Jeri Tidwell Photography
After a successful summer run of crowd-pleasers like Grease and Mamma Mia!, Toby’s Dinner Theatre goes a little darker for their Fall presentation of The Bodyguard, based on the hit film that starred Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. I have never seen the movie, but I have seen the national tour and, honestly, I think this production at Toby’s has the edge.
If you’re unfamiliar with the movie, Rachel Marron is a recording artist up for her first Oscar, staging concerts while trying to campaign for that award. Her manager finds a threatening letter in her dressing room and hires Frank Farmer as her bodyguard, without telling Rachel why. Reluctant at first, Frank comes on board to protect Rachel, her son Fletcher and her sister Nicki. After a surprise club appearance nearly ends in disaster, Frank and Rachel develop a romantic relationship that he has to break off when her stalker becomes more dangerous. Frank takes the family to his cabin in the woods, but will he be able to keep them safe even there?
I have a feeling that the movie The Bodyguard and the show are two very different animals. The show has a very thin storyline that makes one suspect they excised a lot of the movie’s plot to cram in a ton of Whitney Houston’s greatest hits, many of which were not featured in the movie. But, as was the case with Toby’s production of Mamma Mia!, the superb cast, and the intimate atmosphere of the in-the-round presentation, elevates the source material. This isn’t a case of a creative team of people doing the best with what they have to work with, it’s a team of people making something better than it has any right to be.
Jeri Tidwell Photography
Ashley Johnson-Moore is terrific as Rachel, nicely balancing the demanding diva Rachel with the Rachel who is a mom looking after her son. She wants that Oscar, but she wants to protect her family as well. In the touring production, Deborah Cox made the diva Rachel almost unlikable, but Johnson-Moore makes sure to keep the character a little more sympathetic so the audience stays with her. And when she begins to fall for Frank, the performance is totally believable. As for her voice … glorious. She can belt out those familiar tunes with ease, nailing the sometimes complicated phrasing of the songs perfectly.
Samantha McEwen Deininger is equally terrific as Nicki. From the first moment Rachel casually dismisses her while suggesting a word to fit the lyrics of the song Rachel is writing (‘The Greatest Love of All’), you know from Deininger’s performances that Nicki always feels like a second class citizen to Rachel (even though she co-wrote the song that is nominated for the Oscar). We also feel for her as she mistakenly misinterprets the bodyguard’s concern for her safety as a bit more romantic, with those hopes dashed when she realizes he’s falling for Rachel. She isn’t on stage a lot but when she is, Deininger shines and her voice is also remarkable, like raise the roof powerful. And the too-few times she and Johnson-Moore get to sing together is electric.
Jeri Tidwell Photography
Russell Sunday is fantastic as Frank Farmer, the bodyguard. Frank is a difficult role to play and in the tour, it seemed as if the actor was just phoning in the role but I cut him some slack because the character is supposed to be emotionless. He can’t get attached to the person he’s hired to protect because that could make him careless and put them all in danger. Sunday, however, gives Farmer a real personality. He has a no nonsense attitude towards his client and takes the job seriously, but it doesn’t feel like such a stretch that Rachel (and Nicki) would fall for him. Sunday gives Frank Farmer a lot charm, another example of the actor elevating the material.
Justin Calhoun is appropriately creepy as The Stalker, threatening even as he moves from his little box above the stage to the action below, often lurking around the fringes of the action. Calhoun is a Toby’s regular and he’s been terrific in roles like Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid where he gets to show off his beautiful singing voice. Here, unfortunately, The Stalker barely speaks and doesn’t sing (until the curtain call), so we are robbed of his voice this time around. Oddly enough, Russell Sunday is also known for his powerful voice in shows like Beauty and the Beast and Mamma Mia!, and like Calhoun he barely gets to sing either. Frank loses a bet with Rachel and has to do a karaoke song which Frank is supposed to sing badly, but he also finally gets to raise his own voice during the curtain call where the cast cuts loose to ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’.
The cast is rounded out by Toby’s regulars David James, DeCarlo Raspberry, David Bosley-Reynolds and Jeffrey Shankle … none of whom gets to sing. There are a lot of new faces and voices among the ensemble who act as Rachel’s back-up singers and dancers when she performs and they are all nice additions to the Toby’s family and the handle the rigors of Shalyce Hemby’s choreography very well.
Jeri Tidwell Photography
As always, directors Toby Orenstein and Mark Minnick have done a remarkable job of taking a show meant for a proscenium stage and transferred it to an in-the-round setting, with cast members often coming into the audience seating area and occasionally interacting with the audience. Some of the scene changes aren’t as invisible as they usually are because they have to take place near the end of a song with some lights up instead of quickly and in the dark, but it doesn’t detract from the show. The lighting design by David A. Hopkins isn’t too flashy, but I did like the lighted stage Rachel performs on and the twinkle lights during her Oscar performance. The costumes by Janine Sunday were nice approximations of some of the costumes worn in the touring version and, especially for Rachel, helped tell the characters’ stories. The sound design by Mark Smedley was also on point with the dialog and vocals nicely blended with the musical accompaniment by Ross Scott Rawlings and his seven-piece orchestra.
The Bodyguard is a show for an adult audience that includes swearing and some shocking violence, not to mention the use of guns but all in service to the story, so be aware when planning your outing with family members.
As always, the dinner part of Toby’s Dinner Theatre is excellent from the tasty side dishes to the proteins, topped off with a choice of cakes and the famous make your own sundae bar. And with every show comes a specialty drink, this one called The Mayan (named after the nightclub Rachel performs in against Frank’s wishes), a frozen peachy margarita in a glass rimmed with blue sugar. Delicious! And it comes in a non-alcoholic version as well.
In my opinion, Toby’s Dinner Theatre’s production of The Bodyguard is a different, and in some cases better, version of the show and is well worth the trip to Columbia, Maryland. The plot may be slim, but the music is familiar and the voices are stellar. You won’t be disappointed.
The Bodyguard runs about 2 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission.
Toby’s Dinner Theatre
Check our Ticketmaster link for ticket availability.
Share this post
