Stage Matters

This North Coast Weekend

2012-01-26T00:29:00.000-08:00

North Coast Rep opens the Neil Simon comedy, Laughter on the 23rd Floor. In a way it’s a sequel to Simon’s autobiographical trilogy (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, Broadway Bound) since it is based on his “big break” job, writing for the early 1950s television hit, Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar. NCRT’s production opens on Thursday, January 26, as the usual benefit for cast and crew. It runs through February 18. Information and tickets: 442-6278, www.ncrt.net.

The Young Actors’ Guild juniors and seniors of Northcoast Prep present Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: A Retelling, directed by Jean Heard Bazemore. It’s a limited run—just Friday and Saturday (Jan. 27 & 28) at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. It’s at the Arkley Center in Eureka, which is also handling the tickets at the box office, by phone (442-1956) or online (arkleycenter.com)--but be advised, there’s a hefty service charge for online purchase.

This North Coast Weekend

2012-01-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

On Saturday (January 21) Redwood Curtain presents the latest in this locally favorite form--the live radio comedy-- in its fifth annual fundraiser, appropriately titled A Fifth of Zounds!

Artistic Director Clint Rebik describes it as Prairie Home Companion meets Saturday Night Live, with a Humboldt County twist. It’s presented in the Sapphire Palace at the Blue Lake Casino (along with drinks and dinner) and broadcast live on KHUM. Participants include Pamela Lyall, James Floss, Randy Wayne, Bonnie Halverson, Ron Halverson, Terry Desch, Steve Carter and Christina Jioras. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Information and tickets: www.redwoodcurtain.com.

Wendy Williams

2012-01-18T01:00:00.000-08:00

Sad news: North Coast playwright Wendy J. Williams has passed away. She came to Humboldt as a journalist but found a home in theatre, first by acting for the Pacific Arts Center Theatre, Ferndale Rep and NCRT in the 1980s and 90s, and then earning an MFA in dramatic writing at HSU. Among her works was a one-person show, Motherhood: Made in China, based on her own experiences adopting a girl in China. She performed it at the Plays in Progress theatre. Her play Range of Light, inspired by the life of Eureka’s Carole Sund and her murder at Yosemite, was produced at HSU in 2006. (This small photo is from a group shot when she participated in the HSU 10 Minute Play Festival.)

Over those years she worked with many people still active in the North Coast theatre community. I wrote a little about her in my Stage Matters column this week, and I knew of several people involved in productions mentioned in the column that she worked with. Her teachers at HSU, her editor at the TV publication she wrote for, all admired her.

I spoke with her at length only once, when I talked to her about Range of Light, with her daughter (then in grade school, now a teenager) doing her homework at the next table in the late afternoon light on the Wildberries patio. She was the only person who specifically mentioned reading the last chapters of the paperback edition of The Malling of America, in which I wrote about the experience of writing and publishing it. As a journalist and freelance writer, that interested her.

Of her portrait of motherhood in Range of Light, she told Journal reporter Cynthia E. Gilmer: "Even the little, everyday acts of kindness can lead to greatness." It’s one kind of greatness by which Wendy will be remembered.

R.I.P. 2011

2011-12-27T01:04:00.000-08:00

top, l to r: Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Falk, Vaclev Havel, Susannah York.
Harry Morgan, Elisabeth Sladen, Anna Massey, Romulus Linney, Ellen
Stewart, Lanford Wilson.

Among those the international world of theatre lost in 2011 were: Czech playwright and author Vaclev Havel (who later got a day job as the first president of the Czech Republic,) and American playwrights Lanford Wilson and Romulus Linney.

Also American playwright and dramaturg Max Wilks, British playwright N.F. Simpson. Ellen Stewart (founder of La Mama), Arthur Laurents (playwright, screenwriter, director,) Irene Gilbert (actor and teacher), and Gilbert Cates (founder of the UCLA School of Theatre, Film & Television.)

These days actors are known primarily for film and television. Particularly in the UK but also to some extent in the U.S., the participation of these actors in live theatre is important. So among those lost to UK theatre are Pete Postlethwaite, Susannah York, Anna Massey, Dulcie Gray, Roy Skelton, Donald Hewett, Dulcie Gray, Shelagh Delaney, Elisabeth Sladen. American actors Peter Falk, Paul Michael, Harry Morgan, Elizabeth Taylor, Dana Wynter, Michael Sarrazin, Cliff Roberson, Jackie Cooper. American actor and critic Leonard Harris, choreographer and actor Tony Stevens, choreographer Roland Petit. May their work be remembered, and may they rest in peace.

This North Coast Weekend--and Beyond

2011-12-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

This weekend: Northcoast Prep presents a musical adaptation of The Odyssey, Wednesday December 7 through Saturday, December 10 at 7:30 p.m. (plus a Saturday matinee at 1:30) in the Studio Theatre at HSU. Adapted and directed by Gretha Omey Stenger. Reservations at brownpapertickets.com or 445-2355.

The Dell’Arte School’s second years present their Character Projects (one act plays) December 8-11 in the Carlo.

