Director's Note
Hello, and welcome to “Something Rotten!”
There’s so much to thank you for. Thank you for coming out and supporting the arts at a time when it is so desperately needed! Thank you for choosing UP for an afternoon or evening of entertainment! Thank you for continuing to support live theatre in our community!
Writing my director’s notes for a show has always felt like a golden opportunity for me. It’s a chance to let you in on why we’ve chosen to produce a certain play for the season. What the story is we’re trying to tell, what we hope you’ll leave with, or how we think our theatre can relate to the world at any given moment. Sometimes, this is where I hope to get you excited for what you are about to see, explain what you just saw, or try to connect it to a bigger picture. Ultimately, the things I write to you here usually mimic what I’ve found myself saying about a show for weeks or months when people have asked me about the piece or the experience. “Something Rotten” is a little different. There’s a stark duality here that I hope you love and that I hope makes this musical more accessible to a huge group of people.
More than anything, “Something Rotten” is fun! We wanted to finish out this year with a slapstick, silly, bawdy, irreverent, over-the-top comedy that would give our audiences confidence in coming to shows they might not have heard of before, but could never forget. That fun is for all of us; I promise our actors are getting a kick out of a show that so perfectly pokes fun at musical theatre and allows them the absurdity of dancing as eggs and learning lyrics like “what’s that creeping ‘round your pee pee”. I hope you are as blown away by the spectacle they’ve created and the hilarity of it all as I am, in a time when I strongly believe we could all use a good, hearty laugh.
But … While SO much theatre is multilayered and complex or profound or thought provoking, etc etc etc, the difference between the sheer comedy in “Something Rotten” and its heartfelt themes seem somehow more drastic to me. My hope is that the fun will be so much that it isn’t until later that you realize you were also at a play about brotherly love, sticking to your convictions, standing up for what you believe, teamwork, relying on your family as a support system, blind censorship, believing in yourself and your talent, the folly of taking the easy way out, taking pride in your accomplishments, and the hopeful message that somehow everything will all work out in the end. “Something Rotten” is oozing with all of this ... like a rotten tomato ... see what I did there?
The stories of these brothers who need each other more than they might realize, the wife who wants to do anything to actively contribute to help her family, the girl that is willing to leave her upbringing for love, and the bard who borrows from everyone else to get ahead have filled my heart, and they’re our gift to you this spring. I hope the hilarity of this show is the best way we could end this season and send you all off for the summer ... before we ask you to join us at the Salem witch trials this coming fall!
Andrew Lidestri, Founding Artistic Director, Theatre UP
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