SHE LOVES ME
Highland Arts Theatre production continues until Sunday
Romantic comedy running at Highland Arts Theatre.
On Wednesday, the Highland Arts Theatre debuted its new holiday musical comedy to a sold-out audience for “She Loves Me,” a Broadway musical from the 1960s that features the same writers as “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Cabaret.”
The story is simple. Two coworkers each fall in love with anonymous pen pals through a letter-writing service called the “Lonely Hearts Club.” They hate each other in real life … but guess who they end up with?
This definitive romantic comedy is based on an 1930s Hungarian play called “Parfumerie” which has been adapted several times into very successful films: “The Shop Around the Corner,” starring Jimmy Stewart, “In the Good Old Summertime,” starring Judy Garland, and most recently, the 1998 hit “You’ve Got Mail,” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
What sets this adaptation apart, however, is the music.
“The score is one of the best Golden Age of Broadway musical scores I’ve ever heard, from a composing team at the height of their craft,” said HAT artistic director Wesley J. Colford, who is directing and performing in the holiday musical. “The songs are so beautiful, yet are completely human and flow perfectly naturally from story and dialogue. Even better, they are absolutely hilarious.”
The musical takes place during the lead up to Christmas as shoppers become more and more frantic to finish their Christmas shopping, making it the perfect show to kick off the HAT’s holiday performance schedule.
“It’s a very old-fashioned musical in a lot of ways, but that definitely adds to the charm. In a way, it’s about ordinary people living their ordinary lives yet the music elevates these seemingly mundane moments and offers each character the ability to become extraordinary. To me it’s a metaphor for the potential we each have, every moment, to be extraordinary. We just have to take the leap.”
She Loves Me runs until Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Highland Arts Theatre, 40 Bentinck St., Sydney.