Pity the poor cast of what is sure to go down in Prince Music Theater history as The Scottish Play of Musicals.
Toby Zinman's review in Variety puts it this way: "The jinx endures."
We've gone through the understudy for the leading lady (Taryn Cagnina heroically stepping in to fill the shoes of Crista Moore), and last night we saw the understudy's understudy (Kati Lyles, doing double duty as Fay Apple and cookie June). Now Kati's voice is shot, a casualty of the virus that's felling them all, but we think Taryn is recovered enough to go back into the fray. Meanwhile, Jane Summerhays, who's labored valiantly to keep going despite illness, looks like she might finally succumb tonight, and we've got Cora #2 waiting in the wings. This afternoon, it finally was too much, and we cancelled the matinee, but we've got two shows left, and it looks like tonight's performance might actually have a full set of Cookies (the last few have been sufficiently decimated that we've had to cut the Cookie Chase in Act II).
Meanwhile the orchestra, under the agile baton of Sam Davis, has managed to escape illness (where's wood?), sounding uniformly marvelous from day to day, and the unflappable Chuck Wagner has been a beacon of good cheer and energy, marshalling the sick and the healthy with the vigor of a Patton. This is definitely one for the history books.
