Mid-life! The CRISiS Musical

Critiqued by Holly Bartges

It’s about time!

Brian Norber, Scott Beyette and A. K. Klimpke in Mid-life! The CRISiS Musical.

In our youth oriented society, it is about time someone has the foresight, perception, and intelligent maturity to creatively write a humorous laugh-out-loud celebration of life embracing the reality of aging.

Contrary to popular opinion, it happens.

Contrary to popular opinion, it happens to every living molecule from a blade of grass, to a rosebud, to butterflies, to every human being who ever walked the face of the earth, and whoever plans to.

Somehow, particularly in our society the “we-ness” chooses to fool the “we” by saying “not to me,” and “we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen.” The more the “we” attempts to make sure it doesn’t happen with nips, tucks, and Botox, the more obvious it becomes.

Surprise! Aging is simply a fact of life, as much as a fact of life as is death, and “we all know that happens to everyone else, but not to us”. When it does happen, it comes as such an unexpected surprise. With aging comes the wonder of perception, insight, and wisdom.

It’s about time to turn the page celebrating life including the ending.

What better way for Boulder’s Dinner Theatre to do just that while celebrating its 30 years of Broadway in Boulder?

Jim and Bob Walton, brothers who happen to be New York actors, who also like to write, wanted to try their wings at something new: a musical revue. Concluding it would be a great idea to write about something they knew, they hit upon aging, and you can’t get any more universal then that.

Jim was able, eager, and willing to come to Denver to direct and choreograph the brilliant BDT cast in the deliciously hysterical look at various stages of aging, with a touch of poignancy belonging to the total package.

The cast wondrously features Scott Beyette, Alicia Dunfee, Brian Norber, A. K. Klimpke, Barb Reeves and brings back Bren Eyestone Burron who has been greatly missed from BDT. With this roller coaster speed bullet musical, these “favorite six” change characters from the inside out faster than nano-seconds allow.

On a simple but elegant set designed by Amy Campion, center stage features a turn table for quick focused scenes, and a large eye chart above the set moving with a life of its own, identifying the fast moving scenes.

The song “Welcome to Mid-Life” sets the color scheme for what is to come promising laughter, empathy, truthfulness, and laughter by the carload, and above all celebration.

Norber confuses even the other cast members when he confesses to being a victim of CRS.

CRS?

Translation: Can’t Remember Squat.

For a 40th Birthday party, Beyette admits to one small hitch: turning into his Dad, preferring to wear plaid while playing golf.

In “Biological Clock,” Dunfee and Klimpke find themselves at a bus stop bench following their second date. Although she invites him up to her apartment for a drink, effervescently pretending “it isn’t late”, the spotlight treatment allows her to express real feelings that it is late. The spotlight treatment gives Klimpke his chance in the moonlight to reveal his true feelings. It’s late for him too. Late enough for him, unable to read beyond her eagerness, “I’m going.”

Out of breath, Norber appears on the scene. Having missed his bus, lamenting he has another 80 minutes to wait, Dunfee jumps in with “Just enough timeÉ”

“Friends For Life” finds Reeves and Beyette at an art gallery. With Beyette on his cell phone, Burron wanders in overjoyed to spot Reeves. A lively catch-up conversation follows. Both gushing over how thrilled they are to see each other, promising soon to get together for lunch. After Burron flies off and out of sight, Beyette asks who that was. With confusion pasted across her face, Reeves admits she has no idea.

Weekend Warriors takes Norber and Klimpke to a local gym to play basketball. Beyette saunters in challenging the other two, leaving them openmouthed revealing his latest basketball gear covered with Bling. Beyette signed them up for the Old Timers League beginning in two weeks. Although they have much work ahead of them, they attempt to convince each other, most importantly attempting to convince themselves, they are in great shape. Stretching exercises gives way to a song. Whew! The wives call and whew! They need to leave. The three characterize the athletic bravado that once upon a time they championed. The ego remains. The bravado slipped out the door sometime ago.

With a beautiful ballad, Reeves following Lasik surgery, reveals how sweet to see him again, referring to her husband, including a few elements that aren’t so sweet to see again.

With Beyette as a doctor, Burron with her unique animated eyebrows finds herself explaining why it has been six years since she had a Mammogram. Ah, with a straight face, the doctor joyously introduces his assistants Dunfee, Reeves, and Klimpke with a singing mammogram. They in turn introduce a lighted blinking contraption along with tap dancing pap smears. Not funny when you come right down to it, but the lyrics and these brilliant comedic actors ride the laughter to its full spectrum.

