‘Blame it on the movies’

Frontiersman

PALMER — If something has to be blamed, might as well be the movies.

A parade of film musical numbers ranging from the 1940s to today, “Blame it on the Movies” is Palmer High School’s catchy, snappy and ultimately bratty romp through Hollywood’s songbook.

A singing and dancing salute to Hollywood, “Blame it on the Movies” doesn’t lack for memorable melodies. There are more than 40 numbers covered in the student-run musical, spanning more than 60 years of film history.

The musical opens with a 7 p.m. show Thursday.

“It covers everything from stupidness to a whole sequence of love songs and Disney anthems,” musical director and Palmer High School music teacher Stan Harris said.

From Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” to the 1961 Gene Pitney classic “Town Without Pity” sung by PHS student James Vieira, the scope of the performance takes the audience through a blockbuster medley of genres.

Harris said last year’s “Smoky Joe’s Café” was a huge hit, so he decided to stick to musical comedy again.

“I took over these shows a few years ago because nobody else would do them,” Harris said. “So, I went looking for scripts, found this and had my daughter [Valley Performing Arts choreographer Miranda Harris] come in and teach the dance element.”

Twenty students gathered in the tiny basement stage of PHS Monday for final round of dress rehearsals to sing the songs many know by heart.

Auditions for “Blame” began in late September, drawing choir, band and theater members from the high school’s student body.

The original production of “Blame it on the Movies” had successful runs in Los Angeles and New York during the 1990s. After Harris made some alterations to the musical numbers — “Some of them were too obscure,” he said — and a small group of dedicated after-schoolers were recruited, Harris began molding his musical.

The show begins in a theater setting and the cast plays an audience that, from the beginning, takes things into their own hands. First up, the great production numbers from the 1940s musicals like “The Fleet’s In” and “Singing’ in the Rain.” It works its way through the next four decades with “Jaws,” “Flashdance,” “Town Without Pity,” “Yellow Submarine” and “The Pink Panther.”

Finally, the audience lands firmly in the heart of Disney magic with a montage of memorable songs from “Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Hercules.”

A vibrant and young cast has the musical experience and credits from past PHS shows (“Smoky Joe’s Café,” “The Pirates of Penzance” and “Footloose”) to pull off “Blame.” Some have won state and national awards for their singing.

Kailyn Beetch, a senior at PHS, has been a fan of theater since she was in a first-grade production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Beetch plays a feisty usher who breaks into song. It’s the only part with an actual title as the rest of the cast is referred to as simply “cast.”

“I narrate people into the next sections of songs,” Beetch said. “There’s no dialogue between the characters, so it kind of jumps around. It definitely keeps you on your toes.”

Beetch has been in previous PHS theater productions (“Footloose”) choir gigs and plans to continue performing in the arts, for entertainment, when she attends Eastern Washington University next year.

“Theater is always there if I need it, always fun,” she said.

PHS senior Remmington Campbell agrees.

“I love acting,” Campbell said. “I’ve done a lot of dancing and choir when I was younger and this is tons of fun.”

Campbell performs in many of the musical scores in “Blame,” most notably as Gaston in “Beauty and the Beast” and as the chef from “Little Mermaid” singing “Les Poisons.”

Harris leads his young American Idols through a series of vocal warm-ups Monday afternoon, jokingly shushing a small group of high-pitched screamers at the back of the stage.

“No screeching,” Harris said. “When ‘Jaws’ comes, you can screech then.”

For each section in “Blame,” students wear minimal costumes on an almost prop-free stage, not because of insufficient funding for Palmer’s small high school, but to present the vocal range of the students as the centerpiece of the performance.

The minimal dance choreography was implemented by Miranda Harris, who sandwiched this project between wrapping up “Nunsense” for the Valley Performing Arts Center and leaving for Brazil to do a show with a professional dance company.

Harris said the cast was willing to watch movies from before their era, putting the imagery with the songs they learned for the production.

“A lot of the older stuff we had to discuss,” Harris said. “Like women in the 1940s, working in the factories while the men were off to war, so they really got an education in this process.”

Harris said “Blame It On The Movies” is for the family, as each generation is likely to know a number contemporary to him or her.

“People are invited to come for a hoot and a holler and expect a good time to be had,” he said.

Show times for “Blame It On The Movies” are 7 p.m. this Thursday through Saturday, and again Nov. 29 through Dec. 1 in the Palmer High School Theater.

Tickets are $7 and available at the door or for reservations call 746-8403.

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.