ACT's 'She Loves Me' Part I

November 8th, 2007 at 10:20pm Michael Conniff 2

Okay, I admit it--I had to leave early and the second act awaits next week. I also write this not more than an hour after my first glimpse of "She Loves Me," the brand-new Aspen Community Theatre production that opened Thursday night at the Wheeler Opera House. But I can happily report that what awaits you at the Wheel House is an evening of almost unrelenting good cheer, with a joviality that reaches from the performers to the back of the house.

Based the the play "Parfumerie," "She Loves Me" is the musical precursor to "You've Got Mail," the movie about online and anonymous romance starrting Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan a few years back. A direct line to this production also runs through the old movie, "Little Shop On The Corner."

In this version of the classic story, a man and a woman who work in a perfume store in Budapest fall in love by answering "Lonely Hearts" ads in the newspaper--the earliest version of newspaper personals. On the stage of the Wheeler, director Mike Monroney coaxed warmth and humor out of everyone in the cast, and the overriding feeling that somehow true love would triumph.

I'll write about specific performances when my head clears, but one element of the production I'm determined to tout is the lazy-susan set in Kodachrome by Tom Ward, whose set design here and in last year's "Fiddler on the Roof" border on genius, with very little in the way of hard goods suggesting much larger worlds.

The play is also perfect for the compact universe that is the Wheeler Opera House. "Fiddler," in contrast, was a huge show that seemed to include the better part of the community on stage. "She Loves Me," in contrast, is intimate and joyous. I had a slap-happy grin on my face throughout Act I, as did former Mayor Helen Klanderud chuckling in the seat next to me. Can't wait until the curtain goes up on Act II.

Entry Filed under: Movies, Theater, Aspen, Pitkin County, United Post