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January 7, 2014
Local artist forsakes the rules, sculpts her paintings
January 7, 2014
“Cinderella Battistella” was an unequivocal success last Christmas, so the Bayou Playhouse extended its run for three weeks. Sellouts continued, and the classic fable doused in Cajun-inspired humor reached an unprecedented status at the Lockport theater, influencing how the current season was formatted and prompting a reprisal almost a year to the day it concluded.
“I’m always concerned about bringing a show back because you never know if it’s going to do as well, but apparently, this one is,” said Perry Martin, the playhouse’s artistic director. Martin was actually hospitalized with pneumonia throughout the show’s initial run, excluding opening night. “They would call me on Monday and Tuesday and tell me that the weekend was completely sold out. We sold out seven weeks without trying.
“We already have 120 tickets sold at this point, and we started rehearsal yesterday,” he said in late December.
Aside from scheduling the special three-week encore run slated to begin Jan. 17 (“Okra” is the only other production to be reprised in the theater’s six-year history), Martin returned to the “Battistella” writers and kept true to its formula for playhouse’s ’13 winter musical that concluded last month, “The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf.” It too made liberal use of Cajun tropes, accents and proper nouns in reinventing classic tales for the Bayou.
Musicals with south Louisiana take on classic tales has been the theme each of the past two winters. Martin said he’s not sure if the playhouse can keep churning out triumphs in the same vein – which is in part based on the availability of scripts – but he foresees returning next Christmas with a musical.
“I’m always concerned about bringing a show back because you never know if it’s going to do as well, but apparently, this one is,” Martin said. “The Big Bad Wolf did really well, Cinderella looks like it’s blazing, and we’ve kind of resigned ourselves, around the holiday time, to do a musical.”
Most of last year’s cast is returning for the “Battistella” reprisal. The three changes are introducing Jacob Miller (the wolf of “The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf) and Larry Hyatt (last seen locally in Le Petit’s “Night of January 16th) as the prince and King Cake King, respectively, and Sara Goodrum (the pig Luzianne in “Big Bad Wolf”) as the wicked stepmother, Evangeline DeLaParish.
“I think it’s a cast with better singing voices this year, and I have a lot more pros, whereas last year, we had a couple of people who had never been on stage before,” Martin said. “Instead of me giving them every comedy bit, these guys are creating their own stuff, which is really great.”
Bob Bruce and David Cuthbert collaborated to write the script and lyrics, and the music is credited to the late Fred Palmisano. Martin said the writers give him freedom to adapt it to the south Lafourche setting, so the Cinderella (Mindy Guidroz) depicted is “the saddest girl south of Clovelly.”
Mistreated by her stepmother and –sisters, as her tale always goes, Cinderella dreams of being crowned the King Cake Queen. She’s aided by her two friends, Buster Crab (Caroline Savoie) and Berl Crawfish (Emma Burlette), and the magic spun by her Voodoo Princess Fairy God Mama, Mama LeRoux (Tiffany Billiot).
Aggie Thibodaux (the pig Roseanne in Big Bad Wolf) is again Feliciana, one of the two stepsisters alongside Tangipahoa (Trey Acosta).
“That is my favorite role,” Thibodaux said. “I’ve been in a few other shows at the Bayou Playhouse, but it all comes down to ‘Cinderella Battistella.’ Perry is like, ‘Could you calm down?’ I just can’t. It’s something about the cast and the people, it’s just my favorite part to play.”
Thibodaux said she thinks the show’s appeal is in the local flavor and, thus, the audiences’ surprising familiarity with the substance.
“They’re coming to theater not expecting to hear those French words, not expecting the names of places down the bayou, places they know, places they’ve been to,” she said.
Martin agreed, adding that children and adults can laugh simultaneously at different jokes.
“I think it appeals to, well I say, kids of all ages,” Martin said. “I think the adults can laugh their butts off because they get all the references, and the kids love it because there’s a lot of slapstick and a lot of comedy, plus the costumes and it’s a musical.”
Mindy Guidroz plays the marginalized, mistreated Cinderella in the Bayou Playhouse reproduction of “Cinderella Battistella,” a unique telling of the classic fable doused in Cajun tropes, accents and proper nouns.
