Forget serious, forget musical, think funny of the belly laugh variety with Iola High School’s production of “Check, Please.”
The play, on the Bowlus Fine Arts Center stage at 7 p.m. today and Friday with no admission charge, answers, many times over, the question: Could a blind date possibly get any worse?
Danielle Venter and Colton Schubert play a girl and a guy recently broken up, who seek a return to dating adventures — and get more than they bargain for. Each blind date is at a cozy restaurant and each ends, sometimes very quickly, with the plea, “check, please!”
Four males and four females play their dates, not once but several times taking on different characterizations for each.
Schubert deals with a girl whose life revolves around football, another who is a kleptomaniac and one who is a mime. Venter faces the challenges of dates who comes dressed in a burlap sack, another as a pirate and another nattily in suit and tie.
Fryendz Wallace impresses as a debonair man-about-town, a pirate and, during interludes, as a kid playing Xbox. Other males who try, with equal lack of success, to sway Venter are Hayden Wolf, Drew Smith and Jordan Garcia.
Schubert’s foils are Audrea Stahl, Michaela Ingle, Madison Luken and Violet McCullough.
While all the actors’ performances are special, the presentation is made more intriguing by lighting techniques that, right on cue, draw the audience’s attention to the uncoupling of the blind dates. Katie Terhune, who has a knack for stagecraft, is the lighting operator.
The play also depends on sub-heads projected on a screen above the stage. Alanna Knavel is in charge of giving the audience a clue to what is about to unfold.
RICHARD Spencer is the play’s director. He has put together a cast that by Wednesday night’s dress rehearsal had lines down pat and seized cues seemlessly.
The one-act running a little over an hour is different from that normally found on high school stage. Many scenes, some as short as a minute or so, are woven together as they hop-scotch from one table to the other.
Onlookers will find themselves quickly anticipating what outrageous event may occur next, from rude attention of one girl, Ingle, to her cell phone, to Jordan Garcia’s childish antics, to Luken’s imposing mime routine.
Venter and Schubert succeed being on stage throughout and tying all together with flawless dialogue. Other actors have their moments, although they are limited by the play’s structure.
