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Dan’s Diary: Three Cheers for Community Theatre
Is there anything else that’s as simultaneously uplifting, corny, humbling, authentic and entertaining as community theater? Talk about hope. Community theater is built on hope (and love and sweat, too.) With every song and dance number, ordinary people get to live the American dream. Community theater is American Idol for all. The Center for Peforming Arts at Rhinebeck is an accomplished community theater that produces its shows in a barn (naturally), and its current production of Stephen Sondheim‘s 1971 Follies (through January 25) manages to pull off the the show’s tricky balance of pathos and bathos. The story of a reunion among Broadway show girls thirty years after their heydays on the eve of the demolition of the theater where they performed, it seems an oddly apt show for this moment in time. It’s about looking back at better days and honoring the survival extinct. The show’s most famous song, “I’m Still Here”, has been sung meaningfully in cabaret settings by divas such as Eartha Kitt and Elaine Stritch, and it’s an anthem for all of us who plan to weather these difficult times with as much optimism and humor as we can muster. In Rhinebeck, Lisa Lynd delivers the song with gusto and no self pity. Unlike most of the audience last Sunday, I did not have friends or relatives in the cast but by the end of the show I felt like I knew every one of the actors and felt as proud of them as if they were my nearest and dearest. I could feel the audience collectively praying for every member of the cast to shine. And that’s why it’s called community theater—because it celebrates and fosters community.
Follies at the Center for the Performing Arts at Rhinebeck
661 Route 308, Rhinebeck, NY; 845.876.3080
Through January 25
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