Forever Plaid

Release Date: 5/17/2001. Expired: 7/27/2001

The Renaissance Center Gaslight Dinner Theatre will present the international hit musical Forever Plaid every Friday June 8 – July 27. Tickets are $25 and include dinner and the show. Special bookings for groups of 25 or more can be scheduled by calling LeAnn Polk, director of events, at (615)740-5503.

Forever Plaid will put a smile on your face, a tap in your toes and a tune in your heart. Directed by Kim Leavitt, director of drama education at the center, this production will feature The Renaissance Center’s director of curriculum development Brad Diamond and actors/directors Pacer Harp and Hal Partlow. Chris Cooper, who recently portrayed Jesus in the center’s community theatre production of Godspell, completes the quartet.

Partlow is originally from Upstate New York and has worked professionally throughout the country for 15 years. Having been at The Renaissance Center since its first season in the Fall of 1999, he performs with The Rep company in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre and in the Faraday Science Theatre, adapts scripts for curriculum shows, and directs various productions for the Theatre Department. His directing credits include Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Belle of Amherst, The Glass Menagerie, and Twelfth Night for the Renaissance Center, and Ruthless and Suddenly Last Summer at the Roxy Regional Theatre. He is currently directing Grace and Glorie, in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre at the center.

Louisville, KY native, Harp, is infamous for his portrayal of Michael Faraday in the Renaissance Center’s Faraday Science Theatre. In addition to performing for thousands of school children and educators each year, he also serves as Managing Director of the Gaslight Dinner Theatre. He recently directed the smash hit Last of the Red Hot Lovers, and starred in, co-directed, and choreographed Christmas Seasonings and Bar-B-Q for 2. No stranger to the stage, Harp has performed such roles as “Hysterium” in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, “Billy Crocker” in Anything Goes, “Lt. Cable” in South Pacific, “Cain” in Children of Eden and won a “Best Actor” award for his portrayal of the title role in The Elephant Man. Currently, he can seen as “Lysander/Peter Quince” in The Renaissance Rep’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Diamond, the director of curriculum development at the center, is a talented tenor known for his musicianship and style. In recent seasons, he has performed Messiah with the Roanoke Music College, Buffalo Philharmonic, Jacksonville Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Oratorio Society of New York, Nashville Symphony, Tulsa Philharmonic, and Princeton Pro Musica. For three years he was a featured artist in “An Evening of Gilbert and Sullivan” which performed with symphony orchestras in Cedar Rapids, Buffalo, Lakeside, Richmond and St. Louis among others. On the operatic stage he has performed the role of “Almaviva” in the Barber of Seville with Lyric Opera Cleveland, Opera Pacific, and a recording for Public Television Broadcast with the Florentine Opera Company of Milwaukee. In recent seasons, he has performed the role of “Ralph Rackstraw” in HMS Pinafore with the Dayton opera and “Prince Ramiro” in Rossini’s La Cenerentola with the Indianapolis and Nashville Opera Companies.

Cooper recently relocated to Nashville from Chicago. He has been performing throughout the country for the past 11 years. He debuted at The Renaissance Center in the community theatre production of Godspell. Cooper works as a healthcare operations improvement consultant.

“Forever Plaid captures the essence and innocence of the 1950s, an era untouched by assassination, rebellion and Vietnam,” states Leavitt. “It was a time when kids actually listened to their parents; when families ate supper around the dinner table then went into the living room to watch the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’; when the American dream was still a possibility. Car radios and jukeboxes were filled with the music of quartet guy groups who wore dinner jackets and bow ties, whose dance moves were as tight and precise as their harmony.”

“Forever Plaid is dedicated to the good guys; to the guys who carried an extra handkerchief; to the guys who saved their allowances to give their parents an extra special night on the town for their anniversary; to the guys who wheeled the projector carts for the Driver Education films; to the guys who didn’t go beyond first base, and if, by some miracle, they did, they didn’t tell anyone.”

It is the story of four unlikely heroes. High school buddies who love to sing, they all met when they joined the Audio Visual Club. Discovering that they share a love for music and entertaining, they formed a quartet and landed singing gigs at weddings, fund raisers and family gatherings eventually graduating to super market openings and proms. They rehearsed in the basement of one of their family’s plumbing supply company and it is here they became Forever Plaid, a name that connotes the continuation of traditional values, of family, home and harmony.

Finally, landing their first big gig at the Airport Hilton Cocktail Bar, they find their dreams of musical glory are about to come true. However, en route to pick up their custom-made Plaid Tuxedoes, they were slammed broadside by a school bus filled with eager teenagers who were on their way to see the Beatles make their US television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Miraculously, the teens escaped uninjured but, the members of Forever Plaid were killed instantly. It is at that moment when their careers and lives ended that the story of Forever Plaid begins.

Through a twist of fate and a hole in the ozone layer, a mystical and mysterious time warp hauls them back to earth and the quartet with angelic voices get their second chance to do the show they never got to do in life. Their mission is to perform the perfect show that always eluded the reach of their controvertible talents. If they complete their quest, the men in plaid can return at peace to their place in the cosmos. But it won’t be that easy. Each questionably talented Plaid has a flaw, be it jittery nerves, indigestion, a slight speech impediment or the inability to tell his left from his right.

Shaken and confused by what fate has done to them, they nervously stumble about trying to synchronize their choreography and uncertain four-part harmonies. As the play unfolds, they seem to regain their confidence and footing on stage as they sing segments of vintage songs that dominated the AM radio airwaves in the late 1950s and early ’60s such as “Catch a Falling Star,” “Chain Gang,” “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Matilda, Matilda,” and many more. As the foursome finds their footing and their voices they proceed to give the performance of their “life.”

“It is a heart-touching play about pursuing dreams no matter the odds,” continues Leavitt. “The quartet’s slow and often awkward transformation from bumbling geeks to confident performers is as endearing as it is funny.”

With the help of supporting musicians, all the vocals are performed live with harmonies that are very tight and very complex during this engaging journey back to a more innocent time when chaperoned teen-agers searched for dreamy-eyed romance at the high school prom. The charm and ambience of The Gaslight Dinner Theatre along with the show’s wistful undertones give way to an intimacy with and sympathy for the foursome and their unexpected plight.

The menu for Forever Plaid is meatloaf, mashed potatoes/gravy, salad, green beans, corn, rolls and variety cobblers. Tickets are on sale now and can be obtained by calling (615)740-5600 or visit the center at 855 Hwy. 46 S. in Dickson.

Visit the Gaslight Dinner Theatre page for more about dinner theatre.

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