A Spoonful of Sugar dishes out sweet production
Cast members of A Spoonful of Sugar strike a pose to celebrate a successful performance.
May 23, 2022
A Spoonful of Sugar was a quickly and efficiently produced performance by Riordan’s theater team.
This musical, despite having a shorter production period than most other performances Riordan has done in the past, was skillfully put together largely by its own student crew.
As Valerie O’Riordan, the director, put it, “The cast created the line up, the crew created the spoons, and the adults created the opportunity.”
This short production period gave the Riordan community a performance that was 40 minutes, yet despite the run time, the whole performance flowed naturally from act to act.
The musical was kept short and sweet, and packed with enjoyable and impressive talent from all the individual cast members.
Mary Ann Datoc, a teacher and fan of Riordan’s drama team, pointed out a unique part of the play, a monologue of The Ages of Man from As You Like It, performed by Daniel Barrett ’24.
Datoc said, “Daniel was the only one that did the monologue so that really stood out to me.”
Among so many talented renditions of musical pieces the monologue was an outlier, but nonetheless a great addition to the play.
One of the most prominent members of the cast was Marina Viray ’24 who performed in a sextet that presented,“Helpless” from from Hamilton, a rendition of, “She Used to be Waitress, and Mine” my personal favorite act, “Satisfied” from Hamilton. Marina showed real talent in all of her performances and displayed the result of her hard work well just like the rest of the cast.
This performance felt like a real compilation of all the talent Riordan’s drama team had to offer and as William Haskell ’22 said, it seemed to have been an enjoyable experience for all those involved in putting it together.
In his own words, “Putting this performance together was nothing but fun. We were there to share our talents and have a good time, so if anything was too difficult or stressful we just cut it out or altered it.”
Coming up with their own acts and practicing over the Easter break in addition to having a few rehearsals prior to opening, the cast really pulled through with a performance that looked effortless on their part.
The performers showed dedication and creativity in their acts, seeing as every crew member volunteered and came up with their own ideas for the show.
A Spoonful of Sugar replaced the originally scheduled Mary Poppins, and included two songs from that musical. The cast and crew delivered something just as impressive with each cast member showing their own individual talent to the audience that no doubt was blown away by the near professionally executed acts.
