Boy meets and falls in love with girl, boy loses girl, villain tries to get girl, boy wins girl and triumphs over evil.
The Butte Theater in Cripple Creek will reignite the classic melodrama formula with its latest production, “Darling of the Donkey Derby,” followed by the olio, “Blame it on the Boogie: Songs of the Decade,” featuring music from the ’70s. It opens Friday and runs through July 14.
The show is based on an old book somebody found years ago at the Cripple Creek library and turned into a melodrama for the theater, which has staged the production at least once. This year’s version was adapted by playwright Chris Sorenson.
“It recaptures the early days of Donkey Derby Days and the history of how the derby got started,” said director Betsy McClenahan. “It brings into play the mines and a lot of local references. It’s lots of fun.”
Set in old Cripple Creek, Tom Moffatt, the prospector and hero (cheer!) vies with a bad guy (boo!) for the heart of heroine Katy Darling (sigh!) and a huge estate left by the bad guy’s rich uncle who’s about to meet his maker. It’s all set against the backdrop of the first Cripple Creek Donkey Derby Days, which started more than 90 years ago by Cripple Creek businessmen who wanted a way to attract more people to town during the summer.
The first festivals featured donkey races with participants riding the animals 5 miles from Victor to Cripple Creek. In the ’70s, the race changed into teams leading the animals along a half-mile stretch of Bennett Avenue.
Eight cast members from across the country will break the fourth wall and interact with the audience — standard protocol when it comes to melodrama, versus a straight play, where there is no audience interaction.
Only one of the cast members had done a melodrama, so McClenahan gave them some homework.
“I said I need you to go watch ‘The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends,’ because Dudley Do-Right is the epitome of what a melodrama is,” she said. “Everything Disney does is based on the melodrama formula. Rodgers and Hammerstein did the same thing.”
McClenahan knows of what she speaks. The longtime performer spent about 15 years doing melodramas and credits them with making her a better actor.
“Even though a lot of people throw away melodrama as a fluffy thing, I tell young actors it taught me how to be within a character even when I’m doing traditional theater,” she said.
“In melodrama you have to always play to the audience and hear what’s going on with the audience. Are they booing and hissing? Are they understanding the side characters? It’s different than putting a wall up and only wondering what the other actors on stage are doing. There’s a whole other section of things you have to pay attention to.”
