If you attend one of the remaining performances of "Sausage" at UMD, you'll have a great time. But you won't see the same show the opening night audience saw Thursday.
It'll be different every night. Oh, it'll be the same general plot, about a rich girl whose skinflint father won't let her marry the poor boy, and how the kids' mothers scheme to get them together. And it'll still have elaborate masks, actual slapsticks, slight of hand, song-and-dance numbers, mass juggling and flatulence jokes.
But in this production of Jeff Hatalsky's script, directed by William Payne, the actors make up their lines as they go along. And as improvisers, the 12 young cast members are amazing in their creativity, wit and timing. They had a smallish opening-night audience laughing continuously for nearly two hours.
"Sausage" is presented in the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte, which began in Italy in the 5th century B.C., has delighted kings and commoners ever since and is the basis of some of the greatest modern comics, from Sid Caesar to Monty Python to Jerry Seinfeld. Indeed, Jenelle Bartelt, who plays the love-struck Isabella, has a style strikingly reminiscent of the classic TV comedienne Carol Burnett.
The tradition is honored in the masks worn by most of the characters. Nina Escobedo has crafted wonderfully unique looks for each of the characters. It is further carried out in Cathy Sorge's set -- flats painted to represent a generic street scene -- and the live sound effects, created by what's termed a "Foley artist," in this production Emily Crom.
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The story has no specific time period, and the costuming is ambiguous: Scott Mallace's character, the Scroogish Pantalone, is resplendent in a scarlet tuxedo, while Seth Carlson, as Pantalone's servant, Arlecchino, sports a vest with the argyle pattern traditional for a certain type of Commedia dell'Arte character.
Unhindered, then, by "timeliness," the actors are free to take their allusions where they find them, and Thursday's show included references to swine flu, the Kozy Bar, DirectTV, the Mall of America and Victoria's Secret. But, again, the show you see may not.
And the line that the spoiling sausage "smells like a critic" was almost certainly unintended.
PAUL BRISSETT is a Duluth writer and amateur actor who has appeared in numerous community theater productions.
