By Abigail Worthing
Staff Writer
SOUTH PORTLAND – When Nick Sutton, 15, decided to make a video of himself singing show tunes in the car while his mother drove, they had small expectations of who they would reach.
“When we would talk about it, we would say to each other ‘Maybe we’ll get a thousand views,’” said Kristin Sutton. “Now here we are 24,000 views later. We really have trouble believing it.”
Little did they know that their video would reach more than a thousand views within the first two hours, and by morning the next day there were more than 9,000. That number has grown in the last week, and as of press time for the Sentry, the number of views has topped 30,000.
This mother-son duo singing in the car is nothing new. If anything, it’s a way of life. As both of are musical theater enthusiasts, there is rarely a time in their family car that a musical theater soundtrack is not playing.
“When Nick was working at Smiling Hill Farm this summer we were driving from South Portland to Westbrook every day, with a different soundtrack either way,” Kristin said. “It would be ‘Hamilton’ on the way there, and ‘Fun Home’ on the way back, or ‘Great Comet’, or ‘Mamma Mia!’”
Kristin is a long-time dance teacher in the South Portland area with her own company, Avant Dance out of Westbrook, and she owns a cleaning company, Kristin’s Kleen Sweep. Nick is a student at Baxter Academy and is active in the musical theater community in South Portland, most recently playing third keyboard for Portland Players production of “Mamma Mia!” In addition to being a singer and piano player, Nick also plays the accordion, Autoharp, melodica, ukulele and guitar.
The two have posted videos of them singing together, the first of which was them singing “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little” from “The Music Man”, complete with an appearance by one of Nick’s three beloved chickens.
Following praise from their previous videos, Nick decided to do a compilation video of him as a number of musical theater characters, performing in costume inside the car as his mother drove.
“We decided if we were going to do it, we were going to do it all the way,” Nick said.
Once the plan was hatched to create the video, the important decisions came. Namely, what songs should they use?
“I told Nick we need to make sure that they were songs people knew,” Kristen said.
“A lot of it also had to do was what costumes we had on hand,” Nick added. “That definitely helped direct the songs we chose.”
For example, Christine from “Phantom of the Opera” became Fantine from “Les Miserables” when the only available wig was a blonde one.
“You can’t do Christine as a blonde,” Kristen said. “It just doesn’t work.”
The videos are taken from the point of view of the dashboard of their family car. Nick, in the passenger seat, sings and acts out the songs while his mother focuses on the road and looks on, occasionally singing along.
“I wanted her to be more involved,” Nick said with a sigh. “She insisted on focusing on the road.”
“Well, someone has to drive the car,” Kristin said, laughing. “I never know what he’s going to do, so I have to pay attention to the road.”
Part of the comedic affect of the video is Kristin’s straight-faced stoicism as she drives, unfazed by her son dancing, in costume, in the passenger seat.
“People ask me how I was able to do this with such a straight face, but I’ve been listening to him in the car for the last 11 years,” Kristin said. “This is white noise to me.”
The process of filming all the scenes took place over the course of a few weeks. Each song was filmed multiple times to ensure the best take was used for the video. Kristin had a loop that she would take near their home in South Portland, where she lives with husband, Kevin, Nick and her younger son, Declan. Declan, who is a musician and dancer, makes an appearance during “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little,” popping up from the backseat.
For each scene, Nick’s attention to detail is noticeable, from holding his pet dove Ronette while singing “Feed the Birds” from “Mary Poppins” – for those who have seen the video, it is a prop dove thrown by Kristin, not Ronette – to a very convincing night scene by candlelight for “Papa Can You Hear Me?” from “Yentl”.
“You can’t see it, but there’s an prop owl in the back seat for atmosphere,” Nick said. “It looked so cool but it’s too dark in the car to see.”
“I drew the line at him bringing a tree stump into the car,” Kristin said with an affectionate eye roll.
There was one song in particular that Kristin and Nick agreed on going full out, no holds barred: “Sweet Transvestite” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
“If we’re going to do it, we have to go full out,” Kristin said, who was in the 2009 production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at Portland Players.
Nick performs the song in the wig and make-up style popularized by Tim Curry in the 1975 film version of the musical.
When asked how they knew the video had really taken off, both Kristin and Nick said it was when they realized that some of the 212 comments and 280 shares were coming from other countries.
“At first the comments were from friends, then friends of friends, and then strangers and I knew that it had gone farther than we had expected,” Kristin said. “At one point we got a comment from someone is Israel and I had to use Google to translate it and see what it said.”
The duo released a “blooper reel” of their video, showing the times when there were goofs during the time spent filming, which had garnered 3,000 views.
Next up, Kristin will choreograph the upcoming Portland Players production of “Guys and Dolls”, and Nick plans to audition for the South Portland High School production of “Newsies”.
Nick and Kristin also plan to do “Volume 2,” and have already started planning songs.
“This is has been a great cure for our winter blues,” Kristin said.
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