Must see musical

This show is a must see. Rather than spending your time “lying awake night after night, fighting the urge to defrost a freezer,” as Ginger Del Marco (brilliantly portrayed by Jenny Rand) says, go to the playhouse on the Ridge. See Ruthless! The Musical.

This play is as much a mystery as it is a spoof of the musical-theater genre, examining the poignant way that ambition can tear a family apart as it follows the highly motivated Tina Denmark (Ashleyanne Krigbaum] as she embarks on a mission to get the lead role in her school play at any cost. Echoes of the classic play The Bad Seed shape a plot centered on characters written as caricatures but played nonetheless with passion and drive by the excellent ensemble cast assembled by veteran directors Judy Clemens and Joel P. Rogers.

Instead of serving up fluff, which is often a danger in musical-theater productions, the TOTR crew delivered a finely crafted, tightly directed, well-sung show that engaged the audience from start to finish. All aspects of this show were strong, from the gorgeous voices of the six cast members (several of whom played multiple parts, including one very cleverly disguised character within several characters that left some audience members especially puzzled and titillated), to the voluptuous costumes and pregnant pauses in the fantastically witty repartee.

The fact that this show runs for only two more weekends is all the more reason to run out and catch it before, like the fleeting nature of talent itself, it is gone.