“My Favorite Year:” A Review

With a worthwhile plot line and magnificent stage presence, the play My Favorite Year creates theater the old-fashioned way. The UHS drama club’s version of My Favorite Year captures a long-lost time and place to perfection through the use of very clever dialog, humorous situations, and casting that is nearly as perfect as can be. An excellent play from top to bottom, indeed.

The story, involves a dissolute matinee idol named Alan Swann, played by Noah Gehrmann, and his scheduled appearance on a live television variety show, Your Show of Shows. Told through the eyes of junior writer Benjy Stone, played by Sean Smith, who idolizes Swann, the play requires unusual skills for Gehrmann to show off and stretch his comedic skills. Mostly associated with the great performances in the past drama club plays, it’s a delight watching Gehrmann play this swashbuckling souse with such confident composure. Sean Grady, playing King Kaiser, truly performed the part wonderfully, as he seems to have that definite edge in him that fit the Kaiser’s personality in the play. Smith has the put-upon look of exasperation down to a science, and gets to use it very well in the scenes with his overbearing mother, Belle May Steinberg Carroca, played by Joanna Nowak. Nowak showcased her role with a different ethnicity that really differentiates her from the rest of the characters in the play.

Director and drama club adviser, Gregory Chew, shows a nice comedic touch in letting the more subtle humor shine through and many of the jokes are almost lost in the surrounding mayhem, but they are all very catchy and most definitely funny. Although this play was thoroughly enjoyable, there were a lot of different characters that make it hard for audiences to keep track of and know who’s playing what character. The scene where Smith realizes that he is going to appear on live television and his excited-can’t-wait-reaction to that information is a classic.

The effort to keep Swann sober during the week leading up to the show, and the things he begins to discover about Swann as he goes into the process, nearly drives Benjy to the brink. When he’s given an unexpected glimpse into Swann’s broken heart Benjy learns about human frailty. Benjy succeeds in making his show a success- which then makes the year 1954, his favorite year. This play is a mixture of tragedy, comedy, and love which gives its audience the satisfaction that the play itself guarantees first and foremost.