The best man is missing the boat — literally. The bride is loudly trying to keep the groom from seeing her dress. Her great-aunt is wailing, “We are all going to die.” Ah, a good, old-fashioned family wedding.
But this wedding is a theatrical experience designed for comic effect, and it’s the latest show offered aboard the Sanford-based Barbara-Lee, a handsome sternwheeler with bright red paddles that churn the water as the vessel plies the St. Johns River.
“The Barbara-Lee Comedy Wedding” is playing on select Thursdays and Sundays through September. The show is produced for the St. Johns Rivership Co. by the Phantasmagoria troupe, led by John DiDonna, but bares no resemblance to that group’s usual gothic, Victorian-steampunk vibe.
The vibe here is Brooklyn. Italian. Think loud and boisterous with an accent only Tony Danza could love. Or George’s screechy mother on “Seinfeld.”
DiDonna, who grew up in New York, knows this milieu well.
“It is 100% autobiographical,” he says with a chuckle. “Everybody’s an amalgamation of family members and friends from when I was a kid.”
So you have a bride with a mind of her own, a maid of honor who hits the bar early, a groom who’s “the prince of New York,” a defiantly divorced mother of the bride who’s determined to give her daughter the perfect day, and Aunt Assunta, clad in black, crossing herself, pushing her Avon products, and mourning her beloved husband, Freddie — may he rest in peace — who’s been dead for 32 years.
It’s all played for laughs, with the passengers serving as the guests at the wedding and the subsequent reception. The show is an interesting mix of silly scripted scenes, improvisation and interaction, with the actors mingling in character with the cruisers.
“Some of the best moments are the ones spent with guests,” says DiDonna, who runs the show’s music and keeps things on track in character as Cousin Jimmy, a “facilitator.”
A facilitator of what, who can say? Perhaps, if you need a horse head in your bed, he’s your man.
“They say he’s on the up and up,” Assunta assures me of Jimmy, her nervous eyes and pointed shrug indicating the opposite.
Assunta is played by Jac LeDoux, a 2020 Orlando Sentinel Critic’s Pick winner for comedy performance in the paper’s annual year-end theater awards. The cast is uniformly strong, which lifts the well-trod material. Kari Ringer, as the brassy mama, is another familiar name on the Sentinel’s year-end honors list, as is Sarah Lockard, playing the saucy bridesmaid, and DiDonna himself.
The cast rotates by cruise, and DiDonna points out it takes skill to maintain the characterizations for three hours and know how to discern who in the audience wants to play along and who just wants to watch.
“You’re reaching all kinds of audiences,” DiDonna says. On my Thursday afternoon cruise, there are couples, a group from a senior living facility and a pair of enthusiastic young women on a girl’s day out.
Lang Lang in Orlando, plus visiting orchestras, new FSYO director and new music
The show is designed to allow varying degrees of participation: There’s a singalong for those comfortable remaining in their seats, and there are opportunities to dance — the Macarena, Electric Slide, YMCA, the “chicken dance,” it’s a wedding, all right.
There’s also time to visit the boat’s outside decks and watch the natural Florida landscape glide by.
Seating is at tables on a main level, a mezzanine and an upstairs deck. Depending where you sit, you will see different scenes and interact with different characters. If you sit near the wedding party’s head table, you will eat a four-course meal right alongside them.
The experience boasts a surprising number of food choices — far more options than I’ve seen at any real-life wedding reception — and my teriyaki salmon was delicious. So was my cocktail from the extensive bar menu.
The first few cruises have sold well, DiDonna said, and plans already are in the works for future shows: A ghost-themed Phantasmagoria experience in the fall, and a Christmas cabaret as the holidays approach.
The wedding is a something of a full-circle moment for DiDonna, who staged a similar show for several years two decades ago on another Sanford-based riverboat. One of the Barbara-Lee’s captains is the son of the owners of that previous vessel, the Rivership Romance.
“The return of theater onboard the ship after a 12-year hiatus brings me a great deal of joy,” says Michelle Wyatt, the current owner of the Barbara-Lee. “It gives us one more channel for the community to experience the enchantment of a historic paddle-wheeler while experiencing family-friendly entertainment. ”
While there is a tradition of interactive theatrical wedding (and funeral) shows — the most famous being the more adult and extravagant “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” — DiDonna says “The Barbra-Lee Comedy Wedding” is designed to be more personal. With a smaller audience on the boat, there’s more time to interact with the bride, groom, family and hapless wedding planner.
DiDonna tells how LeDoux met a passenger who, like LeDoux’s Aunt Assunta character, was an Avon saleswoman grieving a husband. The real widow and fictional Assunta shared a bond on that voyage.
“That’s the show, right there,” DiDonna says. “We let the guests share with us, that’s the beauty of it.”
‘The Barbara-Lee Comedy Wedding’
- Length: Cruise is 3 hours
- Where: The Barbara-Lee departs from the St. Johns River Ship Co., 433 N. Palmetto Ave. in Sanford
- When: Boarding at 4:30 p.m. the second and fourth Sunday of each month, boarding at 10:30 a.m. the fourth Thursday of each month; through September
- Cost: $85, includes a four-course meal (alcohol available at extra cost)
- Info: stjohnsrivershipco.com/cruises-fares/theater-dinner
