A Big Splash 

I really enjoy musicals so I was really excited to check out Proctor’s latest performance.  The play Finding Nemo Jr, directed by Kelly McGee and Drew Kutcher, was performed in the Buggiani auditorium the weekend of April 9. Finding Nemo is a story about a fish who was taken from his dad by a diver and the father working to get him back.  This is a great first play to see if you are new to the theater business. The set was well built and enticing and the story is easy to follow.

 It’s not easy to make sets and props for an ocean theme, but the costumers and prop makers did a wonderful job. 

The jellyfish scene is what stood out to me the most.  The jellyfish were clear umbrellas with colorful ribbons and black light; the lighting made the jellyfish look real. The people holding the jellyfish umbrellas were practically invisible. They were stacked together in a  phalanx and creatively maneuvered to create special effects. 

 The barracuda prop was also very well designed. It can be described as a massive paper mache’ chinese dragon style barracuda. It entered from ground level stage left and distracted the audience from the characters leaving the scene that were eaten by the fish. Even the small things like the fish eggs and the clownfish fins were ultra realistic and very well crafted. 

The casting of the roles was perfect. Everyone fit their role and was on point. 8th grader Ari Himes was cast as Nemo. She had the perfect voice for Nemo’s singing parts and a great fit for Junior Issac Hanlin who was cast as Marlin,her father, and was just as fantastic. The way that Issac’s deep, and Ari’s high octaves flowed with each other was beautiful. Freshman Nahdia Lee was cast as Dory.  She did a fabulous job portraying a character that is funny and sweet, but also forgetful. Overall each and every actor fit their role perfectly and I wouldn’t change a thing.

The actors were very into this production. Even the actors with smaller roles or even no mics projected their voices beautifully to where we could hear them well. There were so many contributions to the vocals in the ensemble as the star roles sang their parts. The scenes were portrayed just as they were in the movie. The shark scene with Bruce was phenomenal. 8th grader Sawyer Graham blew me away with his performance as Bruce. His singing along with his dance and “blood addiction” really made this scene pop. The irony of this scene is that the sharks were singing a song about fish being friends not food. Following that song, Bruce goes crazy due to the smell of blood.

Overall every aspect of this play was firing on all cylinders. Everybody worked together to not miss a cue, and excel in every scene. Every actor sang fantastically and never broke character. Some cool extra details that were added from the movie were when the beach goer and seagulls fought over food. The little seagulls did an awesome job being pests towards the man (Andrew Lee) yelling “Mine!” over and over. Given their young age, they stayed in character very well. Andrew did a very great job projecting his voice with no mic and really digging deep for anger as his pizza and melon were comically stolen by the seagulls. That really sparked laughter in the audience. 

Everybody knew where and when to be exactly when they had to. The combination of fantastic crafted props, committed actors, and a skilled behind the scenes crew, makes for one of the best plays I've ever seen locally.