Once you make your reputation with edgy, unconventional musicals like Bat Boy, Assassins and Side Show, it is hard to switch gears, go mainstream and be completely satisfying.
That is the challenge facing the adventuresome Slow Burn Theatre Company, which feels obligated to pull back from the offbeat during the summer, when its available audience pool is smaller. So it has selected 2006’s The Wedding Singer, about the romantic woes of a wedding band vocalist, based on the popular Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore flick from eight years earlier.
The results are pleasant enough, and director-choreographer Patrick Fitzwater has again discovered and showcased some terrific non-union talent. Still, “pleasant” is not what we look for from Slow Burn, so the evening feels lightweight, certainly when compared to the other musicals from the West Boca troupe this season.
Slow Burn does introduce to the area the songwriting team of Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, who cleverly harness the pop sounds of the ’80s to chart the emotional ups and downs of Robbie Hart, whose heart gets crushed when his fiancée dumps him at the altar. Of course, that adversely affects his ability to be upbeat at his wedding gigs, but he slowly recovers and falls for catering hall waitress Julia Sullivan, only to learn that she is already engaged to a wealthy Wall Street clod.
The cast rarely stands and sings when they can dance instead, so Fitzwater gets to flex his choreographic muscles more than he otherwise has this season. With period fads, line dances and funky ballroom moves, the show is crowded with energetic production numbers that the young ensemble executes with verve, if not always precision.
As Robbie, Clay Cartland gets to exercise his facility for broad, physical comedy, while still being a credible romantic leading man. A neat trick. He began his professional theater career at Slow Burn and makes a triumphant return, with charisma to spare. He has a better than needed singing voice, as heard on the opening bouncy It’s Your Wedding Day and the love duet If I Told You — to name just two — as well as the bonus of knowing his way around an acoustic guitar.
Courtney Poston, so sprightly as conjoined twin Violet in Side Show, sings sweetly here as Julia, but her character comes off a bit bland. She is shown up by blonde-ringletted Erica Mendez, who draws attention as Holly, Julia’s promiscuous friend and dispenser of bad advice. Other supporting performers who register well include Conor Walton as the band’s androgynous keyboardist George, who turns a synagogue prayer into a mellow secular interlude, and Penny Mandel as Robbie’s Grandma Rosie, an unlikely but proficient rapper.
As always, scenic designer Ian T. Almeida supplies the physical production on what looks like a very tight budget. For The Wedding Singer, that means set fragments for its many locales. And where the Broadway production showed off with a first act finale that spoofed Flashdance, Almeida takes the requirement in stride with his own solution to the water deluge effect.
The Wedding Singer is fun, even if it feels a few cuts below the usual Slow Burn effort. As a summer’s diversion, it will do, but it comes off as what it apparently is — an off-season entertainment.
THE WEDDING SINGER, Slow Burn Theatre Company at West Boca High School, 12811 West Glades Road, Boca Raton. Through Sunday. Tickets: $40. Call: (866) 811-4111.