Musical theater performer William Martinez escorts audiences on a journey so uniquely entertaining and inspiring, it’s no wonder SIGNing The Song has become a coast-to-coast phenomenon.

 Martinez may be best known to Southlanders for his roles in over a dozen and a half Musical Theatre Guild concert staged readings and another dozen or so for Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series, but it was in La Mirada Theatre’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame that Martinez’s unique upbringing proved particularly fortuitous, for not only did he appear as Lieutenant Frederic Charlus, Martinez served as ASL captain for a production that featured a deaf leading man and integrated American Sign Language into a tale of a societal outcast at long last finding his voice.

 Perhaps not coincidentally, there was a time in Martinez’s formative years as the hearing son of a deaf divorced mother that young William felt as isolated as Hunchback Quasimodo, fluent at an early age in ASL but severely limited in his command of spoken English, an isolation made even more profound by a nomadic life that had William studying in nearly twenty different elementary schools, never long enough in one to fully develop his English language voice let alone learn social skills or how to score a passing grade in class.

Then came the day a thirteen-year-old William found himself arriving too late in the school year for his choice of electives and, as luck would have it, into a choir class taught by an arts instructor who changed his life.

 Without Mrs. Norma Freeman, who knows what would have become of William Martinez, but once Mrs. Freeman had heard this lonely, silent boy’s miracle of a singing voice, there was no stopping William on his journey towards academic success and a career in musical theater.

SIGNing the song has Martinez reliving his life in spoken word, signs (a number of which he teaches his rapt audience), and songs, the most memorable of which may well be the one he sang and signed for his mother at his first school choir concert, a performance that made her feel, if only for the few minutes it took for him to perform “Oh What A Beautiful Morning,” like a part of her son’s hearing, singing world.

 Not only does Martinez pay tribute to a mother who raised him in his youngest years despite almost impossible odds and a teacher who must surely have changed hundreds if not thousands of lives during her lifelong career, but also to a father who made sacrifices above and beyond the call of duty during William’s middle school years and helped his namesake become the man he is today.

Oh, and in case you don’t believe in serendipity, how about the cruise ship gig that introduced Martinez to Harry Wong, author of the 3.5 million-copy-selling The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher, and his wife Rosemary, a meeting that has led Martinez to his current full-time job as teachers’ conference keynote speaker, inspiring thousands of educators to be the kind of mentor to their students that Mrs. Freeman was to him.

 Compelling and entertaining and filled with joy and tears, SIGNing The Song has Martinez also paying tribute to the ASL interpreters who make musical theater accessible to deaf audiences in a show-stopping sing-and-sign rendition of Annie Get Your Gun’s show-stopping duet “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” and later getting his audience singing (and signing) along to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.”

 Making Martinez’s four-performance stop at Burbank’s Colony Theatre (before he heads off to perform a one-hour version of his solo show at teachers’ conferences in Denver, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Minneapolis, Tempe, and beyond) even more memorable was his opening and closing act, Burbank’s John Burroughs High School Powerhouse Vocal Ensemble (the inspiration for Glee’s New Directions), twenty-four of the most talented young performers* any city could possibly wish to call its own.

A collaborative effort directed by Martinez himself, SIGNing The Song features the talents of musical director David Bawiec (who doubles as music arranger, orchestrator, and composer), choir director Brendan Jennings, choir vocal coach James Hayden, and choir choreographer Jennifer Strattan.

Additional program credits are shared by ASL master Cath Richardson-Kiwitt and ASL interpreter Tracy Brennan-Spalding.

 I’ve known William Martinez as a performer since he stepped into a lead role in MTG’s Sail Away at a moment’s notice back in 2005 and my fandom has only grown in the ensuing thirteen and a half years. The extraordinary SIGNing The Song seals the deal.

* Simone Beres, Janina Colucci, Daniel Coscia, Lauren Duncanson, Jillian Flynn, Yoni Fogelman, Martina Hemstreet, Jordyn Holt, Jake Howick, Julian Jensen, Jacob Levine, Mykala Listorti, Nastazia Lukic, Sage Mcneely, Iliana Mendias, Alex Meyers, Isa Murguia, Trenton Rogers, Nathaniel Semsen, Nathan Shearer, Craig Shippey, Coen Sosa, Eli Staub, Harshil Vijayan

Colony Theatre, 555 North Third Street, Burbank.
www.colonytheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
November 4, 2018

Tags: Colony Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review