Here’s a Zen koan for theater goers: What’s an Adam Sandler story without Adam Sandler?
Centenary Stage has tackled this question with its current production of “The Wedding Singer,” a Tony-nominated musical based on the 1998 Sandler flick.
What’s a Sandler story sans Sandler? For this show, we have our answer: funny, touching, and so buoyant it channels the joy of a wedding reception one hour into open bar.
It’s been a long time since 1998. If memory’s a little misty, let’s flash back to the big-haired, smartphone-less world of the original movie. The plot follows a—gasp!—wedding singer in 1980-something New Jersey. He’s wildly enthusiastic about his job until his own fiancée leaves him at the altar. Our heartbroken hero, finding himself unable to belt songs of romantic love, falls into despair… before falling for another woman. One problem: she’s engaged to someone else. Cue comedic chaos.
In the original, much of the comedy derives from Sandler’s signature style. Sometimes he yells, sometimes he flails—y’know, Adam Sandler things.
Centenary’s production takes a different approach. Matthew Steen’s Robbie is a softer, kinder everyman, like a young Sean Astin with impressive pipes. When Raelyn Ariella’s Linda makes her first ridiculously charismatic appearance, you wonder what a nice young man like him was doing with a Tina Turner-esque hellion like her.
The impressive roster of side characters gives the production the feel of an ensemble piece. In his wedding band, Robbie is flanked by guitarist Sammy (Kai Valva, exuding post-disco swagger) and keyboardist George (Jack Sisk high-heel stepping into a comic relief role and elevating it to high camp). The other band members never feel like afterthoughts.
But then, no one does here. Jeremy Ashton is persuasively repulsive as the smarmy finance bro. On opening night, understudy Asher Paterno heroically stepped in for the role of Holly, landing both the supportive friend persona and the character’s big musical number with Sammy.
Enough cannot be said about Megan Schmiedhauser’s genuinely magnetic Julia, the caterer that Robbie falls for. Schmiedhauser is a gifted comedienne with dynamic physical presence. Then the music begins and she unleashes a voice that dissolves any prior silliness and reveals aching vulnerability. You get why Robbie falls for her—who wouldn’t?
The two romantic leads share a playful chemistry that’s visible from the back row. They seem the type of couple to climb other people’s fire escapes and prank strangers from the roof. As a delightful sidenote, Steen and Schmiedhauser thanked each other in the playbill’s cast bios. It’s clear why—their scene partnership is contagiously gleeful.
That glee suffuses the entire show. On opening night, after a few early throat-clearing scenes, the energy of the audience palpably shifted. Spontaneous cheers erupted when Deirdre Worth’s glorious Rosie power-walked across the stage. When the once-wedding, now-bar mitzvah band worked an imaginary crowd, we instinctively clapped. In the show-stopping number that ends Act I, “Saturday Night in the City,” Olivia Theroux and Lea Antolini-Lid’s choreography makes you want to launch out of your seat no matter how creaky your joints feel.
Some musical adaptations rank in the category of “things that probably shouldn’t exist if we’re honest with ourselves.” Others manage to outdo the original. As Christopher Young, the General Manager of Centenary Stage Company, mentioned over melon slices and merlot at the opening night reception, this musical is a bit sharper than its inspiration—more clever, more fun and more skillful at wink-wink 80s references.
Maybe that’s unfair to movies. There are things a live musical can do that a screen can’t replicate. It’s a certain connective electricity that you can feel when the cast hits its stride, the choreography lines up perfectly, the singers’ voices blend into one single indistinguishable note— like at a wedding when the drinks are flowing, the jackets and heels have come off, and a line of people doing the electric slide no longer feels like a hackneyed cliché, but a cheer of collective catharsis.
Centenary’s production hits that note, especially in “Single” and the big closing number. That’s the lovely thing about weddings, and good theater, and anything that connects people to the larger community. We can believe that love conquers arrogant finance bros and the soulless world they represent, and that victory is ours, too—one that calls for celebration!
Get your champagne flutes out. This show deserves a celebration, too.
“The Wedding Singer” runs now through July 19 at the Sitnik Theater in Hackettstown. For more information, visit https://www.centenarystageco.org/the-wedding-singer.
Chip O'Chang is an educator, fiction writer, and lifelong resident of New Jersey. He has also written for My Life Publications and NJ Indy. He lives in the NJ Skylands with his partner, two cats, and and a bearded dragon.
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
