The Wedding Singer has Somers Walking on Air

On Friday night March 24, the Somers High School Drama Club put on the musical production of The Wedding Singer, and without question, the audience stirred to the sound, the uplifting beat and endearing love story. Of course, the reception is never a given, and lead actress Caitlyn Stellwagen voiced the realization of what it meant to actually hit the high notes.

“It was electric,” boasted Stellwagen.

Playing Julia, the story mostly follows the Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore comedy. She’s a waitress engaged to an insensitive, high powered stockbroker and her star eventually aligns for the Adam Sandler character. A wedding singer named Robbie, he’s been jilted at the alter, and as the 80s music churns, they come to see that “growing old together” is their destiny.

So the duo had a pretty tall order in recreating the magical chemistry of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars - or not. “Actually, it’s not that difficult because me and our Robbie Hart are IRL,” she revealed, “in real life.”

Andrew Tatela agreed. “It’s helps when you’re dating your co-star,” said the senior, and both cherished sharing their passion for performance.

The male lead is no stranger to a stage either, but all the many moving parts are not so familiar. “I play in a band, where you just plug in and go,” said Tatela who is in the School of Rock’s house band.

The first time before an audience as an actor, he was unprepared for playing off the reaction. “I’m not used to the laughs,” he said. “I had to pause the dialogue, and I just kept going and going.”

Of course, jamming the guitar, mastering the octaves and dancing the numbers seemed to go pretty well and so did all the costume changes. “The hardest part was the costumes,” he countered.

For instance, he’d be wearing boxers, and in the next scene, a full tuxedo. So time of the essence, the changeovers were a team effort and didn’t always go as planned. At one point, he joked, “They put my pants on backwards, and the shoes on the wrong feet.”

Elsewhere, another unexpected glitch involved the glare. “We had to get rid of all the red (makeup), because apparently on stage, it looked like eczema around the eyes,” lamented Jett Sofko.

The makeup artist made due in the nick of time, and when asked what else went awry, Allie O’Connor didn’t hesitate. “Literally everything,” the stage manager revealed.

Words probably said by every good stage manager everywhere, she was simply voicing the complexity. “Getting all the moving parts right, we put everything together in a week, and we just finished today,” said O’Connor.

Coming under the wire, O’Connor still had only props. “Everyone in the cast did great, and I love them all,” she said.

Her co-stage manager had no shortage of amore either, and the end result had both her head and heels above the clouds. “It’s like walking on air,” Kody Nestor extolled.

Back on the ground, Jay Seaboldt really put the screws to the production as stagecraft. Building and painting sets was pretty time consuming and the handyman didn’t mince words when asked when he did his homework. “I didn’t,” he assured.

A big relief to have the first show under his belt, Seaboldt wasn’t the only one carrying a heavy load. “The second I leave the stage, I want to get off that wig,” said Olivia Peck.

Playing the girl who jilts Robbie, Peck sports the 80s hair that we’d all like to forget, and the bad girl image to go with it. A welcome change, she said, “I follow the rules in real life, so I get to not follow the rules on stage.”

Even more so, Derek Farrell delivered the grime as Glen. “It’s kind of fun to get inside the mind of a really crude, annoying asshole,” the actor joked.

He actually went a bit over the top in drawing from Christian Bale’s performance in American Psycho. Farrell also aspired to move the period piece closer to the present. “It’s about the 80s, and now it’s 2023. So I tried to add in a more modern touch,” he said.

Anthony Fusco, on the other hand, was timeless. Playing Boy George in full regalia, his portrayal got the biggest laughs. “I just had fun with it,” Fusco downplayed. “I was excited to see that the crowd was liking what I was putting down.”

They were pretty amenable to the comedic beat of Gordon Mescain-Archer too. Still, in playing Robbie’s friend Sammy, the actor needed to find his own voice. “I had to distance myself from the character in the movie, find that niche and connect myself to the character,” he said. “That’s how I got what I got out of the character.”

Angelina Pineiro did the exact opposite in bringing Robbie’s grandmother to life. “I kind of just based it off of Rosie in the movie,” she said, and all the laughter verified the success of her method. Two more shows to go, the actress acknowledged the rollercoaster ride that is live theater, but assured that the cast and crew will meet the challenge. “We got this under control,” Pineiro concluded.