ADRIAN — Looking around the opening-night audience for the Croswell Opera House’s “Escape to Margaritaville,” with all the Hawaiian shirts and leis and a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt or two, it was obvious that a lot of folks were there to celebrate all things Buffett.
And in that respect, they probably didn’t go away from the show disappointed, because “Escape to Margaritaville” is jam-packed with Jimmy Buffett music start to finish. Which is, of course, the only real reason to see this musical; you certainly wouldn’t go expecting Great American Theater.
Like jukebox musicals in general, “Escape to Margaritaville” doesn’t have much in the way of a plot. True, it’s sort of entertaining to see how the playwrights managed to make a storyline happen out of Buffett’s music, but it leads to a lot of really random things that make no sense except as set-ups for the songs.
In fact, in the playwrights’ desire to stuff as much of the late singer-songwriter’s canon as possible into the show, what’s already a pretty inane plotline gets draggy in spots, and that’s through no fault of the people onstage.
But since you don’t go to a show like this for the story, you go for the music, it’s absolutely true that the Croswell’s production lives up to what it’s supposed to do.
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Preview:Jimmy Buffett tunes tell story of 'Escape to Margaritaville' at Croswell Opera House
The silly plot at least results in a show that true Buffett fans, and even casual ones, should revel in as far as getting in all of the greatest hits and then some, and the cast makes the most of them when it comes to presentation.
Songs like “Margaritaville” get an enthusiastic rendering — and a whole lot of people in Friday’s audience definitely knew to chant “Salt! Salt! Salt!” at the right time — while the more reflective tunes like “Son of a Son of a Sailor” are nicely done too. And in that latter “more reflective” category, “He Went to Paris” actually leads to one of the show’s rare truly poignant moments.
The production’s four leads — Maxwell Lam as Tully, Ally Szymanski as Rachel, Meg Clark as Tammy and John Lamb as Brick — are all very appealing performers and bring a lot to their roles.
You really want the two couples to end up together (and you really want Tammy to not end up with her fiance, Chadd, played perfectly obnoxiously by Jared Freeman, because Chadd is a complete tool) because each pair matches up so well. When it comes to the necessary vocals, too, each of the four is quite fine for their characters, and they’re all really solid in the acting department as well.
When it comes to the secondary characters, the real standout is, unsurprisingly, Eric Parker as J.D., the beach bum with an interesting past.
Parker is a complete hoot in this role and anchors his scenes just as you’d expect with anything he does onstage. He’s also the production’s director, and his professional stage experience helps get everything possible out of his cast and the show overall.
It also helps the production tremendously to have a really great music director in the pit in the person of Dave Rains, who deftly leads cast and orchestra through all those Buffett tunes and all the instrumental color inherent in the score.
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It does have to be said that the opening-night production was disappointingly uneven in terms of sound quality. Unhelpfully in that department, too, a couple of the actors really need to do better at speaking up and speaking clearly. The end result of all that was that a fair amount of the dialogue got lost Friday night.
But given that, as already noted, this show exists for the music, not for the plot, perhaps that doesn’t matter quite so much as it might otherwise.
It’s true that for multiple reasons this production doesn’t rise to the level of quality people have rightly come to expect of a Croswell show. It’s also true, though, that it does what it’s supposed to: provide a show that’s escapist, breezy, upbeat and should be thoroughly appealing to people who just want to immerse themselves in Jimmy Buffet’s music — and even, now and then at least, sing along.
If you go
WHAT: “Escape to Margaritaville”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 17; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 18; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 19
WHERE: Croswell Opera House, 129 E. Maumee St., Adrian
TICKETS: $44/$33/$22 for adults, $25/$20/$15 for students
HOW TO ORDER: Online at croswell.org or by calling 517-264-7469
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