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| with Gianina Ocampo, one of the cutest female actresses I've seen these past two years, and she's a very good actress! This is actually the first time I saw her in any production. |
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| with Topper Fabregas, one of the "Leading Ladies". It's one thing to watch actors do drag in a movie, but to see it done in real time in a theatre where it's tick tock tick tock to do costume changes and voice inflections, I raise my hat to this guy! |
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| with James Stacey, the other "leading lady". He looks fabulous in his dresses and he has this one incredible scene where he sashays onstage from a suit and then seconds later, in a fabulous purple gown - without skipping a beat in changing his voice and assuming the character. |
Repertory's latest offering, 'Leading Ladies', is one riot of a play! The play is about two down-on-their-luck actors who stumble into a newspaper article about an old and dying woman who is searching desperately for her long-lost nieces, who she last saw as kids. She wants to bequeath 3 million dollars to them and wants to see them before she dies. Sensing this as their opportunity out of their miserable theatre gigs, the two actors dive in! What happens next? Well, you'd just have to watch the play because these guys and the rest of the cast do a fantastic job in keeping the hilarious play in motion. Frankly, you'd never notice the two hours pass by as scene after scene ups the ante in comedic errors - including a very funny seduction scene of mistaken identities!
I love Cris Villonco here. She's so Stepford Wives-ish here, from the way she talks to the way she sashays onstage in those fabulous clothes of hers. Gianina Ocampo is very cute and bubbly here and she plays the ditzy role to the hilt. The two "leading ladies", James Stacey and Topper Fabregas are topnotch! Unbelievable really! Cross-dressing men in movies are one thing, but to do it onstage, where the clock goes tick tock tick tock during costume changes - whew - they just pull it off so well! And they have to check their voices too to make sure they are in the character they are trying to pull off.
Everyone else in the cast is funny and superb as well! Each of their characters have their own quirks which keeps everything interesting.
The set drew an ooh of an approval from the mostly student audience and it does look great! The sound effects help create the ambience needed and the costumes are outrageous and stylish as well, depending on who's wearing them.
It was great to see an almost full audience today (the theater looked 80% occupied), since almost 80% of the audience were students. It was certainly an enjoyable way to spend one's Sunday!
The play runs for one more week so better catch it before it finishes its run.
