Theater Previews By Neil Cohen

A Different Kind of High School Musical

Zanna, Don’t pleads for an end to heterophobia

Imagine a world where gay people were the norm, and heterosexual men and women faced ridicule, discrimination and were shunned by society.

Stop smiling! It isn’t any better than what the LGBT community has endured forever.

That rosy pink worldview came to writer Tim Acito in the summer of 2000 he was while listening to a country western love song. He started daydreaming about how great it would be to hear the song sung about two men.

Soon, “the world of Zanna, Don't! was born,” Acito wrote on a Web site, describing his inspiration for the musical that is having its Valley premiere at Scottsdale Desert Stages.

Think of it as a gayer Disney’s High School Musical.

In beautiful Heartsville, USA, everyone is gay – at least, everyone decent. The kids at Heartsville High just want to fall in love and go to the prom. Zanna is sort of a magical matchmaker at school, making sure that every girl has a gal and every boy gets his boy.

Suddenly, the kids’ world is shaken when quarterback Steve falls in love with overachiever Kate. The town is horrified and the two students find themselves outcasts. This occurs despite the fact that all the kids at school had decided to create a musical addressing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against straight people in the military.

It’s up to Zanna to do the unthinkable and use his magic to make the people of Heartsville open their hearts to all kinds of love, not just for same-sex couples. But at what cost?

Acito’s musical is a light-hearted and entertaining show, but it has serious themes at its core.

Desert Stages deserves credit for doing a show that is sure to offend conservatives, but as with the touching musical A Man of No Importance, they’ve shown an openness to the LGBT community.

Acito wrote that he hopes that Zanna, Don’t! has grown more universal for audiences, noting that almost everyone has felt different or “struggled with identity, prejudice, friendship, and love, only to have their hearts broken along the way.”

The Play About the Naked Guy bares theater’s dirty secrets

Ron May wants you to know that The Play About the Naked Guy is not a slam against Nearly Naked Theatre. That’s why he wanted his pal Damon Dering, Nearly Naked Theatre’s artistic director, to direct David Bell’s fast and furious satire about a struggling “artistic” theater troupe forced to host a, shall we say, “less artistic” company to stay afloat.

The Integrity Players are a painfully earnest Off-Off Broadway company devoted to performing “lost classics” that probably should have remained lost. Their lead Harold is a “master thespian” who’s so self-enamored, he gives personal asides to the audience while performing.

Integrity needs a hit to stay open. Dave, the artistic director, refuses to do anything more commercial, even though the theater is down to just three members and on the brink of financial collapse. Amanda, Dave’s wife, is the third member, but she announces that a fourth member is on the way – she’s pregnant.

Enter producer Eddie and his two catty minions, creators of such Off-Broadway cash-cows as “Naked Boys Running Around Naked” and “Drunk Frat Boys Making Porn.” They need a venue for their latest opus, a play built around their porn star lead, Kit Swagger.

The battle of Art vs. Commerce never looked so good!

May and Dering recognize that the onstage companies can be viewed as highly-amplified parodies of their alternative troupes, which makes it that much more delicious.

Bell’s wit spares no one. The cast of comic pros include Johanna Carlisle, Samuel Wilkes, Matthew Harris and Douglas Lloynd, not to mention Marc Rambeau as “The Naked Guy.”

Neil Cohen is a playwright, actor and director who has been part of the Phoenix theater scene since 1981. He can be reached at reelthoughts@aol.com.

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