Opened at Starcastle Dinner Theatre
August, 1994

Yo, it's a Wedding party 

Those who love to cry at weddings probably won't get much satisfaction at Tony 'N' Tina's Wedding.  At least not if things are working right.  The Starcastle Dinner Theatre in Gretna is the first area theatre to present the long-running New York comedy in which the audience gets into the act.  It opens today.  When the audience members arive, they are escorted into "St. Dominic's Chapel", created in the area where the buffet tables are usually found.  After Tony and Tina tie the knot, the cast of family and friends, along with the audience, moves to the theatre room for a dinner reception.
"The actors make you feel you're at a real wedding," producer Sandy Bravender said.  But not all goes smoothly at the wedding that brings together two feuding families, and amid the dining on "a real Italian feast," dancing to Deanna Dulcet and Fusion and cutting of the cake, matters fall comically apart.
"They try to be classy," Bravender said of the families, "but they're just not classy types of people."
Bravender and her Starcastle partner Rick Sasnett are in the show, playing, appropriately, the owners of Vinnie's Coliseum catering hall.  Sasnett is also directing the unothodox production which stars Vatican Lokey and Camille Meaux as the title characters and features Bob Krieger, Amanda Hebert, Danon Dastugue, Charlie Vezien, Jacques Barbé and others as the friends and family of the couple.
Bravender and Sassnett had originally planned to have the "wedding" in an actual church and then bus the audience over to the theatre.  But the logistics just grew too cumbersome, and the New York producers advised them to stick to one location.  In New York, the audience walks from the chapel to the performance space.
"They told us that, just like at a real wedding, people might skip the ceremony and head to the reception," Bravender said.  "But the chapel we've created definitely looks like a church."

The Wedding From Hell

The Starcastle Dinner Theatre has one of Off-Broadway's most successful staples-Tony 'N' Tina's Wedding.  "Created by Artificial Intelligence," according to a pamphlet, this is not a regular play, but much like those mystery theatre productions' formats where the audience witnesses the crime and helps solve it during dinner.  Well, there is no crime at Tony 'N' Tina's Wedding, except the bad taste of the characters involved. Tony 'N' Tina's is where everything can happen and does-everything from a feud between the bride's and the groom's families, a pregnant maid of honor, drunken uncles, jealous ex-lovers, a nutty nun, a tipsy priest and almost constant brawls.  This is a melee with more energy than the crowds of Royal and Canal at high noon on Mardi Gras.
Unfortunately, energy does not replace content.  Even though the cast is just about perfect, carefully handpicked by director Rick Sassnett, there is so much going on simultaneously, with talented characters performing in every nook and cranny of the Starcastle that you might just step back and allow it all to flow over you, like at an accident scene-instead of trying to make some sense out of this calculated confusion.
Earning the biggest piece of wedding cake served after a herd of hot hors d'oeuvres and a slight Italian meal are:  Vatican Lokey, Camille Meaux, Bob Kreiger, Amanda Hebert, Jacques Barbé, Sandy Bravender, Pauline Prelutsky, Lee Prevost and Charlie Vezien.
If you are feeling lonely and haven't been to a good party or fight in a while, get yourself invited to Tony 'N' Tina's Wedding in Gretna.  Don't bother dressing!