Freaky Friday
Horizon Theatre
through April 22, 2018

This musical is a Disney creation based upon a novel in the 1970’s. While there have been several stories and plays about exchanged personalities; this one is really upbeat and unique. With music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, a huge cast of 19 players takes to the stage with a live band adjacent.

It’s really fun in a place like Horizon where you are right up close to the players as if they were in your living room, or maybe the other way around. Ellie Blake (Abby Holland) and her mom, Katherine (Jennifer Alice Acker) have the normal mother-daughter stuff to deal with. If you have raised kids, or recall those days of yore when you were the kid; then it will make sense in an insane way. For, when a magical hour glass gets destroyed Ellie and Kathy swap bodies. So now Mommy has to go to gym class, and daughter has to play the woman who is about to be wed? Not quite what either may have expected in life. But, life is what happens as we wait for our plans to work out. N’est pas?

Directed by Heidi Cline McKerley, who also did the choreography with Jeff McKerley, the extraordinarily energetic cast to the stage in 19 high intensity numbers. There’s also a reason why most professional actors hate to take the stage with an animal or a kid. In this case the youngster is played by a professional 14 year old, and two of them work as swings on different days. Frank Faucette plays Mike, the fiancé of Kathy, who not be Kathy at the time; and Randi Garza comes on as the bitchy classmate who is more than 100% into herself.

The show is set in present day Chicago, in Katherine’s home and the high school; and is a delight to see all this action done so well. The set is by Moriah and Isabel Curley-Clay and the largest cast ever to perform at the Horizon just swims into it with ease. More info available at HorizonTheatre.com