Creede Repertory Theatre will launch its 59th season over the weekend with three winning shows. If you like comedy in all its forms – farce, satire, parody and the mother of them all, a crackling comedy of manners – CRT’s 2024 season is for you.
Oscar Wilde’s brilliant send up of Victorian manners, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” begins the weekend trilogy Saturday afternoon. Wilde’s hilarious mashup will be followed in the evening by Ken Ludwig’s revisionist spoof of a famous Sherlock Holmes tale: “Baskerville.” On Sunday afternoon, “Young Frankenstein,” opens to showcase Mel Brooks’ goofy, idiosyncratic musical talents.
What’s not to like or reimagine in summer 2024?
“Earnest” was first produced at the St. James Theatre in London way back in 1895, but there’s nothing old about it. Wilde packed zingers into just about every line, and the teatime parody of English courtship and class still resonates. Key roles will be played by some of CRT’s most able company members. The inimitable Christy Brandt, who is celebrating her 50th season with the company, will play the pompous Lady Bracknell. Graham Ward, another CRT stalwart, will do the honors as Jack Worthing, the bachelor who leads a double life “Bunburying” in London with his fictional brother Earnest.
If you go
WHAT: “Young Frankenstein,” “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
WHEN: Opening weekend: June 28. Season runs through Sept. 14.
WHERE: Creede Repertory Theatre, 124 North Main St., Creede.
TICKETS: Flex passes begin at $185 for four, eight and 12 tickets. Single tickets: Adults and seniors $25 and $38; students $20. Plus $3 ticketing fee.
MORE INFORMATION: Call (719) 658-2540 or visit www.creederep.org for schedule and ticket information.
Because CRT is a repertory company, you’ll see actors in a variety of other roles. Ward also plays the title character in “Young Frankenstein.” Dr. Frederick Frankenstein is the grandson of Victor, the infamous fictional scientist who first appeared in Mary Shelley’s legendary 1818 novel. Her story of a man playing God by bringing an assembled corpse back to life has had a long life in literature, film, the stage and this quirky musical.
In 1974, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, his partner in comedy crime, revitalized the Frankenstein juggernaut by parodying Hollywood’s craze for horror movies in the 1930s. The Brooks-Wilder layering resulted in their black-and-white film spoof featuring Wilder as the young Frankenstein. Decades later, Brooks and Thomas Meehan concocted a musical based the film. The 2007 musical was a huge hit on Broadway. The creators scaffolded all the layers of Shelley’s original “Frankenstein” into a fresh form, and that’s how some stories achieve eternal life.
Playwright Ken Ludwig seems to be a favorite of CRT. The company has most recently staged two of his works: Last season’s tribute to Ludwig’s parents: “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” and earlier one of his telltale comedies based on a legend: “Sherwood.”
He smartly reconfigures memorable stories into modern farces for the stage, and “Baskerville” falls crisply into that camp. It’s Ludwig’s compelling adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous mystery “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
Like Wilde’s stories, Conan Doyle’s tales date back 100 years but are still evergreen and ripe for fresh interpretations.
“Mystery and comedy have a lot in common,” CRT notes in its program. “Ludwig sets his play in a brand of storytelling right at that intersection.”
In “Baskerville,” Ludwig takes a familiar mystery story and re-creates it in a modern form.
And then CRT brings Ludwig’s imagination to fruition when five company actors play 37 roles. Now, that’s live theater.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
