Apparently the honeymoon isn't over for Desert Star Theater's current production of "My Big Fat Utah Wedding: The Cultural Hall Is Reserved."
Due to the show's popularity, Desert Star's adjoining restaurant is undergoing a "big fat" makeover, turning the main dining room into a second theater, which will allow owner Mike Todd to move the "Wedding" spoof into the newly renovated area for an open-ended run.
Patrons attending the shows in the past few days have probably noticed construction going on in the restaurant section of the historic, downtown Murray building. (The steak house occupies Murray's old J.C. Penney store.) The official word on what is transpiring was described Monday in a telephone call from Todd to the Deseret Morning News.
"My Big Fat Utah Wedding" — now completely sold out — is scheduled to close Aug. 21 in the cabaret theater across the hallway. Another locally written spoof, "The Soap-ranos," is gearing up to open Aug. 26.
But word-of-mouth about "Wedding," a hilarious parody of traditional Wasatch Front weddings, still has people scrambling to find tickets.
So Todd is moving the restaurant portion of the business to a room at the rear of the site — into a space formerly used for banquets. The larger dining area, directly off the complex's main foyer, is being remodeled into a dinner-theater, which will differ somewhat from Desert Star's "cabaret" operation.
"My Big Fat Utah Wedding" will be moved into the new space and modified slightly to turn it into a sit-down wedding dinner . . . with chicken cordon bleu, wedding cake . . . and that all-time Utah favorite, green Jell-O.
It sounds a little like "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding," an off-Broadway spoof of nuptials involving feuding Italian families, but Todd said the Desert Star production — written by artistic director Scott Holman — won't be nearly as inter-active. Booing and hissing, however, will still be encouraged.
Box office manager Laura Lewis said the new space is tentatively scheduled to open the end of August or the first of September. The seating configuration is also in the planning stages, but it will not be the same as Desert Star's cabaret venue, where small tables are arranged on several tiers.
Details on show times and tickets also have yet to be worked out, but Todd indicated there will probably be fewer performances — certainly less than the current 10 per week — since it will be settling in for an open-ended run. Ticket-holders will have two options — with or without the dinner. Cost for the dinner-and-show combined will be about the same as productions and meals in the cabaret theater, where patrons select from an extensive menu that ranges from pizza and hot dogs to ice cream sundaes. Todd said the prices will be considerably lower than most "dinner-theater" operations around the country, which sometimes run as high as $40 or $50.
Desert Star subscription patrons with tickets to "The Soap-ranos" and other shows on the theater's calendar should see no change in their previously committed dates. But the addition of the new space will allow "My Big Fat Utah Wedding" to continue as long as the interest holds up.
Who knows? It could turn into Salt Lake City's version of San Francisco's long-running "Beach Blanket Babylon." The latter has played more than 10,000 performances since it opened 30 years ago.
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com