I had never been particularly interested in Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor, because for whatever reason I always thought it was a musical, and I just wasn’t feeling it. But the Nittany Theatre at the Barn production, directed by Frank Wilson, has definitely changed my mind. The show is funny, it deals with so heavy subjects lightly, and ultimately, it’s rather uplifting.

Lend Me a Tenor revolves around the local politics of the Cleveland Grand Opera, which has gotten Tito Merelli, a world-famous Italian tenor, to perform in their production of Otello. This is a big coup for the opera house, and Henry Saunders, the Opera’s general manager, puts his assistant Max in charge of taking care of Tito—and keeping him away from wine and women before the show. Max’s task is complicated because his girlfriend Maggie (Henry’s daughter) wants to have a fling before they get married, and she sets her sights on Tito, and the Opera’s ingenue, Diana, decides that an affair with Tito will be good for her career. Trying to get the tense tenor to nap, Max drugs Tito’s wine with sleeping pills. But then Tito’s wife, Maria, finds Maggie in the closet of their bedroom, she leaves Tito just before the show. In despair, and after failing to stab himself to death with a wine bottle, Tito takes more sleeping pills and goes for a nap. When it’s time for the show, Tito won’t wake up and Max—finding Maria’s note about leaving and misinterpreting it as a suicide note—decides he’s successfully carried out his threat to kill himself because Maria left him. Unwilling to give back the ticket money, Henry convinces Max, who it turns out is an aspiring opera singer, to dress in Tito’s Otello costume and blackface and do the show as Tito. Max does, and it’s a triumph. But during the show, Tito wakes up, puts on his other costume, and tries to get into the theatre, where he has a run in with police before returning to his hotel room. After the opera, both Maggie and Diana go to Tito’s hotel room hoping to seduce the singer, and a complex series of misrecognitions and mistaken identities takes place, the upshot of which is that Maggie sleeps with Max and Diana sleeps with Tito—with both men still in the Otello costume and blackface. Tito awakes and runs off again, and Maggie and Diana meet each other, both in their underwear in Tito’s hotel room. They’re understandable perturbed, and turn on Max, thinking he’s Tito. Max retreats to the bathroom, where Henry had put his tuxedo for the reception. Maria returns and finds the two women, and begins shouting at the bathroom door, thinking Tito’s in there. Then Tito returns, and the women decide the person in the bathroom is the same one who tried to get into the opera earlier and escaped from the police. Finally, Max emerges from the bathroom in his tuxedo, and while there is some confusion, everything is resolved. Tito asks Maria to take him home, away from this crazy town, and Maggie (joyfully) realizes the fling she wanted to have to liven her life up before marriage was actually with her fiancé in disguise.

The Nittany Theatre production did a wonderful job with the play. The stand out performers were probably Dave Saxe (Tito), Ben Whitesell (Henry), and Steve Burns (Max). Each of the three actors brought distinct approaches to comedy which ended up meshing well together and playing off one another effectively. Saxe’s Tito seemed inspired by Chico Marx, with boisterous, stereotypical Italian mannerisms and good humor, balanced with regular confusion as events swirled around him. Whitesell’s performance style was equally over-the-top, as the overbearing opera director prone to fits of rage. One of his funniest scenes was when Henry and Max just find out Tito has ‘died,’ and Whitesell repeatedly lost his temper, jumping on Tito’s body and screaming in his face, and trying repeatedly to attack the corpse with a pillow, which Max needed to prevent. Burns’ strongest performances came in relation to the Saxe and Whitesell. Ironically, his chemistry with Molly Riva (Maggie) didn’t seem as comfortable as with the two male performers, who he could play off of easier. Burns’ performance had to shift part way through, as he opened with an uncomfortable and self-conscious Max, but then when Tito helps teach him to sing, Max gains confidence, a confidence that peaks first after his opera triumph, and again when he successfully seduces Maggie (albeit in the guise of Tito).