'Wedding' to get big fat extension

Apparently the honeymoon isn't over for Desert Star Theater's current production of "My Big Fat Utah Wedding: The Cultural Hall Is Reserved."

Due to the show's popularity, Desert Star's adjoining restaurant is undergoing a "big fat" makeover, turning the main dining room into a second theater, which will allow owner Mike Todd to move the "Wedding" spoof into the newly renovated area for an open-ended run.

Patrons attending the shows in the past few days have probably noticed construction going on in the restaurant section of the historic, downtown Murray building. (The steak house occupies Murray's old J.C. Penney store.) The official word on what is transpiring was described Monday in a telephone call from Todd to the Deseret Morning News.

"My Big Fat Utah Wedding" — now completely sold out — is scheduled to close Aug. 21 in the cabaret theater across the hallway. Another locally written spoof, "The Soap-ranos," is gearing up to open Aug. 26.

But word-of-mouth about "Wedding," a hilarious parody of traditional Wasatch Front weddings, still has people scrambling to find tickets.

So Todd is moving the restaurant portion of the business to a room at the rear of the site — into a space formerly used for banquets. The larger dining area, directly off the complex's main foyer, is being remodeled into a dinner-theater, which will differ somewhat from Desert Star's "cabaret" operation.

"My Big Fat Utah Wedding" will be moved into the new space and modified slightly to turn it into a sit-down wedding dinner . . . with chicken cordon bleu, wedding cake . . . and that all-time Utah favorite, green Jell-O.

It sounds a little like "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding," an off-Broadway spoof of nuptials involving feuding Italian families, but Todd said the Desert Star production — written by artistic director Scott Holman — won't be nearly as inter-active. Booing and hissing, however, will still be encouraged.

Box office manager Laura Lewis said the new space is tentatively scheduled to open the end of August or the first of September. The seating configuration is also in the planning stages, but it will not be the same as Desert Star's cabaret venue, where small tables are arranged on several tiers.