OTHELLO — The play opening Thursday at Othello High School promises to be the bee’s knees. Perhaps even the cat’s pajamas.

“(‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’) is the memoir of a flapper,” said Othello High School Drama Club advisor Tom Christensen. “She’s manipulative and a con artist. Her goal in life is to see how many men she can get to give her expensive things.”

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” follows two young women of the Roaring ’20s on a trip to Europe, ostensibly to improve their education, but more importantly to scope out the selection of available, wealthy men. Lorelei (Adelle Walker) seems to fit the blonde stereotype: beautiful, breezy and buttonheaded.

“You wonder if she’s smart enough to play dumb, or if she’s just really dumb,” Walker said. “I still can’t decide which one she is.”

Her brunette friend Dorothy (Ariel Kaminsky), also attractive but less impulsive, serves as the voice or reason, which with Lorelei is something of an uphill battle.

“(Dorothy) looks like she has everything under control, when really she feels like she is about to explode underneath,” Kaminsky said. “Lorelei can’t keep her head on her shoulders and Dorothy has to be the brains of the two.”

The scrapes the girls get into – and sometimes out of – involve an engagement, a missing ring, French police and a mother-of-the-groom-to-be who’s teetering on the edge of senility, Christensen said. Most of the focus, however, is on the two leads; they’re offstage only for about 10 minutes total, Kaminsky said. 

“They have, each of them, about 250 lines,” Christensen said. “Most of the other characters might get 25 or so.”

“Adelle and I work really well together,” Kaminsky said. “I make sure to keep my sternness. Dorothy is Lorelei’s best friend, so she’s learned to keep some patience with Lorelei, and around Lorelei, Dorothy learns to slow down a bit and take a deep breath and (think), ‘Everything’s fine, everything will be handled.’ I think that’s how we can keep up to speed with each other.”

The dialogue, even with its Jazz Age slang and century-old references, is much easier to master than last year’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Christensen said.

“The language isn’t such a far reach as it was last year with Shakespeare, but it’s still not delivered the way that we would speak today,” he said. “There are a few (characters) with attempts at French accents that have been fun.” 

The stage adaptation of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” tones down the raciness of the original 1925 novel, Christensen said, but it retains more of the comic sharpness and social satire than the better-known 1953 musical starring Marilyn Monroe. 

“The kids are taking the challenge of an entirely different perspective on the characters,” he said. “There’s a lot of comic freedom in the script.”

‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’

7 p.m. Nov. 12-14

McFarland Middle School

790 S. 10th Ave., Othello

    There's Jazz-Age hilarity in store when the Othello High School production of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” opens Thursday.
  

    Othello High School will stage "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" Thursday, Friday and Saturday.