Missy, Suzy, Cindy Lou and Betty Jean aren’t characters from Happy Days, although they could be. They’re fictional everyteens in a Midwest that doesn’t exist: It’s 1958, and they’re singing at the Springfield High Super Senior Prom, wearing chiffon party dresses, Pepsodent smiles and bouffant hairdos.
Welcome to the nostalgic world of The Marvelous Wonderettes, the season kickoff at Stageworks Theatre. Directed by Artistic Director Karla Hartley, it opens Sept. 29 (a week later than first announced, due to the unwelcome visit by Hurricane Irma).
Roger Bean’s jukebox musical comedy has been favorably compared to that doo-wopping evergreen Forever Plaid. In this case, however, the harmony-singing quartet is an all-girl affair, and the period songs they perform — “Sincerely,” “Mister Sandman,” “Lollipop” and the like — are historically, famously from the female perspective.
(Oh, and the girls don’t die in this show.)
There’s no fourth wall — we (the audience) are at the prom, watching the Marvelous Wonderettes perform. And eavesdropping on their between-song bitchiness.
“You get to know each of the characters in their own little way through the songs,” points out Heather Krueger, who plays Betty Jean. “You get to figure out their kind of dynamic, and where there’s some drama within the group. There’s two sets of best friends, there’s boy drama — which a lot of these songs lend themselves to, love and heartbreak.”
“They were not meant to perform originally. The boys’ glee club — the Crooning Crab Cakes — were meant to perform but they got in trouble for smoking,” Hartley explains of the story.
The Wonderettes — with all their emotional baggage and petty differences in tow — are last-minute prom replacements.
Ah, but they sing like angels.
“With that four-part harmony,” says Krueger, “it’s hard to find four girls that can mix well. When we sing together, it sounds like one person. And that’s a whole thing in itself.
“We’re not trying to make it anything it’s not. This is corny, it’s silly, it’s cheesy. We want people to come, have a drink, laugh and have fun. And listen to some amazing singers.”
Krueger, Heather Baird (Cindy Lou) and Alison Burns (Missy) are Stageworks veterans; only Kali Rabout (Suzy) is a newcomer to Hartley’s stage. All four are well-known singer/actresses in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.
Before getting the script for The Marvelous Wonderettes, a couple of them were vaguely familiar with the fabled school “songleader squads” of years gone by.
“When my grandma was in high school in the ‘40s and early ‘50s, she was in one of these,” Krueger says. “And they could never find a bass. So they carried around a little dummy.”
“Even when I was in high school, we had the Beauty Shop Quartet, and we would go to those Sweet Adeline conventions," Burns says. "These women in the ‘50s, this is what they did in high school: The four-part girl harmony.”
There’s a twist in the second act, which takes place at the school’s 10-year reunion, with (different) era-appropriate songs (“Wedding Bell Blues,” “It’s My Party,” et cetera). “It’s your classic awful, stereotypical sad-girl stories,” Burns laughs. “One’s lost love, one’s losing love, one’s finding love and one’s pregnant.”
Sure, it’s light-hearted froth — it’s nothing more than fun, populist entertainment, but what’s wrong with mixing things up?
“I’m not gonna lie, I placed this at the top of the season because it’d be nice to start off with an infusion of cash,” Hartley says. “After this, I’ve got two shows that are much more serious, and much more focused on societal and social issues.”
Still, she says, “There’s no knowing. I don’t know this is going to do great. But I think it will. And that’s our fondest hope.”
Bill DeYoung was born in St. Pete and spent the first 22 years of his life here. After a long time as an arts and entertainment journalist at newspapers around Florida (plus one in Savannah, Ga.) he returned to his hometown in 2014. He is the author of Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought it Down and the forthcoming Phil Gernhard, Record Man. Learn more here.
