On March 18th, I attended Edgewood High School’s production of Big Fish, an enthralling adventure following the relationship between a wary son and his eccentric father. Big Fish is based off of the 2003 film directed by Tim Burton and the 1998 novel written by Daniel Wallace. While you may be expecting me to badmouth Edgewood’s show due to it being another school, this will be far from that. It’s not like I’m writing about West.
Romeo Roher, Andrew Bacsik, and BriahCarli Walker stun as the leads, impressively portraying the emotional baggage as well as the coming of age in the characters through different timelines. The set was good quality and was clearly made with love. I adored the fun, fantastical choreography and costumes, especially in the witch number. I expect nothing less in such a story. Romeo Roher’s performance especially stood out to me because of his exceptional accent work, with a thick southern inflection. It was suitable for the character, theatrical and most importantly understandable.
The story takes place in Alabama, and the effort put into representing Alabama culture did not go unappreciated. You could also see Romeo’s brother, Apollo, following in his footsteps, playing a young Will Bloom. A great brother duo backstage and a great father-son duo on. BriahCarli as Sandra Bloom was purely loveable and endearing. Andrew Bacsik did a great job playing up the tension between him and Romeo. Now, I have to address the elephant in the room. I literally lost count of all the stage kisses. I wouldn’t refer to any of them as necessarily inappropriate or over the top, and I acknowledge that some were necessary for the plot. I just feel like a good amount of them could have been hugs, or hidden behind a hat, or pretty much anything else. This portion of the review is not a criticism of quality, but I really can’t think of another way to describe it other than it just kept happening. I wish I had a number but the fact that I couldn’t count it all shows the sheer amount of them.
The cast also included a dog I spent more than a minute debating whether or not he was real. As much as I love a unique casting choice, frankly that dog did not know what was going on. I can’t say I was impressed by his performance. It felt akin to when a celebrity who can’t belt Broadway is cast for a show for the status of their name. However, I have to admit that he was very cute. As much as I enjoyed this show and was immediately intrigued by the plot, I can’t say I love it for high school production. Between a main character being pregnant and numerous stage kisses, I found it mildly distasteful. Thankfully, the skill of the cast kept me entertained as I watched. The cherry on top of the show was the props, specifically the dandelions which were tossed to audience members. (I caught one!!!) Next year, Edgewood is putting on Les Miserables, Newsies, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I can’t recommend seeing them enough.
