The Boy Friend, Summer 1988

In the summer of 1988 our production was The Boy Friend.

It was a summer of change as it was the first time in many years that Adam Lazarre was not directing the production.

Santo Giglio, the long time choreographer, would take over the directing duties.

The play was chosen in part because it would not be too much of a challenge.

For those who know it, The Boy Friend is not a deep musical, very light and to me it seems very similar to the classic No, No, Nannette in style and plot.

The musical has no show stopping tunes or ones that must people would know.

That summer we also had two outside designers working with us.

Both the scene and costume designers were from SUNY Geneseo, 40 or so miles to the south.

I knew the scene designer as I had worked with him a few times before and became friendly with the costume designer as well and we all had a good time that summer.

Our production was not bad and as always I had fun working on it.

The summer musicals were always lots of work but we always made sure that we had lots of fun too.

Wednesday lunchtime cookouts on the loading dock and of course cast parties after each show, and many of the rehearsals as well.

I do not have too many special stories from this production, good or bad, but as with many other shows I have bits from the shows still hanging about, literally.

Until the recent renovation we had a bright yellow plywood Sun from the show hanging in the shop.

Not sure where it is now, I will have to find it and put it back.

I had enough fun with the two outside designers that we talked about getting together after the show was done.

That fall one of the student assistants and I went down to Geneseo to see one of their shows.

Wrong show.

The play we chose to see was about women prisoners during the Holocaust.

It was sad and very Loooooooooong.

There was maybe 10 to 15 women in the play, all dressed in death camp outfits, very pale grey makeup and a few of them even shaved all of their hair off.

They did a fine job but it took more than just a few minutes to shake off the play and get into the mood to go have a few beers with our friends when it was done.

I guess that speaks to the effectiveness of the production and its very difficult subject.

When I left to go see the play I did not know what we were going to see, I just thought we would see some normal college production and have a few beers and laughs after.

The next school year would be the last for the scene designer and we also be getting the first of several new costumes designers.

We would have four different staff costume designers over the next five years and other staff changes were also ahead in next couple of years.

Through it all we still did our productions, most of them good and had a good time doing them.

 

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