Will Rogers: Common Stars, Surreal Moons

By Dan Hagen

Oddly enough, as I was about to leave to attend the dress rehearsal for the Little Theatre’s “Will Rogers Follies,” I had just gotten to page 338 in the biography I’m reading, “Lindbergh” by A. Scott Berg.

During the summer of 1935, right after the conviction of Bruno Hauptman for the kidnapping and killing of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby, Lindbergh learned that his friend Will Rogers had been killed with aviator Wiley Post in an Alaska plane crash.

Like Lindbergh, Rogers was an early 20th century superstar, astoundingly popular. But at this late date, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about — a folksy, aw-shucks Oklahoman who made rather banal observations and became famous for rope tricks and the preposterous claim that he never met a man he didn’t like.

Rogers’ influence on popular culture has been so great that we no longer see it, in part because it has been retranslated and recycled many times, from Andy Griffith through Johnny Carson to Ron White.

Once, everyone in the world knew who Will Rogers was, but he died almost 80 years ago, meaning that these days, many do not. And that makes this show a harder sell.

Kelly Shook directs and choreographs this “life in review” musical, not really a play with a plot but a series of interconnected biographical sketches structured as a Ziegfeld show, with the great impresario himself making voice-of-God comments through a loudspeaker.

Like a Ziegfeld show, it’s got dancing boys and lots of pretty girls in spectacular, colorful costumes by Edward Carignan, all performing on a large, lighted and somewhat intimidating stairway by scene designer Alex M. Gaines.

On the top step of the show business stairs is Rogers, played by Sean Zimmerman, who needed more rehearsal with his rope tricks but is affable enough. Skipping around in time, the show’s comedy material doesn’t always work, Rogers’ newspaper-based jokes sounding about 15 years out of date.

Karla Shook, Sean Zimmerman. News-Progress photo by Keith Stewart

Zimmerman’s best moment comes near the end, when Rogers is asked by President Hoover to cheer up the nation during the worst of the Depression. Instead, he makes low-key and heartfelt remarks about fat cats, economic injustice and compassion that ring so true for today that it almost gives you chills.

With songs lively but unmemorable, the show plods a ways, trying to find a way to engage the audience. It doesn’t really get anywhere until it arrives on the moon.

And what, you might well wonder, is a homespun humorist doing on the moon? Well, Ziegfeld is spicing up Rogers’ life story, and finds the actual setting for Rogers’ first meeting with his wife Betty Blake (Karla Shook) too dull. So he moves everything to the moon.

Shook’s excellent voice delivers two of the better tunes in the show, the romantic “My Unknown Someone” and “My Big Mistake.” The moon meeting underlines the surrealism of the show, letting the characters admit to the audience that they are characters on stage. That makes everything more fun.

Time and space are discarded. People know and accept their fates. A child (charming little Oliver Adamson) who has already died of diphtheria gets to continue to hang around on stage just because we want him to. Rogers’ dad (Marc Pera, an actor who has some serious stage presence) also dies, but immediately returns with wings. Rogers asks if he can fly. “I had to walk down the stairs, Will,” Pera points out scornfully.

It’s almost as if Rogers’ ordinary-man persona has simply dispensed with the customary shenanigans of the theatre in order to address us directly.

The biggest crowd-pleaser in the show seems to be the rhythmic red, white and blue number when Rogers runs for president, featuring what might be described as hand-dancing or slap-dancing.

Incidental intelligence: “The Will Rogers Follies” is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman.

The cast includes Kara Guy, Jack Scott, Kelsey Andres, Marc Pera, Rachel Perin, Ashley Klinger, Melissa Jones, Amanda Johns, Mandy Modic, Colin Shea Denniston, Andy Frank, Matthew Glover, Peter Marinaro, Jared Titus, Matthew Alan Schmidt, Zach Smith, Caroline Adamson and Nick Clark. Gus Gordon is the voice of Ziegfeld.

The show has lighting design by Matthew Frick, stage management by Jeremy J. Phillips and musical direction by Kevin Long.

Performances will run through July 28. Tickets may be purchased by calling The Little Theatre on the Square Box Office at (217)-728-7375 or online at www .thelittletheatre.org.

Sean Zimmerman and Ziegfeld's dancing boys.