Crazy for 'Crazy for You' at Music Theatre Wichita
It’s not easy to choose one word to describe the dazzling dancing, infectious joy, and staging feasts of this Ken Ludwig reinvention of a boy-meets-girl Gershwin classic. But our reviewer eventually finds it.
In one of my college theater classes, the professor gave us an intriguing challenge: “Using your sensibilities and life experiences, reduce every good play or movie you attend down to one word.” Our professor gave examples. “Othello” is about jealousy, “Mary Poppins” is about parenting, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” is about mendacity.” My classmates and I enjoyed playing this game for many semesters to come.
Tonight, I saw a piece of good theater: “Crazy For You,” the second production in Music Theatre Wichita’s current season. Full of terrific songs from the Gershwin catalog, the show is adapted from the 1930 Broadway musical “Girl Crazy,” later turned into a film vehicle for Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.
On leaving the Century II Concert Hall, I fell into my “reduce-the-play-to-one-word” mode. I pondered. The story has a familiar trope: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Nine words. I got into my car. “What’s the one word ...?” I kept dissecting the production on my way home in an effort to find, among the many words that could describe MTW’s spirited production, the encapsulating one.
The original musical was all about George Gershwin’s infectious melodies and his brother Ira’s inventive lyrics. Its scenes, provided by Guy Bolton and John McGown, existed only to carry us to the next toe-tapping tune and clever story within the lyrics.
Ken Ludwig, one of Broadway’s finest farceurs, revised the original paper-thin libretto and turned it into an evening that celebrates key farcical elements: mistaken identity, physical comedy, and escalating events. Ludwig’s libretto is as much fun as the Gershwin brothers’ tunes. It’s easy to understand why the show was the Tony voters’ choice for best musical.
However, “Crazy for You” is not a foolproof show. It requires imaginative direction and choreography delivered and interpreted by skillful and facile performers.
Director/choreographer Angelique Ilo offers up a visual feast. The clever and inventive staging — from a chorus girl clown car to faux shoot-outs to a pyramid of chairs to a sequence involving ordering a drink — is poetry in motion. The entire cast takes the show’s situations and fills them with charm and style.
The show’s Act 1 closer “I Got Rhythm” offers one of those rare moments in musical theater when you wish it would never stop. The entire company delivers this spectacular, showstopping number. It, alone, is worth the price of admission.
As Bobby Child, the banker who really wants to be a song-and-dance man, the multitalented Daniel Beeman performs intricate footwork combinations that appear effortless. Taylor Aronson as Polly, the independent postmistress of an isolated desert town, delivers a performance of charm, singing a lovely rendition of Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
Beeman and Aronson receive solid support from the rest of the cast.
David Elder as the eccentric theater producer Bela Zangler teams up with Beeman in Act Two to execute a mirror image routine that would make Groucho and Harpo proud.
Angie Schworer’s “Irene” and Nathan Oesterle’s “Lank” deliver an alluring game of cat-and-mouse with the seductive “Naughty Baby.” And it is always good to see Karen L. Robu on stage. She has cornered the market on MTW “mother” roles.
Adam Koch’s scenic design is theatrically handsome and correct. The set units move seamlessly from the opening scene at the New York Zangler theater to Deadrock, Nevada, where we are delivered to its tumbleweed-strewn main street and then taken into its busy saloon and the seen-better-days local theater. The muted color palette informs us that this is a depressed town in the Depression era. Thomas G. Marquez’s costumes are appropriately Nevada Desert Dusty and Glorious Follies Glitz.
There were a few fussy opening night moments: props that wouldn’t cooperate, costume changes that challenged entrances, mics not being turned on, but it made no difference. The cast made it all look downright fun.
One more thing. Eventually, I found the perfect one word to sum up MTW's “Crazy For You.” It’s a "word" of Gershwin's invention:
“S’wonderful.”
The Details
Music Theatre Wichita presents "Crazy for You"
July 9-13, 2025, at Century II Performing Arts Center, 225 W. Douglas Ave. in Wichita
Performances take place every evening as well as Saturday and Sunday afternoon. ASL interpretation is provided at the 2 p.m. Saturday performance.
This musical is suitable for all ages.
$26-86
Formerly the chairman of the Butler Community College Theatre Department, Bob Peterson is an actor, director, and playwright.
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