britin’s latest edit, a cozy mystery novel called Dumpster Dying is by Michelle Bennington and available where books are sold. Find Britin across social media.
I Do! I Do! plays through June 1 at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center, 50 West Atlantic Blvd, Pompano Beach; Fri-Sat evening performances at 7 pm.; Sat-Sun matinees at 2 pm. Running time approx. 125 minutes includes a 15-minute intermission. Tickets starting at $45. Call 954-501-1910, or visit Pompanobeachculturalcenter.com
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