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Idaho Enterprise

Melodrama serves up laughs for the Fourth

Curtain Call at this year’s melodrama, which was not for the lactose intolerant.

“The Great Ice Cream Scheme! Or Robin Baskins to the Rescue!” by Billy St. John was this year’s melodrama performance at the Iron Door.  An Independence Day tradition for many years, the melodrama is a light-hearted escape from what is typically the hottest part of the afternoon inside the cool confines of the historic downtown theater. 

The melodrama also celebrates the uniquely American dramatic form of the archetypal turn of the twentieth century stage drama designed for frontier audiences.  The melodrama was a staple of saloons, vaudeville houses, western theaters, boardwalks, and other venues designed for the masses, rather than the cultural elite.  The genre has a heavy reliance on puns (which were essentially nonstop in the “Ice Cream Scheme”), physical comedy, and predictable dramatic tropes that invite audience involvement.  Many people in Malad are familiar with the form, and the audiences on hand are usually given a quick primer just in case that isn’t so.

The crowd is encouraged to boo the villains, cheer the heros, and make appropriately gushy noises at the outsized romantic interplay of the two leads.  Unlike many conventional theatrical forms, the actors are “in on” the setup, and encourage the audience responses directly.    

The play was produced by special arrangement with Pioneer Drama Service, Inc. in Englewood, Colorado.  Rex Lippold and members of the cast worked on the sets for the play.

Jeff Richins, who also directed this year’s play, took on the role of the mustachioed villain, I.C. Custard, whose plan to abscond with Pep Amint’s (Jaylyn Green) ice cream recipe provides the basic substrate for the sundae of the plot.  Hero Robin Baskins (Ty Price) fulfills the role of noble defender of all things good, as well as romantic lead paired with Marsha Mallow (Kassidy Martin), who played our requisite swooning heroine.  Matriarch Nana Peel was played by Shannon Worrell, with the cast of ice cream shop denizens filled out by Etta Lotta Spumoni (Trinity Christophersen), Alec De Spoon (Nicole White), Cookie N’ Cream (Ali Jeppsen). 

Ada Campbell was a standout as the clumsy and ultimately good-hearted co-villain Parfait Deluxe.

Another delightful pairing was Candy Sprinkles (Kaleigh Worrell) and Walt Nutz (Kris White), who provided a great running commentary on the proceedings as they unfolded, with sardonic asides on both the characters in the performance, but also the writing and direction of the play itself.

In fact, the meta-discourse of the play (that is, the parts of the play where the characters acknowledged that they were in a play) was one of the main comic features.  In addition to I.C. Custard’s fourth-wall breaking discussions of the play’s events, the audience seemed to relish every time Ernie (Conner Worrell) entered the scene.  Ernie essentially played a teamster, or at the very least a grizzled stagehand, who wanted to break into acting.  His inexplicable intrusions into the play’s plot were amusing and nicely done.

Another feature of the play was a number of blackout gags, which were used to cover the stage arrangement, as well as provide comic relief and commentary on the events of the play.  Campbell, Richins, and Worrell made the most of the scenes and added a fun texture to the performance.  Acting without the ability to convey anything through physical actions can perhaps seem restricting, but the cast did an excellent job with voice work to make it a strong part of the play’s texture.

The Friday night performance was full, and the funds raised during the play will be used to support future endeavors of the Playhouse, which is a great creative asset for the community, and certainly worth supporting.  The playhouse also hosts full productions during the year, as well as a haunted theater event and cowboy poetry.

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