{"id":34396,"date":"2016-07-08T09:45:27","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T15:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=34396"},"modified":"2023-11-14T09:48:58","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:48:58","slug":"the-marx-brothers-crash-a-romcom-cocoanuts-at-the-utah-shakespeare-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-marx-brothers-crash-a-romcom-cocoanuts-at-the-utah-shakespeare-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"The Marx Brothers Crash a RomCom: Cocoanuts at the Utah Shakespeare Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ACocoanuts-0497<\/a>

Tasso Feldman (top) as Harpo (Silent Red), Jim Poulos as Chico (Willie Wony Diddydony), and John Plumpis as Groucho (Mr. Hammer) in the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s 2016 production of The Cocoanuts. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2016.)<\/p><\/div>\n

It became the Marx Brothers\u2019 first feature film, released by Paramount Pictures in 1929, but it began as a Broadway musical in 1925, with book by George S. Kaufman and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Cocoanuts<\/em> is a musical romantic comedy invaded by vaudeville. Adapted by Mark Bedard and Gregg Coffin, and directed by Melissa Rain Anderson, it opens this year\u2019s Utah Shakespeare Festival with the type of slapstick romp that charms audiences every year.<\/p>\n

A young man, Jamison (John Wascavage), has big plans for the future but can\u2019t marry Polly (Anna Landy), the girl of his dreams (as well as a rich heiress) until he can prove his worth\u2014currently he\u2019s an overworked, underpaid bellhop. Their love affair is further complicated by Harvey Yates (Michael A. Harding), a middle-aged suitor from a pedigreed family who sees Polly as the answer to his accumulating debts; and Mrs. Potter (Kathleen M. Brady), the stuffy matriarch who is partial to Harvey and averse to scandals of any kind. The ensuing plot doesn\u2019t add up to much and isn\u2019t particularly important\u2014there\u2019s the case of a stolen necklace, an engagement party in Spanish costume, and a rigged real-estate auction gone awry\u2014because it\u2019s all a set up for the Marx Brothers\u2019 humor and the tunes of Irving Berlin.<\/p>\n

The Marx Brothers were established entertainers by the time Berlin and Kaufman created the musical\u2014their physical humor, jumbled wordplay and oddball characters were all well-developed. Theirs was a type of vaudeville humor that might seem dated today, but either out of nostalgia (the festival audience tends to be disproportionately silver-haired) or pure enjoyment, the audience, a la Harpo, ate it up.<\/p>\n

Four of the Marx Brothers appear on the Randall L. Jones stage. Unless you\u2019re an aficionado, you might not notice Wascavage\u2019s Jamison as Zeppo Marx, younger brother to the more famous trio. But in the case of the trio, comparisons to the original will be hard to avoid: Jim Poulos lays heavy on the Italian accent for his role as Chico Marx and Tasso Feldman endears in the much-loved character of Harpo. It is John Plumpis as Groucho, however, who must carry the play, with his inverted wordplay and atrocious puns. He relishes the role, and made up for any opening-day fumbling with lines both ad libbed and localized \u2014 creating humor at the expense of the visiting governor, Gary Herbert, and the nearby town of Panguitch.<\/p>\n

\"ACocoanuts-0441<\/a>

A scene from the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s 2016 production of The Cocoanuts. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2016.)<\/p><\/div>\n

The comic troupe is fleshed out by Chris Mixon who makes an appearance or two as the fedora-clad Detective Henessey, frequently shirtless and not particularly hardboiled, Melinda Parrett as a shoulder-swaying, throaty seductress Penelope Martin and Josh Durfey, Nicki Elledge and Natasha Harris as a chorus of sorts, with their own comedic moments. Jo Winiarski\u2019s charming set evokes the era of the boom and bust economy of 1920s Florida while adroitly incorporating a five-piece orchestra.<\/p>\n

The Marx Brothers began as a musical group \u2014 they only stumbled into comedy \u2014 and the cast hits the musical notes as well as the comedic ones. It\u2019s no easy task to inhabit the roles of much-loved icons, but by the end of the performance the players had embodied their roles so well, it was hard to recall the originals.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The band, William Petty, Christopher Joyal, Evan Peterson, Paul Helm, and Sean Tillis in the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s 2016 production of The Cocoanuts. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2016.)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Cocoanuts is at the Randall L. Jones Theatre on the Southern Utah University campus through October 15. For more info, visit bard.org.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It became the Marx Brothers\u2019 first feature film, released by Paramount Pictures in 1929, but it began as a Broadway musical in 1925, with book by George S. Kaufman and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Cocoanuts is a musical romantic comedy invaded by vaudeville. Adapted by Mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-34396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre","tag-utah-shakespeare-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/ACocoanuts-0497-copy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 12:44:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34396"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71184,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34396\/revisions\/71184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}