THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL; Payson Community Theatre Company; Payson High School, 1050 S. Main; through Sept. 3; Cost: $7, available at NAPA Auto Parts, Payson, or Boothe Brothers in Spanish Fork or at the door.
PAYSON — The passion, the music and the performance make "The Scarlet Pimpernel" one of the outstanding community theater musicals offered in Utah County this year.
The play, performed at Payson High School and directed by Michael Carrasco, takes the audience back to the French Revolution and the era of powdered wigs, lace and velvet. Carrasco came to Payson two years ago to direct plays.
According to the story line, Percy Blakeney, played by Perry Ewell, takes a French wife, Marguerite St. Just, played by Marilyn Bingham. Percy learns his wife betrayed an aristocratic friend who is subsequently guillotined along with his family. Her complicity is actually a misunderstanding, which Percy learns later in the performance.
So Percy, an Englishman, assembles a band of rogue fighters, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who cross the English channel to assist the innocent French caught in the Reign of Terror in Paris in a series of covert missions. Messages are transmitted by letter sealed with the wax impression of a scarlet pimpernel.
However, Percy keeps his covert operations secret from his wife because he cannot trust her. Because of the distance his actions create, she, in turn, cannot trust him, yet the two still love each other.
Through disguises and cunning the Scarlet Pimpernel eludes capture until the very end when he turns the tables on his nemesis Chauvelin.
Both Bingham and Ewell are outstanding in their roles, but 18-year-old Brent Wesson, who plays the evil Chauvelin, would take command of the stage were it not for Bingham's and Ewell's strong performances.
Wesson's delivery of "Falcon in the Dive" is especially powerful.
The musical is as entertaining as it is passionate. Musical numbers by Percy's league are both humorous and entertaining.
The costuming captures the elegance and excess of the period, while the sets establish the mood yet are unobtrusive.
If you see only one community theater musical this year, make it "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com