Acadia production has a side-splitting `Tenor’

If it has been a while since you’ve had a good, long, hearty laugh, go at once to Acadia Repertory Theatre’s production of Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me A Tenor.” Playing through July 24 at the Somesville theater, this farcical play offers about as much gut-tickling fun as you can get from an evening of performing arts.

Guest director J. Robert Dietz had the opening-night audience reeling in hoots and howls as the cast of eight actors sped through doors, mistook each other’s identities, and engaged in lust, rage, hysteria and love. Dietz kept the action whizzing along with scarcely a moment’s lapse between laughs, or the slightest dip into any sight gag that seemed anything other than completely and spontaneously amusing. When a play rolls along this smoothly and the pace so fits the style, then you know a lot of careful attention has been paid to staging and language, and Dietz has gone far to prove his capabilities in both areas.

Dietz also gets the most from the Acadia actors. Scooting around on Ken Stack’s sparkling art deco set of silver and baby blue, they are convincing, hilarious, and energetic. They simply have to be in order to meet the demands of Ludwig’s script about a would-be opera singer and how — made up to look like Otello — he impersonates a famous Italian tenor both onstage and off.

The wiry Ted Cancila plays the aspiring singer who becomes responsible for escorting and, eventually, for being the great Tito Merelli. Cancila has one of those malleable faces that takes you through fear and disbelief and ecstasy within seconds. His brand of goofy gracefulness — as well as his rich singing voice — suit the role swimmingly.

Keith Tralins, as the revered Tito, comes onstage with a glorious finesse. He is the picture of a passionate singer but never oversteps in a role that would be easy to blast through. Alongside Cancila, and Margaret Roach, who plays Tito’s feisty Italian wife, Tralins steals the show.

Grinding out the role of Saunders, who has orchestrated Tito’s appearance at the Cleveland Opera and must dig his way out of Tito’s disappearance, Alan Gallant shows some tense panache. As Julia, the stuffy head of the opera guild’s collation committee, Kathleen Lake looks and acts as if she walked right out of an old black-and-white film about Hollywood. Her propriety at the start is made all the funnier as a somewhat naughty side of her surfaces in the course of the play.

Both Leslie D. Smith, as Max’s fiancee, and Catherine Slusar, as the diva Diana, do terrific work. Smith plays a sweetly star-struck woman looking for a fling, and Slusar deviously shows the lengths a performer might go for a shot at the big time. They participate in the most outrageous of scenes, and pull them off with verve.

As the bellhop, Matthew Bernstein pops in and out now and then, but still manages to garner attention with his schtick.

Technical director George Hamrah deserves special accolades for this production, which has some swell technical tricks. And costume designer Karen Malm gives the actors some elegant outfits to jump in and out of.

The joy, however, is how it all comes together in such good fun. Any set that has six doors, two Otellos, some crazy mistakes and a director such as Dietz can’t help but be a smash hit.

“Lend Me a Tenor” will be performed 8:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday through July 23, with a matinee 2:15 p.m. July 24, at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Somesville. The show will run again Sept 7-11. For information, call 244-7260.