For a second consecutive season, at the Community House on September 1, thanks to the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, Ken Woodhouse and his Kid Kamp and Arcade Theater took a major step toward ensuring the future of community theater here by presenting another entertaining “Pay as You Exit” show by the children of Cherry Grove.
The show began with Ken typing furiously on a Smith Corona manual typewriter (“The Typewriter Song”), as children in animal masks and exotic headgear took the stage. Then kids and audience alike joined voices in singing “Who’s the leader of the beach that’s made for you and me? C-H-E-R-R-Y G-R-O-V-E!” to the tune of the “Mickey Mouse Club March.”
We cheered as our community’s kids wowed us by playfully singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Mairzy Doats,” and “On Top of Spaghetti.” Ken sang “Swing on a Star” and his charges responded with the “SpongeBob Square Pants” theme song. “Shut Uppa You Face,” for kids and audience, led by Ken, came next.
There were two impressive star turns, with sister and brother Sami and Reggie Elton doing a competitive “Anything You Can Do,” from Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” and then Dylan Jackaway singing the “Periodic Table Song,” a cappella, at breakneck speed, to the tune of the Infernal Gallop, the cancan from Jacques Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” to a standing ovation.
The cast’s tongue-twisting recitation, “Hi, my name is Joe/and I work in a button factory;” song and dance, “The Hokey Pokey;” and Ken and the kids’ “Love Potion Number Nine” led up to the final fully-staged production number, “Hard-Knock Life,” from “Annie.”
Needless to say, everyone left the theater smiling and gladly donated as they exited.