Casting Call Draws Local Talent

It was easy to see that the starlet was love struck, the chaperone was a lush and Adolpho was hot, even in the dim light on a stripped-down stage at the Haddonfield Plays & Players Theater.

Sorting them out, making sure that the butler isn’t going to be sexier than the Latin lover, is the job of Craig Hutchings, director of The Drowsy Chaperone, a musical comedy that will charm lovers of live theater in early spring.

Fifteen would-be players for the show made the cut from first auditions on Sunday and Monday and returned Wednesday to read lines for a further winnowing of hopefuls.

“We may need more men,” said producer Juliann Pomykacz before the readings Wednesday night. If casting isn’t complete this week, she said, she’d call out to men who were in earlier shows and ask those involved in the production to contact colleagues.

The Drowsy Chaperone, which opened in Canada and moved to Broadway in 2006, winning a Tony for best book and best score, is a musical within a comedy. It’s set in the 1920s and is filled with puns and spit-takes. That’s when an actor reacts to an outrageous statement by spitting out whatever liquid is in his mouth. In Drowsy, the liquid is vodka, disguised as ice water (or ice water disguised as vodka disguised as ice water) because it is, after all, Prohibition.

For close to two hours on Wednesday, those trying out for parts slipped in and out of various characters, assuming French accents and wise-guy mannerisms.

Community theater is a vocation for those who found their way on a cold night to the theater in the Crows Wood section of Haddonfield. Kaitlyn Delengowski, 25, of Gloucester City, is already part of a production of Gypsy that is running in Burlington City this month. She’ll play Gypsy Rose Lee in that show. A graduate of Seton Hall University, with a degree in musical theater, she is an administrative event coordinator for Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia.

Connor Twigg, of Audubon, who is stage manager of Drowsy, was also reading a part or two, and wouldn’t turn down a role. Twigg, 18, is also the director of the Gypsy show.

A third try-out for Drowsy, Kendra Cancellieri, 23, of Mount Laurel, is part of Burlington City’s Bridge Players Theatre production. That show closes Feb. 20 and the theater addicts would like to fill their weekends with another musical.

Susan Filtrante of Magnolia, grew up in Haddonfield and is a retired U.S. Navy chief. She’s been in other Plays & Players productions, including Grease, Showboat, and Anything Goes. She could see herself in the chaperone role.

Michael Hicks, of Haddon Heights, has a daytime job running his  hair salon on Tanner Street here. But Wednesday night, he put himself in the role of a butler. “I’m looking for lime juice,” he says after an uncountable number of spit takes toward his face, emitted by several would-be chaperones. “To wring out my eyebrows and make myself a gimlet,” he explains, holding a photocopy of three or four pages of dialogue.

At the audition, every Adolpho wannabe was the star. “I am the king or romance,” each of them proclaimed, but then explained he would not fight big men, just “weaselly, little, dwarfy people.”

Debbie Bello, of Cherry Hill, first played the role of the chaperone relatively strait-laced. But then Hutchings, the director, told her she was supposed to be drunk. She did the part again, seemingly losing her backbone and stumbling over her own feet as she collapsed against the back of the Adolpho character. “Oh, Adolface,” she crooned.

Even with the stage still set for Of Mice and Men, it was a hoot.

The Drowsy Chaperone runs March 31 through April 16. Performance schedules and information on ticket sales is available online at haddonfieldplayers.com or by calling the box office at 856-429-8139.