Omigod,
this play (starring
'80s tunes) is so, like, cool beans!
By Jay Cridlin
TBT (St. Petersburg Times)
November 2007
We Got
The Beat. Hungry Like The Wolf. I Think We're Alone Now.
"Eighties music, unfortunately, is ingrained in me at this point, and I
can't get rid of it," says Jonathan Van Dyke.
So he wrote a musical about it: Totally
Electric, a singalong
ode to '80s-era high school show choir taking place Friday and Saturday
in Riverview.
Van Dyke, 35, who grew up in Clearwater and splits time between New
York and Tarpon Springs, says he based the show on his own stint in a
show choir. "We were all so different in the school population, but we
were all good friends," he said. "It was almost like The
Breakfast
Club."
Van Dyke, an East Lake High School grad--the high school in Totally
Electric is named West
Lake--moved to New York in 1990 to do
theater work. About four years ago, he started splitting his time
between gigs there and in the Tampa Bay area, and last year he debuted Totally
Electric. The show has been
staged at a couple of small thaeters in
New York and Kissimmee and soon it will head to New Orleans. In June it
had a short run at the Ritz Theater in Ybor City.
Van Dyke's influences? For Totally
Electric, he just opened
his yearbook and rented '80s movies. The era-specific costumes came
from eBay, Goodwill and the Salvation Army. The songs came from
Tiffany, the Go-Gos and Duran Duran--and Van dyke said obtaining the
rights to the music wasn't easy.
"It was a lot of homeweork, but (the publishers) have all been very
supportive, and they want me to keep them abreast of how things are
going and what the next step is."
So if Totally Electric
ever makes it to Broadway, maybe you'll
see Simon Le Bon there on opening night.
Van Dyke, though, would be happy to settle for seeing some of his old
East Lake classmates.
"It is kind of loosely based on my high school experiences, so I'd love
it if some of my old high school chums would come check it out," he
said. "They might see themselves. In a good way."
