Being too excited to wait, on Friday afternoon, we moved our tickets up a day to see Williamsburg Players’ opening night performance of Mack & Mabel!  This is a musical set at the time when movies were becoming talkies, and our leading man, movie director Mack Sennett, thinks the new-fangled talkies are just a fad.  This lack of vision by Mack is a recurring theme from the very first couple lines of the play, where he references The Birth of a Nation (yes – the movie that essentially re-launched the KKK) as a great work*.  To Mack’s credit, he is quite consistent with being tone-deaf about many things – and Isaac Kelce (as Past Mack) and David Stallings (as Present Mack) successfully bring that across.

*(As a side note – this made us worried for the next half hour or so about what kind of musical exactly this was going to be – luckily, the line seems to be supposed to make you a little uncomfortable about Mack’s character.  But, it still might be time to retire that line – Mack’s character can be established without making the audience concerned they’ve just paid to see a racist play.)*

Mack runs a studio built on short “two-reelers” which rely mainly on physical comedy – and this cast of characters do not shy away from replicating the hijinks on stage.  They bring a lot of fun to the stage, with pies being thrown in faces, kicks to each other’s rear-ends, and lots of tripping and falling.  That comedic, physical acting is led by Garret Roberts (playing Roscoe Arbuckle), and he shines in the role, while the entire cast seems like they are having a good time.  Mack proclaims that all he wants is to “make the world laugh”.  And when Mabel Normand (played by Hannah Crowder) shows up delivering lunch from the local café, Mack realizes he has found the star his studio needs to take the next step.

And so, the pair of Mack & Mabel (or is it Mabel & Mack?) come together.  Crowder can really sing, and her impressive and expressive voice comes through strongest in the second act, as she belts “Time Heals Everything” from the deck of a cruise ship.  Corey Mason as Frank Wyman is believable as he is thrust into becoming the main writer for the studio, and writes a very special part just for Mabel.  And how have we gone this far without mentioning the massively talented Chasida Taylor in the role of Lottie Ames – her acting was phenomenal, she had great comedic timing, she can sing, and she leads a tap number?  Taylor deserves every bit of that applause at the end of the night.

But this play is ultimately about a man who refuses to change with the times, but the times just keep changing.  He’s surrounded by people who do change, innovate, and grow, but he just can’t quite seem to do it himself.  A tragedy, yes, but with Williamsburg Players, a really fun one to watch.