A single violin roams playfully through its scales, soon followed by a twittering trumpet with a speech all its own. Winds trip over each other before more instruments start a game of leapfrog as their well-played notes and phrases seem to jump and skip all around us.
One of my favorite overtures has just been played beautifully with spunk and spirit by the fourteen-person orchestra under the musical direction of Joseph Kelly as the South Bay Musical Theatre kicks off a fabulously conceived and executed She Loves Me. The multi-Tony-nominated 1963 musical by Jerry Bock (music), Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), and Joe Masteroff (book) started as a 1937 play Parfumerie by Hungarian Miklós Lázló and later had several iterations as well-known movies, both as films (the 1940 The Shop Around the Corner and the 1998 You’ve Got Mail) and as a Judy Garland/Van Johnson-starring musical in 1949’s The Good Old Summertime.
For my full review of this “Best Best by the Bay” play, please continue to Talkin’ Broadway: https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj189.html.
Rating: 5 E
She Loves Me continues through February 15, 2020 in production by the South Bay Musical Theatre at the Saratoga Civic Theatre, 13777 Fruitvale Avenue, Saratoga, CA. Tickets are available online at http://www.southbaymt.com/ or by calling 24 hours a day 408-266-4734.
Photo Credit: Steve Stubbs
