With a subtitle, “Dispatches from the Front Lines of Parenting,” this show continues to ride the wave of enthusiasm that started a year ago at the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. The revue by composer Richard Oberacker and lyricist Robert Taylor was a big hit with audiences who saw themselves — as parents or children of parents (which includes everyone, I guess) — reflected in many of the warm, funny songs. In fact, before the Fringe ended last June, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (ETC) stepped up to say, “We’ve got a theater, let’s do this one again.” So this week ETC opens an expanded, polished edition of Don’t Make Me Pull This Show Over.
Oberacker is a native Cincinnatian, a graduate of Anderson High School and UC’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). But his credentials have blossomed since he music-directed shows for community theaters 20 years ago. When Oberacker’s one-time CCM mentor, drama department head Richard Hess, asked if he might have something in his hip pocket that would work for the 2008 Fringe, Oberacker pulled together the miscellaneous tunes about parenting he’d been noodling for several years. For ETC’s production, three of the five Fringe cast members return (Kate Wilford, Charlie Clark and Jessica Hendy, a CCM grad and Broadway veteran) and two more join (Beth Harris and Alan Kendall), and Hess is the director again. Oberacker tells me he’s added several more songs and the chemistry of this cast is more than he’d hoped for. So it sounds like a don’t-miss production. Even before opening, the show is selling well enough that ETC has added several Tuesday evening and Saturday matinee performances, so be sure to make your reservation today: The run is set to conclude on May 17. $29-$38.
Read a full review here.