Norber’s song “Side Effects” in reading prescription labels leaves one doubled up simply because of the complexity of truth. With his rubber face and rubberized muscle structure, Norber compounds the laughter knowing truth appears in the strangest places.

“My Lost Love” showcases Burron’s incredible comedic talent, and Klimpke’s profound comedic muscular control. He exposes one lost love in the moonlight, and she exposes another.

At a dining room table Burron and Beyette engage in the universal argument over money. To the rescue Norber enters as their mid-life crisis translator. When he gets bogged down, Dunfee rescues him as the menopause translator.

“During The Empty Nest,” Reeves languishes on a sofa folding clothes when Klimpke wanders in and they lament the empty nest. Only their empty next takes a different turn. Norber, as their living-at-home-son, comes in with laundry announcing he and his girlfriend, Dunfee, have decided to live together…there. The empty nest syndrome takes on a completely different meaning expressed wondrously by Reeves and Klimpke’s juxtaposition to Norber and Dunfee.

This leads into the all cast gangbuster song “I Quit” giving “permissioned” credence to a certain time in one’s life, it is freeing to say I Quit.

Act II takes Norber, Burron, and Beyette, on a rollicking identifiable I’m-glad-I’m-not-alone lament of “What Did I Come In Here For?” Demonstrating humor can show up in the weirdest places.

For the Big 50 party, Reeves and Klimpke insist turning 50 is no big deal sending them into a soft shoe dance including canes and hats wearing tee shirts announcing “50 is the new 30.”

In “Boy’s Night In” Norber introduces his friends, Klimpke and Beyette, to the male equivalent to Botox. With these three, the result is just too funny for words. Beyette can’t close his eyes. Klimpke’s face won’t move. For these two, that takes some doing.

Burron, Dunfee, and Reeves attend their 30-year class reunion stunned over how old everyone looks. A disco ball swirls the stage, and the three employ their comedic talent to the hilt.

“Another Trip to the Doctor” takes Beyette and Klimpke into the waiting room to meet while waiting for their physical. In spite of the stoic expressions mostly witnessed in doctor’s waiting rooms, these two act out in suburb detail what everyone caught in a stoic stance goes through from the inside out. What a surprise awaits them.

In classical Menopause, Klimpke finds himself caught in the thrust of a menopausal moment with Burron’s futile attempt to live within her skin. As truthful reality unfolds, Klimpke’s antics of frozen caught in the net speechless moments, Burron drives the hilarious symbolic peg deeper and deeper into the audience. A particular highlight schleps across the stage when Burron appears in a much too tight dress asking if it makes her look fat. Her instigated reaction, coupled with Klimpke’s special brand of “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea paralysis” could easily fall into the ten top classical comedic moments of the 21st Century. Yes, a mouthful, but so is the scene.

The musical takes a sharp left turn into a gorgeous celebratory, upbeat song “The Long Goodbye” taking the breath away, leaving a smile of peace and truth and pain all wrapped into one.

Reeves and Dunfee on a park bench recognize Norber’s attention to one he watches moving into the park to play at something, somewhere. The Walton’s wrote this song in honor of their parents who died earlier this year. The last conversation Jim remembers having with his mother was five years ago. Dealing with the painful reality of Alzheimer’s, the disappearance, the loss, The Long Goodbye celebrates the life that once was, along with the difficulty of the now. It’s gorgeous all on its own, but the three turn it into an exceptional moment of celebration wrapped in grief, and grief wrapped in celebration. Those who face it every day, and will face it, should memorize the lyrics, singing it first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, as well as singing it to those caught in the shadows of Alzheimer’s. Somewhere they’ll hear. Somewhere they’ll know, and somewhere they’ll understand.

The cast bounces into the upbeat with “I’m not ready to grow up, not ready to give up.” They’re not ready to accept someone else’s definition or should’s or should nots. They’ll define their own manner of aging, thank you very much; in I’m Not Ready.

With Neal Dunfee on the piano on stage giving life to the notes of the music in the only way he knows how, the musical gusto expertise swallows the theatre.

Linda Morken designed the costumes with actors and characters boldly in mind, precisely knowing when to be outrageous and when to allow the characters dignity, even when the characters prompted by the actors throw dignity to the four winds.

There is no question everyone, no matter what the chronological age, should have this on their must-see-must-experience list of things to do, take it to heart, dance through the celebration, laugh hard and often, learn early to say goodbye when appropriate, and greet the aging process with a warm embrace with an about time chip riding on the shoulder. Someone needs to write the “It’s About Time” song.