As the cast and crew of the Dedham High senior play did a semi-dress rehearsal Monday afternoon, they encountered your usual theatrical hiccups.
A scene change was sluggish – “This has to be a lot quicker. It’s taking too long,” said director Joseph Brogan – and at one point Jonny, played by Renei Jasteen “RJ” Del Rosario, missed a cue while offstage.
At another, Ed Morneau told technical director Michael Farah to bring up the preset lighting during a musical number.
“Grandmoms, granddads, they want to see their grandchildren (in the back). They don’t want to see them in the dark,” Morneau said.
But things took a decided turn toward the unusual after Jonny came back from the dead; this is “Zombie Prom,” after all.
| If you go |
What: “Zombie Prom”
Where: Dedham High School auditorium
When: Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 6 p.m.
Tickets: $10 |
As Jonny led the other high school characters in an elaborate “Thriller” dance, up in the sound and light booth Morneau walked over to Farah’s board. Hopping to the beat, he told Farah to tap lights to it.
During a break, Morneau emphasized that at a certain point Farah needed to double-time the music. “Feel it in the music. Pretend you’re Michael Jackson,” he said, dancing a bit.
During the second take for “Thriller,” Farah did a complex finger dance on the board, often tapping with both hands as he turned on various lights for instants. The result was like a music video set at a nightclub.
“The timing is the hardest,” said the 17-year-old senior. “Stay in sync with the music.”
The senior play – what Brogan called a wonderful tradition that dates back to the 1920s at Dedham High – goes up this Friday night at 8, with a second performance Saturday at 6 p.m.
“The idea is a senior musical that just the seniors put on,” he said, but most of the kids aren’t actors. “We work like the dickens to get them presentable.”
Rehearsals have been going since early January.
“I couldn’t do a ‘West Side Story.’ I couldn’t do an ‘Oklahoma!,’ where I’d need a really big chorus and singing. But this is the show I can do with this cast,” said Brogan, who is the director of fine arts for the Dedham public schools.
Brogan has directed the last 25 senior plays, working with Morneau, who has been the adult figure guiding Dedham techies for even longer. But this is the last senior play for Brogan, who is retiring this year.
Dedham High previously performed “Zombie Prom” in 1998. Given the prominence of zombies this year in the movies, Brogan thought it would be a good time to return to the show.
The musical comedy revolves around a sweet girl, Toffee, and her rebel of a boyfriend, Jonny. In one scene Toffee (Maggie Griesmer) gives Jonny a pink sweater, and Jonny gives her his cherished “no-H” leather jacket. She asks if that means he’s asking her to go steady.
“I’m no good with speeches, Toffee. I grew up an orphan,” he says. “You’re the first person who’s ever loved me. It might kill me to think it’s less than forever.”
She in turn professes her love for him, and they officially become a couple. But Toffee’s parents won’t allow her to date Jonny, so he commits suicide.
Brogan described the plot as “Girl falls in love with bad boy. Parents don’t like bad boy. He gets depressed and drives into a nuclear power plant. Kills himself.”
When Jonny rises like Lazarus “from a sea-bound sunken cage,” the principal, Miss Strict (Victoria Sliwa), doesn’t want him in the school.
Sliwa and cast members said the senior play brings out many students who aren’t usually in drama. “I’m president of the drama club, but I’m meeting a lot of talented people I didn’t know before,” she said.
“It’s good because you get a different mix of kids, kids you normally wouldn’t hang out with,” said Matt Mariano, 18, who plays the class clown.
Brogan said 65 to 70 kids usually work on the show in some capacity – a large contingent of the senior class. There are some underclassmen on the tech crew.
Morneau expressed confidence in the techies in the booth, including soundman Eric Alfonso, 18, a senior. “If I were to pass out, have a heart attack, stroke, aneurysm, Eric…he would take over. He wouldn’t even call the hospital for me,” he joked.
Near the stage, Del Rosario explained that his only previous Dedham High acting experience was as an extra in a one-act play sophomore year. He joked that he did actually expect that he would, one day, play a teenage zombie in love.
“I was dreaming of that my whole life. I was born – ‘I want to be a zombie,’” he said.
Del Rosario said the songs are his favorite part, though the falsettos can be a stretch for the bari-tenor.
“It gives students a musical theatrical experience they would not normally have,” Brogan said of senior play. “It gives them this one aesthetic moment. They leave here, and they’re better for it.”
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
