Virus Deters High School Theater — For Now

J. Pierpont Finch is making sparks fly in the boardroom, giving them the old razzle dazzle. He’s got moves. He’s got flair. He’s got charts and buzzwords. The only thing he doesn’t have is a good idea. And the idea he does have, isn’t his. But does that even matter?

Last week the Lights Up Drama Club at Wilbur Cross High School had its final dress rehearsals for the cheerfully cynical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the club’s biggest and most ambitious production yet since its inception in 2018. The play was supposed to have opened three days ago. Instead, the coronavirus outbreak closed New Haven schools — and so far, the only audience for the full production were a few lucky reporters and a video camera.

But Salvatore DeLucia, a teacher a Wilbur Cross who co-directed the production with Heather Bazinet, swears that won’t be the production’s final bow. They’ve already rescheduled the run for Memorial Day weekend.

“These kids worked way too hard,” DeLucia said. He was talking about the work on this year’s production, which started in October, as well as the three years of Lights Up Drama Club productions that got the students to the point where they could stage a musical as elaborate as How to Succeed.

“This is a behemoth of a show,” DeLucia said, but it was one that Lights Up was ready for. ​“Our cast has tripled since our first year,” DeLucia said, to 27, and ​“we have this huge amount of talent.” Many of those cast members — including Brandon Oliveras, who plays Finch — have been with Lights Up for all three years. ​“For some of them,” DeLucia said, ​“this is where they find their people…. They’re a family up there.”

The numbers and strengths of the cast coming into the year made DeLucia and Bazinet rethink the scale of the production they might do. Last year’s Sister Act had been about showcasing the talent of the young women in the cast. This year, ​“we wanted to do something that featured males and females,” DeLucia said. They thought of How to Succeed, with its many roles, and many chances for actors to shine. And ​“there’s something special about doing a classic,” DeLucia said.

But it’s the students who really brought this classic to life. Oliveras nails Finch’s winning charm and maintains the ambiguity that makes the character interesting. Is he savvy or just shallow? Is he disarmingly naive or deeply cunning? Oliveras makes it clear that whatever the case, he has the game of the business world figured out, and he plays for keeps. Finch’s ambiguity is reflected in the play’s two leading women who are, in a sense, each other’s foil. Kate VanTassel nails Rosemary Pilkington’s wistful optimism, and Cat Sigg gets laughs as the world-weary Smitty.

Eli Wells is hilarious as Bud Frump, the gloriously untalented nepotism hire who still can’t seem to understand how Finch leapfrogs over him, even as it happens.

As CEO J.B. Biggley, Emmanuel Gonzales accurately embodies all that is most annoying about the old-boy network that runs the business world, makes fun of it at the same time, and still pulls a very likable character out of his role.

Millie Carlson commands the stage and nails the humor as ambitious sexpot Hedy LaRue.

Eye-catching set pieces abound, particularly a low-light scene involving dressing room mirrors.

But in the end, How to Succeed works because it’s a full-ensemble piece. All the cast members enliven the stage. They make the dance numbers full, the crowd and party scenes energetic, and that keeps the production nimble from start to finish, as it tells its pretention-skewering story.

DeLucia put the success of How to Succeed squarely with the students. ​“They’re here early and they’ll all stay late,” he said. ​“The culture here at Wilbur Cross — it’s worth the time you put into it. It pays you back in dividends.”

One of those payback moments for DeLucia came in the form of Ty Scurry, a former Lights Up actor who has now started the Academic Theatre Company at Hillhouse High School.

“I’m so proud of him,” DeLucia said of Scurry, though he wasn’t surprised to see Scurry become a mentor to others. ​“His ability in class to be a leader amongst his peers — he’s incredibly talented,” DeLucia said. ​“Last year he would pick my brain and ask questions” about starting his own theatre group at Hillhouse.

“‘If you want to do this, you could do this,’” DeLucia recalled saying to Scurry — the same kind of encouragement DeLucia said his own teachers gave him. At Hillhouse, from its own dedicated teaching staff to its talented students, ​“Ty has got all the right ingredients.”

The Academic Theatre Company’s production of The Wiz at Hillhouse High School was likewise postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. DeLucia and Scurry talked about what they were going to do with their respective productions — the disappointment they both felt in having to put it off, and the indignation they felt on behalf of their students, who had worked so hard. But DeLucia had faith in them all.

“It might take a little longer than we expected,” DeLucia said, ​“but they are going to kill it over there, and we are going to kill it here.”

Lights Up Drama Club’s production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is scheduled for Memorial Day weekend. Watch the Academic Theatre Company’s Facebook page for information on when the company will put on its production of The Wiz.