2008 Year in Review

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"Church Basement Ladies" needs to ripen

“Church Basement Ladies” at Timber Lake Playhouse starts out with a song line they’re “closer to heaven” in the church basement of the East Cornucopia Lutheran Church of the Prairie in rural Cornucopia, Minnesota. In December 1964, Pastor Gunderson played by Jeremy Day, his three church ladies, and one of the ladies daughter are getting ready for 200 people at the annual lutefisk church dinner. The community is Norwegian and the staples of a Norwegian church kitchen are “butter, flour, sugar, and cream”.

The Basement Ladies discuss and sing about many subjects during the musical, including menopause, genealogy, Lutheran vs Lutheran, Lutheran vs Catholic, city vs rural, and the past vs the future. The main protagonist is the future of the church to modernize opposed to keeping the traditions of the church. The oldest church lady, of course, doesn’t want to see progress while the youngest member can see the future. How could they change the black hymnals to red? And how could they have guitars in the sanctuary?

You’ll recognize the ladies of any local church kitchen with the plot included a small power struggle among the Ladies. Besides the older grumpy Mrs. Snustad, played by Sarah A Ruden, there’s the 50ish lady, played by Kitty Karn, the pastor calls the “marvelous mechanic” who has a bad case of menopause. The third lady is a younger 40ish lady Mrs. Engelson, played by the beautiful Jenny Guse, who has a college-age daughter Miss Engelson, played by Samantha Dubina. Mother and daughter both antagonize Mrs. Snustad. The actors tried to imitate the Minnesota accent, don’t cha know, but not all the actors could pull it off. Some had little or no accent while others sounded at time more like an Irish accent.

The four scenes of the musical reflect the occasions of the typical church lady. The annual fund-raising dinner, a funeral, a wedding, and the Easter Luai(??) - including the Easter Bunny with a grass skirt.

There has been a lot of hype around the Church Basement Ladies since their appearance at another local theater. I know a lot of people have been looking forward to this production and as far as I’ve heard it’s nearly sold out. None of my party of six were impressed. In a season of ripe juicy peaches this production wasn’t even ripe. Some of the singers were slightly off key and there were a lot of flubbed lines and miscues. I could have overlooked those things if it had just made me laugh. I expected it to be very funny. There were a few bright spots but mostly it was just mundane. Hopefully this peach will ripen with age, but it has to become a lot funnier. The musical’s saving grace is that it is only 2 hours with the intermission.

The production is being performed now through August 24th when the 2008 season at Timber Lake Playhouse ends. Call for tickets at (815) 244-2035 The 2009 summer season includes Grease, Lend Me A Tenor, The Wedding Singer, Wait Until Dark, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.

by Barb Benson, Guest Columnist
August 22, 2008