Popular KATS group to stage Lend Me a Tenor

 THE Knocknacarra Amateur Theatre Society KATS will present its upbeat production of Lend Me a Tenor, the award winning Broadway and West End hit by Ken Ludwig in The Taibhdhearc Theatre, Galway from Monday next, May 13 to Friday, May 17

Following its most recent highly successful production, The Unexpected Guest, a thriller by Agatha Christie, KATS decided to do something completely different and opted for this well-known, screwball madcap modern comedy.

The 1986 play is popular among amateur and professional theatres, and with good reason.

It combines the traditional elements from hotel-room farces — mistaken identities, naughty intentions, looming scandal — with the slickness of modern comedy. To add to the fun, the play is set in the frisky 1930s.

It is a play which requires top class acting and the director, Colin Callanan, has assembled a smart cast to do exactly that.

The action takes place in a hotel suite one night in 1934. Tito Merelli, ‘Il Stupendo’, a celebrated Italian tenor is making his long-awaited American debut in Otello with the Cleveland Grand Opera Company.

Saunders, the company’s pompous general manager, and Max, his timid assistant and a would-be singer, quickly have their hands full with Tito, a lover of wine, women and song whose florid charms have the local ladies in a bit of a flutter.

A jealous blowup between Tito and Maria, his waspish wife, combined with a hilarious series of mishaps, an unwise excess of wine and other substances, plunges the overly emotional tenor into a coma.

Saunders and Max believe the star is dead, so in a desperate attempt to salvage the evening, Saunders persuades Max to get into Merelli's Otello costume and fool the audience into thinking he's Il Stupendo.

Max succeeds admirably, but Merelli wakes up and gets into his other costume ready to perform. Now two Otellos are running around in costume and two women are running around in lingerie, each one thinking she is with Il Stupendo.

It all promises to be a production filled with laughter.

Booking for Lend me a Tenor at An Taibhdhearc is at 091 563195.