EDITOR’S NOTE: This is our review from the original run of this production in June 2009. The ticket information at the end of the review is current to the present production, running through Feb. 21:
After 11 years, it was inevitable the time would come for Heritage Square Music Hall’s geriatric “Loud” franchise to move into the retirement home. When Rory Pierce starts singing “Born to Run” from a wheelchair . . . well, the joke just tells itself.
It’s easy to poke fun at the venerable Golden dinner theater’s bulletproof series of eight pop-music revues, all based around snarky siblings Tom and Annie (T.J. Mullin and Annie Dwyer), whom we met in 1998 as “teenagers” making noise in their 1950s basement. Seven sequels later, we have “That Was Loud, This Is Now,” and the “kids” are entertaining residents of the Valley View Retirement Village.
Did we mention Mullin turns 61 in August? Even he laughs about how silly this whole lark has become. But it’s one more than 200,000 have come (and come back) to. “Loud” is making “The Guiding Light” seem practically fly-by-night.
People come for an evening of blue-jeans theater. For cheese sticks, colorful costumes (by mad genius Jane Nelson-Rudd) and rim-shot comic banter. For audience interplay that’s often far funnier than anything scripted.
For example one woman, commenting on how Dwyer has lost more than 50 pounds, asked if the ticket price shouldn’t be half-off . . . like her. That funny, spontaneous line speaks to the relationship this ensemble has built with its audience over years.
One that comes, most of all, because these 11 actor-musicians really know how to sing and dance.
They come to see Mullin get high (falsetto!) on songs like “My Girl”; Kira Cauthorn get all sexy (on Blondie’s “Call Me”); and to marvel at ragtime pianist Randy Johnson’s furious fingers. They come to see Alex Crawford extol the virtues of big behinds (“Baby Got Back”), for Elvis and Beatles medleys, and for the song when the guys will inevitably appear as female backup singers (“Jump”).
Many come to see Dwyer morph from blond (Dusty Springfield) to black (Aretha) to brunette (Shania Twain) — even to blue (“to match the blue-hairs in the audience,” she says). They come to see her target and torment men in the crowd with her tough talk and pure comic lust. Some poor bald guy’s not getting out alive without some lipstick on his head. And everyone but that guy eats it up like dessert. Actually, he does, too.
They come for what they see coming, and for what can’t — like Mullin and token boy toy Charlie Schmidt tearing it up as the Blues Brothers. Like guitarist Eric Weinstein grabbing the mic for a couple of hot numbers like “Runaway.” Like Dwyer and Cauthorn singing “It’s Raining Men” — in fat suits. Let’s face it, a lap dance in a fat suit is never not funny.
There’s still little rhyme or reason to it all. The premise is as shaky as your tail-feather. And the show opens with 20 minutes of awkward, unnecessary banter. Saturday’s crowd was stoic and never got fully into it, and the actors never found their comic rhythm. But even on an off night, these performers are more on than most.
And regardless, the show ended with another standing ovation — led, as always, by the guy with the lipstick on his bald head.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“That Was Loud, This Is Now” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Heritage Square Music Hall, 18301 W. Colfax Ave., Golden. Starring T.J. Mullin, Annie Dwyer, Rory Pierce, Alex Crawford, Kira Cauthorn, Charlie Schmidt and Randy Johnson. Through Feb. 21. 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays (dinner 90 minutes before). $35.50-$40.50 (with dinner); $27.50-$31 (without). 2 hours, 30 minutes. 303-279-7800 or
