<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal align=center><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">From <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ruse</st1:place></st1:City> to Romance, Cupid on Target<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></B></DIV>
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<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal align=center><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">By Tom Wachunas</FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Love is a many splintered thing. Love, as in romantic connection. Finding it, keeping it, losing it, resenting it, and stumbling into it again - such is the topical stuff of “Scarlet Fever,” a new romantic comedy written by Sherry Yanow and Deborah Fezelle. Fezelle is the founder of Top Of The Town Productions, which makes its home at the historic Canton Club, and she directed this thoroughly charming dinner theatre event there that premiered on, appropriately enough, Valentines Day.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The story opens with a wedding ceremony about to transpire at <st1:City w:st="on">Joplin</st1:City>’s, a lounge in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York City</st1:place></st1:City>. Presiding over the nuptials, and narrating the action throughout the play, is the red-vested bartender Valentino, who’s really Cupid. With a wave of his hand he freezes the action and takes us back six months, to the beginnings of this seemingly unlikely union between a bare-foot hippie, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:City>, and bath-robed beauty, Scarlet. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Both <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Griffin</st1:City></st1:place>, a successful Broadway director, and Scarlet, a successful Valentine card writer, have been recently dumped by their fiancées. Thanks to Cupid’s machinations, they simultaneously hit upon the same vengeful idea – to teach their exes a lesson by making them insanely jealous. To do so, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:City> and Scarlet each fashion a false identity to attract a date (not a mate), via a web site called Stupid Cupid. That’s when things get really twisted and yes, feverish.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It wouldn’t be accurate to call this production a through-and-through live musical, though music is woven into the fabric a la romantic standards (with tunes such as “Makin’ Whoopee,” “Withcraft,” and “My Funny Valentine,” for example) presented karaoke-style. While the show seems to beg for a live jazz trio at the very least, the actors as singers nonetheless balance the aural experience with substantially skilled vocal performances.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The writing is a deft melding of comedic wit and wisdom, and the tight, crisp dialogue is delivered by a very fine ensemble cast. In the role of Valentino, Timothy Mark Adkins is neither a stupid cupid nor some mythical love wizard. With remarkably sonorous and mellow voice, both speaking and singing (he at times effectively raises a subtle spectre of Sinatra), he’s the bartender who’s seen and heard it all before, and his character doesn’t so much conjure unreasonable magic so much as he simply accelerates and oversees the inevitable. And that would be the eventual coming together of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Griffin</st1:City></st1:place>, played by Joseph M. Haladey, III, and Scarlet, played by Bethany Taylor. The chemistry between them sizzles as each turns in a performance that is as
genuinely touching as it is muscular and hilarious. At one point, Haladey practically brings the house down as, drunkenly sulking over a drink, he garbles his way through the lyrics of “One More for the Road.”</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Much more hilarity ensues as we watch the other characters interact with the lovelorn couple-to-be. Cheryl Foutz plays Cookie, Scarlet’s best friend, and a therapist with a congenial energy both girlishly mischievous and motherly. Sean Knight is convincing in his role of Pete, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:City>’s mouthy lawyer friend and hypochondriac confidant with an insouciant love-‘em-and-leave-‘em perspective on women. Meanwhile, a subtext that comes delightfully to the fore is that of the blossoming connection between Miranda, a klutzy, nervous school teacher, and Russell, an equally nervous and nerdy geneology buff. In those delicious (if not a little stereotyped) roles, Ruxandra May and Drew Schaar are startlingly, endearingly real. <SPAN
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And so it is that this comical journey from altered personae to altared partners is both gently nostalgic and wholly contemporary, and certainly an arrow to the heart. A funny valentine indeed, its aim is true.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>“Scarlet Fever” will be presented again at Fieldcrest of North Canton on Saturday, February 19. Dinner at 6:30p.m., show at 7:30, $30 per person. Must call for reservations at (330) 966 – 2222. Fieldcrest of North Canton, <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">1346 Easthill St. SE</st1:address></st1:Street>, <st1:place w:st="on">North Canton</st1:place>.</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">For more details, please visit<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT><A href="http://www.fieldcrestofnc.org/"><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">www.fieldcrestofnc.org</FONT></A><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For other reviews and commentaries by Tom Wachunas on the performing and visual arts in the greater <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canton</st1:place></st1:City> area, visit his blog, ARTWACH, at<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT><A href="http://www.artwach.blogspot.com/"><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">www.artwach.blogspot.com</FONT></A><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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