The show seems to get off to a slightly slow start before really coming up aces when Adelaide (Elna Binckes) admits to her fiancé of the past fourteen years Nathan Detroit (Barry Pearl) that her mother believes they have already been married for a dozen years already have a half dozen kids – a misunderstanding induced by letters that Adelaide had been sending Mom to cover up for her embarrassingly long engagement. Nathan takes the news pretty well, except for the part of him being just an “Assistant” Manager at an A & P (Adelaide promises to promote him for Christmas!). But he still doesn’t set a wedding date – a chronic problem that has become the source of Adelaide’s chronic psychosomatic cold, as she figures out in Adelaide’s Lament.

Both Elna Binckes and Barry Pearl continue to roll out most of the show’s best comedy from then on out, enhanced by Elna’s hilarious voice and Barry’s dry sense of humor. Welk audiences might remember Elna as Nellie Forbush in last summer’s South Pacific and Barry in his Billie Award-winning performance as Ali Hakim in the 2001 production of Oklahoma! While all of us Grease fans will remember Barry as T-Bird Doody in the blockbuster 1977 movie. (Note for Grease fans: There are currently plans for a movie-of-the-week featuring the film’s original cast reuniting 25 years later!)

Battling a real cold opening week, the religious and moral Sister Sarah Brown (Ann Winkowski) had to work hard for her regular talking voice, but her beautiful singing voice was marvelously unimpaired. That results in one of the loveliest renditions of If I Were a Bell as well as duets I’ll Know and the romantic I’ve Never Been In Love Before that she sings along with the supremely smooth vocals of Jeffrey Rockwell as high-stakes gambler Sky Masterson.