It’s that time of year when the seasons change again. Light fades. The curtain falls. People come together to celebrate.
But we’re not talking about autumn; that was so last month.
The season of Lake Park theatre is again upon us, with an exciting array of shows awaiting an eager audience.
Starting off the year as always with the children’s play, the actors of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp brought a fantastical tale of compassion and triumph to middle schoolers and adults alike. The play’s fictitious king, played by Rowan Panganiban (LP ‘24) needs a grand story to cure his boredom, and the one his crafty future queen Scheherazade, played by Aashna Bhatt (LP ‘24) spins is sure to please both the monarch and the audience.
Turning away from the children’s play we take a more drastic turn.
For a production more in line with the Halloween season, the LP Drama Department looked to Clue: High School Edition with its seven murders to bring the classic mystery board game to life.
Fear abounds when six Washington, D.C. residents find themselves in the foreboding Boddy Manor amidst blackmail for their various crimes–crimes for which they would kill to cover up.
The manor’s butler, Wadsworth, played by Anthony Johnson (LP ‘25), provides a final retracing-our-steps monologue that delighted audiences both with its humor and complexity.
But make no mistake–while Wadsworth had the most obvious success, no production features just one character. Whether Aladdin’s vizier-and-son duo played by Issac Kaleta (LP ‘26) and Cam Helgeson (LP ‘25) or Clue’s Mr. Green and Colonel Mustard, played by George Moore (LP ‘25) and Tyler Graham (LP ‘26), the beauty of theatre rests in the importance of every role.
For those who saw last spring’s “The Drowsy Chaperone” musical, you can probably relate to the immense power of the theatre. What that play’s narrator, Man in Chair (played by Luke Thomas, LP ‘25) loved about these shows is the transformative element.
When the lights dim and the curtains part, the audience is transported to another world. Whatever your worldly problems are, you can (hopefully) forget them for an hour or two and simply enjoy a catchy song or a thrilling mystery. And, if you’re lucky, the play’s end can be just what you need to make it through the rest of your day. Endings can be hard. The right show can make you wish you could rewind and watch it all over again (as Man in Chair wished for his show within a show).
But when done properly, they also help you remember the small joys in life that brought you to the theatre and that will bring you others down the road.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth infamously related the futility of life to an actor whose brief time on the stage will inevitably come to a finish. All productions (on stage and otherwise) must end, but what a way to spend that fleeting time. No matter how the play makes you feel, time spent at the theatre is time well spent.
Lake Park Theatre is excited to finish off the semester strong with an extra fall play, November’s Plaza Suite, and the highly-anticipated winter play, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Plaza Suite will be the final fall play directed by Ms. Kathy Weber, who will retire from Lake Park High School in the fall.