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Going Broadway classic with ‘Brigadoon’

Marshall High School Tiger Theatre students take different approach

Photo by Cindy Votruba Pictured are members of Marshall High School’s Tiger Theatre preparing for opening night of their fall musical “Brigadoon.” The show is today through Monday at the Schwan Community Center for the Performing Arts at the high school. Director Dan Smith said that after doing newer musicals the last few years, the theater decided to try a classic.

MARSHALL — For this year’s fall musical, theater students at Marshall High School turned to a traditional Broadway classic.

The Marshall High School Tiger Theatre is performing “Brigadoon” at 7:30 p.m. today-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Schwan Community Center for the Performing Arts at MHS.

MHS English teacher Dan Smith is the show’s director. He said the theater students have done fairly new material for the past few years, and he wanted students to have the opportunity to do an old Broadway classic.

“It doesn’t get much more classic than one of Lerner and Loewe’s shows,” he said.

Dan Smith said the theater students have done so many new shows that an old show feels fresh.

“And it’s been fun to do some of the old conventions like closing the main curtain at the end of the show before the curtain call,” he said. “From start to finish, this show just feels like the big classic Broadway shows I grew up with. It’s full of fantastic scenes and memorable moments, but the biggest thing is that it tells a great story.

“The story is the heart of the show.”

At the beginning of the show, Dan Smith said, two friends from New York City get lost while hunting in the Scottish Highlands. They hear music in the distance and see a small village in the mist and stumble into a mysterious town called Brigadoon. The people are dressed as though it was 200 years ago and haven’t heard of modern technology. Brigadoon only appears on the planet one day every 100 years.

Last, year, Tiger Theatre performed “Newsies.”

“It’s definitely very different from ‘Newsies,’ “ said Zoe Vorbach, who plays Fiona in “Brigadoon.” “We had a different approach to it, a more traditional golden age of Broadway.” She said that “Brigadoon” and “Newsies” has equal demands, but different demands as well.

“With ‘Newsies,’ it was such a high-energy show,” said Jack Pedersen, who plays Charlie in “Brigadoon.”

“It’s much more classical, the roles are traditional and super fun; it’s been great,” said Danny Smith. He plays Tommy in “Brigadoon.”

Pedersen and Vorbach said “Brigadoon” is a “rom-com.”

“It’s a classic Broadway love story that has a lot of love and comedy mixed in,” Vorbach said.

In the opening scenes, Vorbach said her character is rational and has a good grasp on what is going on with her life.

But once a man named Tommy from New York arrives, things change for Fiona, Vorbach said.

“Tommy pretty much sweeps her off of her feet” and changes everything she knows, Vorbach said.

“It’s the love story of meeting a strange girl in a strange place and falling in love,” Danny Smith said.

Pedersen said his character shows Tommy that true love is possible.

“For me, Charlie is a secondary character, he serves as a motivator for Tommy,” Pedersen said.

Several of the actors worked on a Scottish accent for the show. Vorbach said she watched some clips of the show on YouTube and had watched the show over the summer when it was announced that MHS was doing it for a fall musical. Pedersen said he also watched a lot of videos to develop a Scottish accent, learning what vowels to stress. Dan Smith said that the show was written in 1946 with very little attention paid to accuracy in the dialect.

“I told them to listen to scenes and movies with Scottish dialects, which for kids their age is ‘Shrek,'” Dan Smith said.

Rose Hanson plays Meg Brockie in “Brigadoon,” and said she listened to the movie “Shrek” a little bit.

“(And) I thought ‘what seems Scottish to you?’ and I just did it,” Hanson said.

Hanson said her character is trying to find the real love of her life.

“I’m just kind of the comic relief,” Hanson said.

Danny Smith said his character, Tommy, and his friend, Jeff, portrayed by Zaakir Hassan, are on vacation, hunting in Scotland. The two get lost in the Highlands.

“All these people are working together to create a community while Zaakir and I have to be unlike them as possible,” Danny Smith said.

Dan Smith said his actors bring honesty and commitment to their roles.

“For as far-fetched as its premise is, it’s such an honest human story,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot about honesty during rehearsals, and the only way to tell a story like that is through actor commitment.”

Layne Ziemer, one of the show’s cast members, said the people in the show really make it fun. Earlier this week, the actors were singing one of the show’s songs in one of the choir rooms, Ziemer said.

“And you could feel the magic,” Ziemer said. “I am so ready for a large audience.”

As the actors got ready for opening night, they said all the work that goes into the show is worth it.

“The cast, we’re who gets us through this,” Hanson said. “We encourage each other — It’s just the best feeling in the world.”

“Theater is like a family, we all support each other, it’s a lot of fun,” Ziemer said.

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