From December 12th to the 15th University High School performed their annual winter musical, White Christmas. White Christmas was a heartfelt, fun-filled tale set during the holiday season.
The story follows two veterans named Bob Wallace (Robert Stage-Cooper) and Phil Davis (Edson Guerra-Guerro) who became entertainers after the war and are taking a trip down to Miami for the holidays. There they meet two sisters named Judy Haynes and Betty Haynes who have their own acts. Phil drags Bob to go with them to Vermont for Christmas instead. They find out the owner of the inn they are staying at is owned by their old general from the war and he’s struggling with the bills. In order to save the inn they decide to collaborate with the sisters and put on a show at the inn. Throughout all of the show run throughs and magic of the holidays, Phil and Bob both end up falling in love with the sisters.
The characters and their love stories in this musical were both extremely well executed by the young cast. There was a split cast for the sisters, Lauren King and Gabriella Maestre played Judy and Daniela Penaloza and Emily Vose took on the role of Betty but Edson Guerra-Guerro who played Phil and Robert Stage-cooper who played Bob had excellent chemistry with both casts which made the love story believable. “The show was very well casted. Looking back I think my voice blended with Betty played by Daniela Penaloza quite nicely,” said senior Robert Stage-Cooper.
After the one-act in November, the cast had a mere month to learn not only their roles, but the numerous dance routines. Large numbers like “Happy Holidays” and “I Love a Piano” had nearly the entire cast on stage with extremely detailed choreography to go along with the songs. “I feel like the hardest part of the process was focusing on blocking in the immense dance numbers because we had such a short amount of time. I already have a hard time with dancing so learning the numbers in under a month was difficult but I got it done,” said Stage-Cooper. This made them captivating to watch but clearly difficult to execute.
The tech crew behind the scenes only had a month to work on the whole show so they were working tirelessly staying until 10 pm most nights. The sound designers had unique tasks for this specific show due to the larger pit. “The most important part for sound is making sure the pit doesn’t over power the mics. To combat this we decided to add speakers in addition to the ones we already have,” stated junior Mahlee Sutherland. This show required large sets like the inn and the train which meant putting the set designers to work. “I think the biggest problem was that we were starting to run out of time to build since we had been also working on the one act. The way we got around this was everyone that was working on it actually put all of our time and effort into getting it all put together,” said senior Kelaia Rivera-Velez.
The pit had a spot light for this show specifically. This was the first time that one of our musicals had the orchestra front and center. The live music of about 40 instruments for songs like “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “Blue Skies” elevated the whole show. “Pit has been working together really well, the people get along great which has helped us progress at a fast pace,” stated junior Zachary Lau.
Although under a taxing time constraint, the lighthearted and festive show came together by opening.
