To close out this year’s theatrical season, Leesville’s Mainstage class left the crowd rolling on the floor laughing with their sketch comedy show, Leesville in a Nutshell.
The student-made comedy show poked fun at everything that has happened over the past year ranging from the introduction of SMART Lunch and “Snowpocalypse” to Clay Aiken’s failed political campaign.
While some of the jokes were about past plays and musicals this year, the way they were presented made the jokes funny for everyone–even those who weren’t a part of the plays.
Seeing Jake Banasiewicz and Christina Brewer reprise their roles as Death and Strife from the fall mainstage play Before Juliet and other characters from this year’s plays in comedic situations, showed just how funny these students are. The characters of Death and Strife, who were sinister characters in Before Juliet, were comical characters in this show. Their stern and serious attitude in silly situations made these normally scary characters not as scary.
My favorite sketch of the night was “A Day in the Life of AJ Muttillo”. The sketch poked fun at Leesville’s principal and included him performing his favorite task of sending out his Bimonthly Bulletin, to him becoming the “Final OG Assassin”. While Dr. Muttillo didn’t perform in this sketch, Ford Nelson did a fantastic job in his role.
Unfortunately, having the show located in the black-box instead of in the auditorium did make things cramped. Because the black box has doors at all four corners for the performers to enter, the audience never knew where the performers would be. Doing this provided an interesting perspective, but also made some scenes hard to see.
This year’s Mainstage class was a very talented one, so it is sad to see some of those great actors and actresses leave Leesville theatre. On the bright side, next year’s class should be just as talented. The Leesville community is excited to see what Mainstage will come up with for next year. Hopefully, they will decide to stick with comedy.
