When Adam Sandler promised to "Party like it's 1985" in the fun classic "The Wedding Singer," he sure meant it. The 1998 comedy starring Sandler in the title role won over fans and almost immediately became a cult hit. Constantly featured on many (basic cable) channels, "The Wedding Singer"recently took a different turn: Broadway.Set in 1985 Ridgefield, the tale revolves around the life of popular town wedding singer Robbie Hart. Engaged to his beautiful, big-haired fiancée, Linda, and performing wedding after wedding with his two best friends beside him, Hart appears to have it all.
He befriends local wedding waitress Julia Sullivan, and the two share an impeccable sense of humor and hit it off from the start. Clever and witty, Julia is smitten with her very own fiancé, a Wall Street clown named Glen who cheats on her day and night.
When Robbie is suddenly left alone at the altar, he is ready to give up on his career as a wedding singer and live a life of loneliness in his sister's basement. Julia steps in and takes charge, helping Robbie find other town gigs (bar mitzvahs, anyone?), and as the plot unfolds, we see the two become attracted to one another. Robbie learns to love once again and helps show Julia what a lying scum her careless fiancé truly is, just in time for him to get his career back in line.
The Broadway version followed the movie perfectly except for a few small changes along the way. Nineteen-year-old University of Maryland student Jessica Abramovici noticed how "normally plays turn into movies, not the other way around," yet the play followed the movie quite perfectly.
The characters looked miraculously similar to the original characters, and names and roles were unchanged. With the addition of a few different songs and scenes, the play version of the 1998 hit was a smash, and one that had the audience humming along line after line.
Complete with hysterics from a Boy George look-alike to Hart's very own thoughts on love, "The Wedding Singer" captured the magic of a Broadway show and the entertainment of the 1980s. True fans of the movie realized a few changes, but otherwise were deeply impressed by how close characters and scenarios resembled those from the movie.
"I left the theater with a great feeling. The play was definitely worth seeing,"Abramovici said.
She added, "Even if you don't like the movie, you would like this."