Photo Source // Allison Upchurch
By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Reporter
Last weekend, the Regis Ramblers, the musical theatre club here at Regis, put on their spring production of the musical “The Wedding Singer.” The show is based off the 1998 movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, but now the Regis Ramblers have taken hold of the story and put it to life onstage.
This production marks a new beginning for the Regis Ramblers as it was explained by the director of the show, Tanner Kelly, that the club has now been incorporated into an official class in the Regis Music Department. With this, current and future students may receive academic credit up to 3 credit hours for performing or helping out with the stage crew throughout the spring semester.
Thestory of “The Wedding Singer” takes place in 1985 and is about the lead singer of a wedding band, Robbie (played by Alex Gallegos), who unexpectedly gets left at the altar by his fiancé Linda (played by Megan Bandeira). As Robbie wants to wallow in his broken heart, his new friend Julia (played by Noelle Norris) pulls him out of his misery and the two start to form feelings for each other, but face the reality that Julia is already engaged to her boyfriend Glen (played by Luis Valle).
It’s a typical love story that is set to the loud and proud sound and style of the 80’s as characters make references to figures and trends of the decade. These callbacks bring the story to life and offer a comedic throwback to audiences members who lived during that time. The music was live performed by a four person band that Kelly has worked with multiple times in the past. They brought the sound of the 80’s into the show in songs like “Not That Kind of Thing” and “Saturday Night in the City” and then slowed it down for the tenderer, reflective moments like in “If I Told You.”
While not everyone in Regis Ramblers is a performer or music major, everyone does have a passion for creating a show and having fun doing it, and that came through clearly as performance danced through the aisles and joked around with each other onstage. It was just as entertaining to watch the background characters as it was to watch the main characters.
With a new beginning for the Regis Ramblers and the Music Department, students will continue on just like they did with “The Wedding Singer” to bring live musical theatre to the Regis community, all culminating in expression the Jesuit value of “unity of mind and heart.”
To receive more information about the Regis Ramblers, email the group at regisramblers@gmail.com and find them on the Regis University website.