‘Boy Friend’ herald of spring

Dustin Strong plays Tony and Michelle Quale plays Polly in University Theatre’s production of the romantic comedy “The Boy Friend.”

In the spring, it is rumored, the fancies of the young lightly turn not to golf, but to love.

Consequently, the University Theatre will cap its 1998 season with “The Boy Friend,” a terribly romantic musical spoof of a 70-year-old genre.

According to guest director Cynthia White, a veteran of the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, “The Boy Friend’s” subtext is “the wonderful world of possibility.

“The ’20s were about cutting loose, living with bravado and gusto after a time of great loss,” in the first World War, she says. In keeping with that buoyant tenor, White notes, the musical theater of the period often portrayed optimistic, idealized situations in which love and money presented no problems.

Of course, no nostalgic 1920s period piece could be complete without at least several rousing refrains of the Charleston. In recreating ’20s dance styles, production choreographer James Sutton, an assistant professor of dance, first researched the period from writings, film and photographs. Then he deliberately departed from what he found.

“Since theater is more imagination than social history, I felt it best to develop the dance steps with the spirit of the ’20s, but the immediacy of the present,” he says. “I used the well-known moves common to the Charleston, and also attempted to develop more eccentric steps, as was the custom of the time.”

One of the chief executioners of those steps is Mindy Throne, a junior majoring in theatre and drama. With a good many stage roles already to her credit, rehearsing Maisie — “the comic relief,” she says — has added an important dimension to her education.

“Most of my performances have been in musicals, but this was the first one in which we rehearsed the choreography, acting and singing all separately and put it all together at the end. Usually rehearsals are much more integrated from the beginning,” she says.

Like Throne, most of the 18 cast members are undergraduate students, White says: “They have the energy these demanding roles require!”

The enviably vigorous cast will open “The Boy Friend” April 23 in Vilas Hall’s Mitchell Theatre. The run will continue April 24-25, 29-30 and May 1-2. A talkback will follow the April 30 performance. All shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, $15/general and $12/UW-Madison students, are available through the Vilas Hall Box Office, 262-1500.