Review: C’mon and Get Tappy at SecondStory Rep

Come On, Get Tappy! @ SecondStory Repertory With Outrage Onstage

Through September 15, 2024

SecondStory Repertory is well worth hiking out to Redmond to see their productions. They create pretty sophisticated productions and have a great track record especially for musicals. Their latest musical is a world premiere, co-produced by Outrage Onstage, and the title, Come On, Get Tappy! gives you a pretty good idea of what it might feel like to attend.

I anticipated some kind of take-off of the famous song sung by Judy Garland, Come On, Get Happy. And tap dancing, and probably something fairly silly, and at least a little laughing.

It’s all that and a bit more. We’re introduced to the Tappy McCrackin Variety Show, starring 10-year-old Tappy, who is an adorable creature when the camera is rolling and a royal brat when it’s not. It feels “old timey” and the music is also kind of classic ‘50s feeling much of the time.

However, Tappy is almost turning 11, and there is some kind of rule that each Tappy only stars on the show for one year. Even though that’s a well-known established fact, these little girls who star for one year have real trouble transitioning from recognizable star back to “real life” at the end of their year.

The technical aspects of the show are (as usual) really well done. It’s a tiny theater seating about 75? or so audience members. It’s very intimate, yet they are creative in managing lots of characters on stage and making their sets and effects look clean and “expensive.” 

The sparkly main TV stage and many rollable pieces of set are by veteran set designer Robin Macartney, who gets straight to a point with unfussy and pertinent set pieces. Massive amounts of funny and colorful costumes are designed by Kristin Haskins. Since there are 18 (!) characters and tons of costume changes, that is a LOT of designing!

Live music, much appreciated because it could have been a recorded track, is masterfully music directed by well-known Mark Rabe. They are able to hide away nine musicians providing excellent musicality.

This cast is full of zany, talented folks, headed by the remarkable young Allie Nolan as Tappy. She has a lot of work to do and the acting/singing chops to do it with! Olivia Lee gets her evil on as Tappy’s neglectful, emotionally stunted, Ursula-style mommy. 

Ceili Caruso (Blythe) is the nice woman who cares for Tappy, and secretly used to be a Tappy herself. She gets a love story with Kyle Sinclair (Bill) who is the show runner, and they had crushes on each other when they were kids.

Every ensemble member sang well and managed some very silly choreography when needed. They all joined into the spirit of sort of cartoon-ish play (there’s magic spells and some dastardly doings and an inevitable happy ending). 

Music and lyric writer Harry Turpin and co-book writer Stacie Hart are the creators of this work. Turpin, a long-time Seattle director, directed and choreographed the show. This being the first production, it’s a fabulous opportunity to see how it plays onstage and gauge audiences’ reactions. It’s currently a really long show (2 hours 50 minutes) with quite a lot of songs, some of which can certainly be trimmed. There are some overly bloated storylines, particularly with a funny clown duo (Merry Senn and Meagan Castillo) and a need for a streamlined ending that makes better sense. 

But there is lots of promise, heart and potential there, and it’s often better to have too much material to trim down than too little that needs adding to. It still feels like it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be – is it a ‘50s show or a modern failing one? Does a 25 year history of the tv show make sense? Do ratings play any role for this tv show? Maybe it needs to lean even farther into farce and let go of any “message” about parenthood or child psychology. Who knows yet?

Musicals are the hardest stage pieces to write in the world! This one is launched on a journey to continue to refine what’s there. My hat is always off to those creators as they continue to love and refine their work. The tickets are selling very well for the last week of performances, so you’ll have to hurry to get your tappy on!

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