‘The Big Bang’ Blasts Audiences Through the History of the World Writer // Janelle Morrison • Photography // Ed Stewart and Courtesy of ATI
Actors Theatre of Indiana (ATI) is proud to present “The Big Bang” beginning Jan. 28 and running through Feb. 20. Bringing historical hilarity and shtick to the Studio Theater, the cast and crew of “The Big Bang” are elated to bring levity back to the stage in a professional and high-quality performance, for which ATI is renowned.
The Premise
Meet the Cast
n the living room of an elegant Park Avenue apartment in New York City, Jed and Boyd, along with their pal Albert on the piano, stage a backers’ audition for an $83.5 million, 12-hour-long musical depicting the history of the world from creation to the present. Eighteen sidesplitting numbers portraying Adam and Eve, Attila the Hun, the building of the pyramids, Julius Caesar and Columbus, among others, give potential investors a taste of the impending extravaganza. In the process, the opulent Park Avenue apartment “borrowed” for the occasion is trashed as the two snatch its furnishings to create makeshift costumes while singing and clowning their way through inventive re-creations of the past. This is one history lesson you’ll never forget.
John Vessels as “Boyd Graham.” Vessels is a 30-year veteran of theater and musical theater. He has spent the last year and a half teaching in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Ball State University. “This production is a revisit for me—I did it in 2002 in a little theater in Florida,” Vessels shared. “It’s a shot-out-of-cannon [production]. It’s a really fast-paced show. I really love the idea of barreling through a scene, and I also particularly like playing at least a million characters in one show. It’s kind of the game of delineating between different human beings that is really fun for me. And so, the opportunity to play 10 or so humans is just a great challenge and a lot fun. It certainly keeps me on my toes.”
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Like many professional actors, Vessels doesn’t have a “favorite child” in the way of a scene in this production, but he did share that he has a special place in his heart for one special spud. “There’s a ballad I sang to a potato that’s pretty magical,” Vessels said. “I sing this beautiful love song to the last potato in Ireland, and it’s as stupid as it sounds and it’s as wonderful as you can imagine, and I like that one a whole lot.” Vessels also shared his thoughts on working with ATI. “It always feels like a family affair,” Vessels said. “There’s always so much joy and love attached to the process here, and so I just keep coming back.” Darrin Murrell as “Jed Feuer.” Murrell has worked as a professional actor, director, producer and educator for over 35 years with theaters all across the country, including extensive work in previous ATI productions and several productions in Indianapolis, Chicago and Portland, Oregon. “Like most artists, I was completely out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, so this is one of the first opportunities for me to get back out onto the stage,” Murrell said. “But more than that, it is a new show to me. It’s one that I had never heard of, never read about and had never seen. That’s pretty rare, having been in the business for 35 years. There’s not much in the catalogs that I haven’t been involved with one way or the other, so it’s always exciting to do something new. It’s right in my wheelhouse in terms of the kind of entertainment and performance style that I enjoy. I’m a character actor, and so my role is usually to come into one or two scenes, do a song and then head back to the dressing room. So, it’s rare for somebody of my character type to have the opportunity to share the lead of a show. That presented a challenge for me that I generally don’t get to tackle, and I’ve been excited to see if all the muscles and memory were there to climb that hill, and thankfully—it looks like it’s happened!”
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2022-01-24 11:44 AM
