REVIEW 'Idora, Forever!' involves audience

Idora Park denizens are transported back in time.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Idora, Forever!" is an enjoyable, humorous, hand-clapping, foot-tapping musical trip down memory lane -- back to simpler times.
Even for the audience members who have no memories of Idora Park, the Youngstown Playhouse's "Idora, Forever!" is a fun, entertaining and informative couple of hours.
It gave the non-Idora folks a sense of what the park was like when it attracted huge crowds and some of the biggest names in show business -- and what it meant to Youngstown and the area.
But, for Idora denizens, it seemed to really transport them back.
"Yeah," someone in the audience said, when the famous Idora French fries were mentioned onstage.
"Idora, Forever!" is a multimedia production -- there are screens on either side of the stage showing nostalgic and historical pictures -- and the players interacted with the audience on several occasions, drawing them into the play and the fun.
Inspired relationships
With the hundreds of thousands of young people who visited Idora Park over the years, it was inevitable that some would meet, court and marry.
One such couple in the audience Friday was Atty. James G. and Louise (Shutrump) Nuth of Youngstown.
Nuth had admired Louise as she walked by the A & amp;P store where he worked. One day at the park, one of his friends told him the girl he liked was there.
He asked her to dance, and that was that. The year was 1935. They have been married for 68 years and had nine children.
She refused that night to ride home in the car with him, his mother and two friends, but did allow him to walk her home.
A few months later, they eloped to West Virginia, lied about her age -- he was 20, and she was 17 -- and got married.
Last night, the Nuths -- he is 88, and she is 85 -- were invited onstage to sit in a Ferris wheel seat and be serenaded by the six Barkers, the players who, along with four young Paperboys and Gramma, move the play along with historical information, song and humorous anecdotes.
Historical plot
"Idora, Forever!" begins with Gramma, played by Barb Evans, telling her grandchildren, Sarah Petrony and C. J. Wilcox, about her Idora memories.
The Barkers -- Matt White, David El'Hatton, Matt Coonrod, Gary Deckant, Jonathan Emerson and Chuck Wilcox; the Paperboys -- Rosemary Driscoll, Frank George, Kyle Fortado and T. J. Scott; and what seemed like a cast of thousands, from young children to a senior or two, tell the Idora story with historical references, interlaced with humor, song and dance.
The all-cast numbers, smartly kept simple enough for the audience to understand what was going on and to stay within the dancing and singing abilities of the players, were well done.
The director is J.E. Ballantyne Jr. Michael J. Moritz Jr. is music director.
There might come a time when "Idora, Forever!" won't work. There won't be enough people left alive who remember and put the buzz in the audience.
But, for now, it's kind of neat, even for a person like me whose only visits to Idora were to the ballroom in 1971 as a member of the 30-and-over dance club.
alcorn@vindy.com