Kirk Players close season with 'Leading Ladies'

For Dominick Basso and Fred Vipond, their roles are posing quite some challenges.

For Basso, he's had to get used to uncomfortable costumes.

"The heels are the pain in the butt," Basso said, speaking of his 3-inch heels. "I don't know how you women do it."

Vipond said his biggest challenge was learning to tango backward.

"Back in college I took ballroom dancing. In the show, we have this big tango number, but I have to follow instead of lead," he said. "My muscles are not used to going in that direction."

The Mundelein actors laugh as they talk about becoming females for their latest role in the Kirk Players "Leading Ladies." But they hope laughs will be the same reaction they receive from the audience.

"How can anyone believe these two are women?" Basso said.

"But they do and that makes it fun."

The Kirk Players will end its 42nd season with "Leading Ladies," a comedy by Ken Ludwig, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Performances will take place at the Mundelein High School auditorium, 1350 Hawley St.

The show is directed by John W. Lynn, founder of the Kirk Players. Lynn, who has directed more than 200 shows since he began working in theater 40 years ago, speaks fondly of Ludwig's script. He adds if the show could have a subtitle, it would be "Some Like It Hot Meets Tootsie."

"[Ludwig] has built [it] in to a quick-paced comedy the great audience pleasers, fast costume changes, farcical physicality, burlesque-like humor," Lynn said. "Of course it's not easy to pull it off. It certainly helps to have a gifted cast, like the one I'm working with now."

Calling his female role a cross between Mrs. Doubtfire and Julia Child, Basso considers himself lucky to earn the role after quite a few men auditioned.

"Some could have been too cute as women," Basso said with a laugh.

Vipond said playing a female can be a blast. He believes you can't get any farther away in characterization than to play the opposite sex.

"It's always fun to run around in a dress," he said with a laugh, adding, "for a short period of time."

Vipond and Basso play Jack and Leo, two struggling Shakespearean actors who are performing "Scenes from Shakespeare" on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish county of Pennsylvania.

Then the two hear an old lady, Florence, played by Bobbi LaBelle, is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long-lost English nephews. Leo convinces Jack that they will pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. The two meet Audrey who helps them learn more about the long-lost relatives and also becomes the object of Jack's affection. But trouble ensues when the two arrive in York and learn the relatives are not nephews. They are nieces.

Romantic entanglements abound through the show. Leo falls in love with the old lady's vivacious niece, Meg, played by Shara Wright, who's engaged to the local minister, Duncan, played by Mike Lieberman.

"The only person not romantically involved with someone of the same or opposite sex is Florence," Basso said.

But while Jack is attracted to Audrey, Basso also notes with a smile Jack's female persona, Stephanie also seems to attract many more men than his character does. Vipond said when some of the men find out Maxine and Stephanie can inherit a large sum of Florence's estate, the men become attracted, particularly to her. Should it bother him or Basso to be the object of these men's affections? Vipond says no.

"Both men are happily married in real life," he said with a laugh.

Rounding out the cast are Randy Rice as Doc and Erick Campos as Butch.