'Crazy for You' finally launches in New West

Picture this: it’s been weeks of rehearsals, the tickets are freshly printed, the live orchestra has been rehearsing non-stop, the stage has been blocked…

…and the curtains can’t come up.

That’s exactly what happened to Royal City Musical Theatre in 2020, when the height of the pandemic hit: the cast and crew of Crazy for You were forced to hit pause on their play as everything essentially shut down.

Fast forward to 2023, and most of the original group will be taking the stage on Thursday, April 27 to showcase their talents. The play includes Todd Talbot (yes, that Todd Talbot of Love It or List It Vancouver) and Rebecca Talbot (who has credits on shows like The X-FIles and Millennium) as the leads.

“We were about two weeks away from opening the show in 2020 when COVID hit,” Valerie Easton, director and choreographer of Crazy for You tells The Anchor. “We were closed down literally two weeks before we were heading into the theatre to do tech.”

Having to tell the cast and crew that the show couldn’t go on was a huge disappointment.

“I remember the day—I literally heard it on the news and got some texts—it was just like a half an hour before rehearsal. And having to walk into the room, having all those faces looking at me, and saying ‘I have some bad news: we’re shut down.’ But the rehearsal was so amazing…everyone said, ‘We want to do this rehearsal. We want to run the show, and finish.’ It was very emotional, but it left everybody really wanting to do the show, since so much work had gone into it.”

Easton notes that a good portion of the cast is back—with some folks in the initial group having to drop out—and at some points, it’s felt like they’ve had to start all over again.

“We’ve really tightened up our rehearsal schedules to get it going really quickly, but part of the cast is going to know the show really well, and the new people…are going to have a really steep learning curve to catch up.”

Regardless of how long they’ve spent rehearsing, Easton says everyone is extremely excited to be able to give their all when the curtains come up later this month. Easton is proud of everyone’s contributions to this romantic comedy that she says will have people laughing, tapping their toes to the music, and resonating with the characters.

“The story is about a fellow named Bobby Child, who desperately wants to be on the stage. He’s from a wealthy family, and his mother wants him to marry a wealthy woman that he’s not in love with,” explains Easton. “[His mother] sends him to Nevada to foreclose on a property they have, and while he’s there he decides to help them rebuild their theatre…in the course of that he falls in love.”

Easton admits she wasn’t sure the Talbots would want to come back after such a long delay, but she was delighted to hear they would.

“They said, ‘No, we want to!’ It’s kind of cool that we’ve come full circle from that rehearsal where we just left. I think it’s going to be really exciting.”

Tickets to the show start at $29 and it’ll run until May 14. You can purchase your tickets through the Massey Theatre.