Footlight Theatre Company present The Marvelous Wonderettes at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts until Nov. 15. For more information visit footlight.ca.
One cigarette changed the course of musical history.
The Crooning Crabcakes were set to entertain at the Springfield High 1958 senior prom when causeless rebel Billy Ray Patton was suspended for smoking.
All seemed lost until Missy, Cindy Lou, Suzy and Betty, better known as the Marvelous Wonderettes, surfed to the prom's rescue on a crinoline wave.
Many young women in the 1950s lived with the simple mantra: "Get a boyfriend or die," notes Katherine Alpen, who plays Missy.
Jukebox musical The Marvelous Wonderettes is divided between that prom performance and a reunion in 1968.
After 10 years of pizza and longing, Missy belts out "Wedding Bell Blues," at the reunion, a ditty which includes lyrics like: "Kisses and love won't carry me till you marry me, Bill."
"You could see it and you could say, 'OK, that's - maybe a little bit simplistic in its emotional story,'" Alpen says of the song. "(But) when you really get down to it and you're telling someone really how you feel, you use those words."
Roger Bean's comedic melodrama looks at jealousy, Cupid's lack of intelligence, and unrequited love through the prism of hit songs like "Mr. Sandman," "Heatwave," and "It's In His Kiss."
Asked about the endurance of the music, Alpen turns contemplative.
"Maybe it's nice because it's uncomplicated," she says. "Comforting."
Fresh from Capilano University's theatre program, Alpen auditioned for the show, in part, because she had a perfect 1950s dress.
She tried - unsuccessfully - to minimize her emotional attachment to Missy after the audition.
"I got home and I realized how much I really wanted to do it and I was like, 'Oh crap, now I care. Now it hurts,'" she says.
At the prom, Missy pines for a fellow who seems unavailable. Ten years later, she's still pining.
"I really love Missy," Alpen says. "She's very high-strung. .. she could probably just use a day off."
Alpen speaks to the North Shore News after being outfitted for a costume, wig and microphone just a few days before the curtain rises on her first performance as the lovelorn ingenue.
"Now there's 17 things going on around me and I still have to do what I was doing in rehearsal," she says.
Alpen speaks rapidly, frequently punctuating her thoughts with laughter.
She describes Missy as "super organized" and "super high functioning."
"It reflects real life in that I'm always way too busy for my own good," she says.
A lifelong Lynn Valley resident, Alpen grew up listening to her mother's violin and her father's piano.
Theatre has been part of the actress' life since a Grade 6 performance where she played the king in a class production of The Little Prince.
"I get high off of going to see live theatre," Alpen says.
Despite her attraction to "the living entity" of theatre, Alpen initially tried her hand at one of Capilano University's more practical programs.
"I think I fought it for about six months," she recalls. "I was miserable, so I went back into theatre."
The ensuing years were: "Probably the best three years of my life to date," she says.
Asked why people should see The Marvelous Wonderettes, Alpen launches into a monologue about the fragile power of theatre.
"It's not like a movie.
You can't say I'll get it when it's out on DVD. No, you have to go. You actually have to put on your shoes and fork over the money that you would probably otherwise just spend on coffee and sit in the seat and submit yourself to a live action experience," she says. "It's only going to happen once and once it's gone it's never the same as it was."
Following the production, Alpen is slated to play a mentally unstable criminal in Camp Death III, a satire targeting 1980s horror movies.
"I must give off that vibe or something. Maybe I'm actually crazy."
