It isn’t easy playing the role of a terrible singer. It also isn’t easy playing the role of a gifted piano player. But Gremlin Theatre has the best actors for each task in their production of the charming comedy “Souvenir, a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins” by Stephen Temperley, directed with a delicate touch by Angela Timberman. A theater could go too hard on material like this, making the characters clowns or cartoons; a theater could also miss the comedy entirely if they lean too hard in the other direction. Instead what we get, under director Timberman’s sure hand, is a story of two human beings who just want to make a little music, and to find an audience that appreciates their talents. It is extremely funny, but also sweet in a way that tugs at your emotions now and again as well. If you need a break from… well, everything these days, Gremlin Theatre has your ticket.
“I stepped from the wreckage a new woman!”
The terrible singer (a legendary one, really) is the Florence Foster Jenkins of the play’s subtitle, fearlessly portrayed by Cheryl Willis. In order to be a convincing bad singer on stage, oddly enough you need to be a good singer to begin with - you need to know the right notes and the right rhythm in order to be able to reliably stay completely off key and out of step for an entire song in the most hilarious way possible. Willis nails this in all of Jenkins’ rehearsals and performances throughout the play.
“What matters is what you hear in your head.”
Jenkins was a New York socialite in the 1930s and 1940s, known for her support of the classical music and opera scene, arranging concerts for others until friends urged her to put her own singing lessons to use and perform herself. It was immediately apparent that the woman couldn’t sing, but what she lacked in accuracy, she made up for in commitment to being an entertainer. Her audiences struggled mightily to contain their laughter and preserve Florence’s dignity. But the train wreck nature of her performances quickly became the talk of the town and everyone wanted a ticket. This lead to a record deal, and finally even a sold out concert to raise money for the troops in World War II at the famous Carnegie Hall.
“Am I crazy to keep writing songs no one wants to sing?”
Her young accompanist on the piano was Cosme McMoon, who had dreams of becoming a composer himself, portrayed by Jake Endres. The conceit of the play is it’s November 1964, 20 years to the day since Florence died, and McMoon, now a pianist at a local jazz bar, is regaling the audience with tales of his 12 years working with Jenkins, on stage and off. Though Jenkins’ singing offended his ears, Cosme was charmed by her determination and love of music, and he also needed to pay the rent. What starts as a job quickly turns into an awkward but endearing friendship between the two.
“I wondered what life had planned to temper his enthusiasm.”
Endres makes playing the piano and performing popular songs from the first half of the 20th century look effortless, which it is most definitely not. And he does this while also playing the role of Cosme, both the young man working with Florence, and the older man looking back on those years with bewildered fondness. This isn’t a romantic comedy. The two characters are decades apart in age in the past, and it’s clearly implied a number of times that Cosme is gay, though that side of his life doesn’t appear on stage in this story. The degree of difficulty, both musically and emotionally, for both performers is high but Endres and Willis pull it off in style.
“It seems to me that some notes are not quite… secure.”
Speaking of style, the production also looks fantastic. Scenic and lighting designer (and Gremlin’s Technical Director) Carl Schoenborn, creates a world on Gremlin’s thrust stage that segues easily from jazz bar of the present to rehearsal room and concert halls of the past with a shift in the colorful and evocative lighting, and Florence’s comings and goings in and out of the dark as Cosme conjures her memory then returns to his present life without her. The black and white checkered floor is complemented by the drape over the grand piano, and with little else but a chair, small table and phonograph cabinet, along with some bright red curtains draping the archway behind the stage, and stone vases on columns for flowers, this production and these two actors create entire worlds, and an unlikely partnership.
“After all, one is not a trombone.”
Florence was big on her costumes, flamboyant visual flourishes to go with each of her big musical numbers, and the production of “Souvenir” doesn’t disappoint in this department either. Rawl Blackett’s original costume design, and Sarah Bauer’s additional work on costumes as well as prop design, give Willis everything she needs for Florence’s unique style on stage and in real life. Kudos to everyone (stage manager Maren Findlay, assistant stage manager AJ Jerome, with Blackett also pitching in on wardrobe duties) pulling off all the transitions and the multiple rapid costume changes they required. C. Andrew Mayer’s sound design gives us a taste of what those audiences must have been like back then, both their applause and their laughter (with occasional heckling thrown in).
“All the mess and smells and joys of life.”
One might well wonder, how does a playwright get a full-length play out of something that seems a bit ridiculous. But “Souvenir” isn’t a one joke premise. It’s an exploration of how two people can find and support one another, creating an artistic bond, as well as a study of someone who genuinely doesn’t hear the bad notes. In her head, Florence sings like the angels she occasionally costumes herself as. And since most of her concert appearances were for charities she believed in and supported personally from her own wealth (she didn’t need the money from a music career) and she supported Cosme’s work as a composer as well (though she couldn’t sing his work any better than the classics), she’s ultimately a benign figure with a good heart.
“Why can’t we live in the music forever? Why can’t we go on and on?”
Florence and Cosme are both characters you can easily find yourself rooting for, despite the fact that Florence has no business singing in concert halls or having her voice preserved on vinyl records. Given her music career happened nearly a hundred years ago now, and over seventy years after Florence’s death Meryl Streep was playing her in a movie version of her life, and here she is still fascinating audiences today, you gotta hand it to an unusual artist that has more staying power that a lot of other people of her time, or since. As Florence herself once said, “People may say that I can’t sing, but no one can ever say that I didn’t sing.”
“Souvenir, a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins” runs at the Gremlin Theatre (550 Vandalia Street in Saint Paul, MN) through Sunday, November 30, 2025 (Wednesday through Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 3pm; no performance on Thursday, November 27th, Thanksgiving).
4 Stars - Highly Recommended
[Photo (l to r) Jake Endres (Cosme McMoon) and Cheryl Willis (Florence Foster Jenkins) in Gremlin Theatre’s production of “Souvenir” - photo by Alyssa Kristine Photography]
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