As the red curtains parted to reveal the Craft Theater Auditorium, the cast of Community Ensemble Theater (CET) feigned sleep around the room, ready to put on their best performance yet. The air crackled with anticipation, and with the first note of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”, the show had begun.
Mr. Franklin Hart Jr, played by CHS junior Jules Gates, is the villain of the show. He works for Consolidated Industries and is a hardline boss with eyes and ears everywhere, even in the toilets. After passing one of them up for a promotion, firing a colleague and creepily spreading rumors he was dating one of them, three of his employees had enough of his antics. In a fit of anger, one of them, Violet Newstead had poisoned Mr Hart’s daily coffee. When the colleagues try to erase the evidence, Mr. Hart discovers and they are forced to kidnap him.
While putting together the show and preparing for his role, Gates had a lot of personal struggle playing the role of a pervert boss but was happy to take on the challenge.
“It was ethically complicated. I had a lot of struggles with it actually more than I thought I would considering the very, very odd conversations. I thought it would just be kind of a funny role,” Gates said. “But I had a great time with this show. Playing the role was ultimately very fun and I am really glad that I got it.”
Among his kidnappers is Judy Bernly, played by junior Toula Greenwalt, a former housewife who is forced into the workforce when her husband leaves her for his secretary and has to manage working for the first time. Helping her adjust is the longtime secretary at Consolidated Violet Newstead played by junior Amelia Sandstrom, who shows her around the office in the song “Around Here”. A widowed and single mom, Newstead finally snaps when Hart passes her up for a promotion to a man she trained and almost poisons Mr. Hart with the office rat poison.
They are helped by Mr. Hart’s personal assistant, Doralee Rhodes, played by Pioneer sophomore Maya Konars, a Texan woman who Mr. Hart makes unwanted advances on.
Before the production came to live, when Konars found out that CET was doing “9 to 5″ she jumped at the opportunity with the encouragement of some friends from CHS.
“I saw that they were doing 9 to 5 and I thought that would be really fun,” Konars said. “I was looking around all the Ann Arbor schools, and what shows they were gonna do, and that seemed really cool. Plus, I’d heard great things about CET.”
Putting together the show involved months of rehearsal from the cast and crew of CET.
“There would be singing days where we would just work with the music directors, and we would work on singing and going through all the different pieces,” said Coco Pong, a CHS Freshman in her first CET show. “We would also spend days working on blocking, which is where you figure out where to stand for each song. Then after we had figured out the blocking, you would go on to learn the dances.”
The cast and crew of CET have put on “9 to 5” for five different audiences from Thursday until Sunday. The cast and crew did encounter several problems however as they battled a wave of sickness.
“Everyone got sick, which I think is the biggest challenge, considering we all had to sing. Tech week was a struggle,” Greenwalt said. “But we made it through.”
In act two of the show, the three women struggle to keep the secret that Mr. Hart has not been to work in weeks. Since nobody wanted to see Mr. Hart except for his Administrative Assistant Ros, they are able to get away with it after sending her to an immersion trip in Colorado.
Eventually with the help of Joe, played by CHS sophomore Jameson Grice, the three leads are able to uncover evidence of Mr. Hart embezzling money from the company and prepare to make a deal with Mr Hart. When he escapes from his house and confronts the three only for Mr. Hart’s boss Tinsworthy to praise Hart’s supposed improvements to office. That’s when Violet finally lets Mr. Hart have it in front of Tinsworthy.
“The way she played that just had so much emotion. It was really, really, really hard to not show how impressive it was, as the guy she’s yelling at,” Gates said. “Every time I got chills during that scene because it was really, really emotional and beautiful to watch from an acting perspective.”
“Coming to see the show, I didn’t expect it to be funny but it definitely was and it captured the energy of Dolly Parton perfectly,” Della Bank, a sophomore in CET said. “It was such a great emphasis on life for women in the 70s and I am so glad CET decided to put this show on!”
Taking on more of a changeling production then expected with long rehearsals, learning lines, choreography and all the absences due to sickness. In the end even with all the challenges the cast and crew pulled through and worked together to put on an outstanding show.
