[NEohioPAL] Review of "Forever Plaid" at Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

'Forever Plaid' shows its true stripes in Beck Center production

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

Boy bands have been popular since the barbershop quartets of the late-19th century and were all the rage when the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and New Edition emerged a hundred years later.  

 

But their true heyday - and the focus of Stuart Ross' corny, contrived yet highly contagious musical revue "Forever Plaid" - occurred in the 1950s with the preponderance of doo-wop groups.

 

In "Forever Plaid," we meet group members Frankie, Jinx, Sparky and Smudge who, in 1964 and not long out of high school, were killed in a car accident on the way to their first professional gig at an airport lounge.  They appear before us - resurrected in matching dinner jackets and cummerbunds by mysterious cosmic forces - to perform the show they never got to do and, hopefully, hit the perfect harmony. 

 

The play's original off-Broadway incarnation in 1990 was a fast-paced musical parody of clean-cut 1950's pop culture, as the boys posture with broad iconic choreography while singing pitch-perfect renditions of "Heart and Soul," "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Rags to Riches" and others.  

 

This Beck Center for the Arts production, under Martín Céspedes' direction and choreography, steps it up a notch.  



For more of this review, go to: http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_4fd27142-3d11-11e4-a64a-afe4aa009e27.html
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