On Saturday night, students flocked to the hip popera, “Breakfast in the City: A Solipsistic Eclipse.” The original, psychedelic bit of musical theatre, written by Nicholas Nauman ’07 and Nicholas Earhart ’07, created an acid-masquerade party-like atmosphere in the normally drab MPR of the Davenport Campus Center.
The small venue was packed: students sat on the floor, squatted on the stage, and stood far in the back. Some audience members even climbed on top of the piano in hopes of getting a better view of the Technicolor, spray-painted, cardboard cutout set.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Malwina Andruczyk ’08. “It looked like the cast was having as much fun as the audience, and that was probably because they were all drunk.”
The cast, starring Elena Schilder ’07 as “Our Young Ingénue,” maintained a joyous demeanor, even as the characters experienced some trying times.
The plot of the play-turned-extravaganza is a classic one: a young ingénue moves to the big city that turns out to be cold and impersonal. She is unable to find anything warm or comforting (not even a piece of toast); to console herself, she sings to try and make sense of the world.
Her search for meaning is stifled by the villainous Forrest Sanders, played by Forrest Sanders ’07, whose on-stage actions were accompanied by foreboding music, red lights, and Madame Ovary, a young tart, played by Hallie Cooper-Novak ’07. The effect was dramatic, but far from threatening.
The super evil was emphasized by the chorus members, who shook at Sander’s every word. Dressed as everything from a French painter to a napping hippy, the chorus filled the stage to the brim and belted out the ballads.
“Being in the chorus was dope,” said Justin Denis ’08, one of the many friends of Nauman and Earhart who took part in “Breakfast in the City.”
“It seemed like a bunch of friends just got together and decided they were going to put this thing on,” said Melissa Silverman ’09. “It wasn’t really organized and at times didn’t make any sense, but they did it and I really admire that.”
Ultimately, the musical did seem haphazard. However, this was mediated by the fact that it didn’t ask anyone to take it seriously. Everything from the show’s title to the note at the end of the program, thanking “all emissaries of joy,” asked the audience to forget the rules accompanying their role as viewer-critics.
“I loved it because it didn’t take itself too seriously,” Silverman said. “I mean, it ended with the chorus throwing bagels at us.”
Perhaps the cast was drunk, maybe the plot had a few holes, and the set was made of cardboard, but even after sitting for 45 minutes on the hard floor of the MPR, the audience was still smiling. Sometimes the world needs to laugh at itself, and “Breakfast in the City” provided the perfect opportunity. It’s impossible to not laugh at a play that laughs at itself.
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