Harlem actors get 'Crazy' for musical

Harlem High School drama students will bring the energetic Gershwin Broadway classic Crazy for You to the stage this weekend.

"Gershwin is not always easy to sing, but it's great music that everybody loves," said Roy Lewis, the director of the musical and the school's drama teacher. Loose change will be collected at all four performances to benefit cystic fibrosis.

The musical, revived on Broadway in the early 1990s, will hit the stage at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Saturday. Tickets cost $8 and can be purchased at the door or by contacting Lewis at (706) 556-5980, ext. 227, or rlewis@ccboe.net.

The musical, loosely based on the 1930 movie Girl Crazy, includes well-known George and Ira Gershwin hits Someone to Watch Over Me, I Got Rhythm, and They Can't Take That Away From Me. The production revolves around 1930s playboy Bobby Childs, played by senior Roberto Marin, whose dream is to dance.

The show is filled with song and dance, including lots of tap dancing, which most of the students had to learn from scratch, Lewis said.

"When you look up on that stage and you've got 45 kids singing and dancing and they are tapping away, we're like, 'Wow,'" Lewis said. "The sound is so intoxicating with the music and the excitement they are putting forth on the stage, it's like the tiny theater can't contain it."

The students have practiced six days a week, including an after-hours tap class taught by production choreographer Elliott Bradlee, of Charlotte, N.C.

Junior Janine DeMichele, 17, will play the female lead, Polly Baker, in the Friday and Saturday matinee performance. The role is her first lead role in a musical.

"Singing was kind of difficult because Gershwin is kind of harder," DeMichele said.

Lewis said he cast the show in February and has been holding rehearsals since then. The 45-member cast is led by only 11 seniors, including Marin, who was recently awarded a $10,000 scholarship to the University of Northern Colorado for musical theater, and Adrianne Kuss, who plays Irene Roth and will be attending the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York.

The performances will be held in the Harlem High School theater on Appling-Harlem Highway.