Over the last few years Parker Sargent has presented quite a few events for the Arts Projects at the Cherry Grove Community House and Theater. While she is known for her various feature films, it is in her direction of theatrical productions that we get to truly see her craft for story-telling, and weekend’s production of “A Gay Night of Neil Simon” was a glowing example of why the community seems to go head-over-heels for her stage shows.
The cast not only delivered a stellar performance, but they proved that so much wonderful talent resides right in our community. Boudior LeFleur and Kamilla Kockman are stars in their own right every week at Cherry’s on the Bay, but seeing these queens act, sing and dance on the Community House stage was amazing. Davida Jones brought sparkle and sentiment in her numbers, and there was no doubt that Lee Sharmat, Kay Davis and JoAnn Orfanos were there to bring the funny with great one-liners, cheeky costumes and even a few puppets. Though we have seen both Tommy DeMastri and Joe Anania in the theater over the years, their talents were shining like the bright summer sun in their duo scene from “The Plaza Suite”, which had the audience riding a rollercoaster of emotions, leaving us all feeling as if we had just watched a masterclass in theatrical acting.
With a cast that brought such magic to the production, it was Sargent herself who enthralled the audience throughout the show, with her heartfelt narration . We were taken on a journey with her, through the lens of being a “theater kid” that never found themselves in the pages of the playbooks provided to her as a student. She took this chance to right-those-wrongs, by reclaiming Neil Simon’s work, by infusing it with gay characters and queer conversations, without altering much of the original script.
The house was packed, the crowd was excited to see the show and they were on their feet several times, to shower this amazing cast with much deserved adulations.
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