Canal Winchester students return to stage with 'Something's Rotten'
Audiences may sense "Something’s Rotten" when the Canal Winchester High School Performing Arts department debuts its latest production.
The musical comedy will be performed 7 p.m. April 29-30 at the Oley Speaks Auditorium at the Canal Winchester Education Center, 100 Washington St.
"Something’s Rotten" tells the story of brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom, an acting troupe living in renaissance England and played by Jonathan Pauwels and Clayton Reher, respectively, who want to make it big in the theater world.
The only problem: they’re competing against William Shakespeare for the spotlight.
Struggling to grab their share, the Bottoms visit a soothsayer.
“They ask, ‘What’s the next big thing in theater? What can we do to get a step ahead?’” said Abbey Phillips, a school drama director. “And the fortune teller says, ‘Musicals. That’s where it’s at, and that’s where the future’s going.’”
The brothers then try their hand at making musicals. After a few unsuccessful attempts, they decide to steal Shakespeare’s next production idea.
They go back to the soothsayer to ask what it is, only for the soothsayer to misinterpret “Hamlet” as “omelet.”
So the brothers make a musical about omelets.
“The whole show is very silly,” Phillips said. “It’s basically just a laugh the whole time.”
“There’s a lot of jokes that are cracked, it’s very funny,” said Melia Williams, a freshman who’s playing Snug.
Several students in the 35-member cast are stepping into larger roles.
Reher, a senior, had 14 lines in Canal Winchester’s last production "Madrigal Dinner Theater at Canal Winchester" in February.
This time he has roughly 140 lines as he plays a character who’s struggling to find himself in the shadow of his brother.
“(Nigel is) very proficient at what he does. But his confidence in himself makes that hard to show,” Reher said. “His entire life is basically just him following in his brother’s footsteps, kind of doing all the work for him, but not getting any of the credit for it.”
In his first acting production, senior Vinh Nguyen will play Shakespeare.
Shakespeare has been written in a variety of different ways in movies, plays and musicals. In "Something’s Rotten," Nguyen said he’s an arrogant and pompous character that secretly doubts himself.
“This Shakespeare, in my opinion, is very interesting,” he said. “He’s so scared of being overthrown. So he puts on a facade that he’s better than everyone. But in the back of his mind he has that insecurity.”
Tickets are $10 and are on sale at the door.
sborgna@thisweeknews.com
@ThisWeekSteve
This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Canal Winchester students return to stage with 'Something's Rotten'
