Debra Boucaud-Mason

MCSP has been producing hits over the years including last year’s popular Hairspray. Crazy for You features the timeless music of George Gershwin, and promises to be the hit of the local theatre stage with its sophisticated bacchanal and laughs by the minute.

The musical recounts the life a of young New York banker, Bobby Childs, who yearns to have a career on stage but has to escape the city to start a new life in rural Nevada where he hopes to revive a dying town by putting on a big theatrical production. Of course, he also has to win the heart of the ‘tough-as nails’ town beauty, Polly Baker.

Boucaud-Mason started her acting career in 1984 with Helen Camps at the Trinidad Tent Theatre. Her appearance in the MCSP 2012 Production Hairspray was her first appearance in a musical, and her first time working for that company. She played villainess “Velma von Tussle” and became the character that the audience grew to hate – and to love. She said then, “The experience was exciting, enjoyable but nerve-wracking at the same time. She had to dance and sing”.

That positive experience convinced her to renew her acquaintance with musical theatre with this year’s production of Crazy for You where she was offered the role of Director after long-time MCSP Director Louis Mc Williams was involved in an accident. Mc Willams, her lecturer at UWI and who directed Boucaud-Mason in The Dragon Can Dance, has returned to assist her in the final preparation for the production.

Crazy for You features a talented cast and crew including Cacique award-winning actress Kendra Sylvester-Flores as cowgirl Polly Baker and newcomer Isaiah Alexander as Bobby Childs, the New York wannabe actor. UWI theatre students Kimberly Jones and Anton Brewster (both seen in MCSP’s 2012 production Hairspray) act as Irene, a New York socialite and Lank, a cowboy entrepreneur, respectively. Michailean Taylor, a UWI Theatre Arts graduate, acts as the playboy impressario Zangler.

The live band is directed by Jessel Murray, the Head of the Department of Creative Arts at The UWI.

Crazy for You is now playing at Queen’s Hall and ends on Sunday.