It's the final weekend for A Playhouse Recessionary Christmas at the Arcata Playhouse, which I review in this week's NC Journal. Also the final weekend for Some Assembly Required at HSU, which I do not review in the Journal, but which is a funny show and a worthy play, a kind of askew sequel to A Christmas Story, at Ferndale Rep through Dec. 18.

The Dell'Arte Christmas show, The Nutcaper (which I do review) is at the Eureka Theater on Dec. 10, and the Van Duzer at HSU on Dec. 13 before returning for paid shows at the Carlo Dec. 15-18.

Here's a show I learned of by reading my own column: The Ladies of the Flies, a new play based on William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, is a work-in-progress created by an ensemble including Dell’Arte Company member Zuzka Sabata, Synapsis Arts Collective co-founder Leslie Howabauten and Dell’Arte grads Cara McClendon and Elana Levitan. Friday, Dec. 9, at 8 p.m. at the Synapsis Warehouse (47 Third St. in Eureka) and on Sunday, Dec 11, also at 8 p.m. at the Arcata Playhouse.

Beyond this weekend (since this is the last This North Coast Weekend of 2011):

On Thursday December 15 at 7:30 p.m., Jeff DeMark and the LaPatina band perform That Train Has Sailed, his new show that’s evolving from recent live performances, at a new performance venue: the Sewell Gallery of Fine Art at 423 F Street in Eureka. The LaPatina's are Paul DeMark, Jim Hatchimonji, Andrew Goff, Neil McLaughlin and Deric Mendes.

For one night only, North Coast Rep presents a mostly musical and entirely family-oriented evening, Christmas at NCRT, with the Redwood Dixie Gators Jazz Band and the Bare-Stage Singers. It’s Saturday December 17, at 7 p.m. 442-6278, www.ncrt.net.

Happy holidays to all and to all a good night.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-12-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

Opening Thursday at HSU was the contemporary holiday comedy, Some Assembly Required by Canadian playwright Eugene Stickland (who will not after all be on campus this weekend, as director Rae Robison had hoped.) The opening night audience rocked Gist Hall Theatre with laughter, and audience members noted resemblances to their own crazy families at the holidays.

The HSU Theatre, Film & Dance production features Evan Needham (familiar from NCRT roles), Romy Clugston (an exchange student from Australia), and HSU students Kyle Handziak, Karianne Nelson and Shea King. Stars were born! The show continues Friday and Saturday this weekend at 7:30, then one more weekend, Thurs-Sat. with a 2 p.m. matinee on December 11. Much more at HSU Stage & Screen.

Also opening Thursday at the Arcata Playhouse is A Recessionary Christmas, with Jacqueline Dandeneau as an upwardly mobile woman who suffers a foreclosure and must return to her unusual parents, played by Bob and Lynn Wells. A crazy sister (Amy Tetzlaff) and various neighbors popping in (different guests artists for each performance) add to the holiday mayhem. Live music by Tim Randles, Tim Gray and Marla Joy, written by Tyler Olsen and directed by Lydia Foreman. The Playhouse Recessionary Christmas runs Thursday through Sunday, December 1-10 at 8 p.m.. For more information call (707) 822-1575.

Continuing: A Christmas Story at Ferndale Rep, The Mousetrap at NCRT and Dell Arte's The Nutcaper at various locations.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-11-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

Dell’Arte begins the celebratory season with its annual series of (mostly) free holiday shows, beginning November 25. This year the Dell’Arte Company takes on the season’s high art standard, the Nutcracker, but with the low rent form of cartoon comedy with a recession edge in The Nutcaper: a tale (or tail, according to the pun-filled press release) of three unemployed and hungry mice who “occupy” the Rat Kingpin’s fancy mansion but wind up taking the famous Nutcracker hostage. Amidst the comic mayhem, a holiday message of generosity and kindness emerges, all to music that includes Tchaikovsky’s tunes for The Nutcracker ballet.

Joan Schirle directs a cast that includes Pratik Motwani and Meridith Anne Baldwin (who appeared in Mary Jane: The Musical.) As usual the show starts at the Carlo (November 25-27) and tours far and wide, including Klamath, Orick, Point Arena, Redway, Scotia, Bridgeville, Burnt Ranch, McKinleyville, Trinidad, Eureka, and Arcata, before returning to the Carlo December 15-18. Tour dates, times, and locations are at http://www.dellarte.com/.

Back at Ferndale Repertory Theatre by popular demand is A Christmas Story beginning Friday November 25 at 8 p.m. It’s the same story as the movie which has been seen in 24-hour marathons on various Turner cable stations since the 90s, but with Ralphie, the young hero, recalling his Depression era Indiana childhood as an adult. It’s also the same play that Ferndale presented in 2008, and not the musical version that’s been touring with Peter Billingsley, the actor who played Ralphie in the movie, as producer.

The story by radio raconteur Jean Shepherd is gentle nostalgic comedy with icons from the movie that fans worship, like the leg lamp, or the kid whose tongue is frozen to a flagpole. Philip Grecian’s stage adaptation of course preserves them all. Ginger Gene directs a cast that includes Nathan Emmons, Kristi Peifer, Brian Morrison, Aiden Vergen, Megan Walsh, Keelan Franklin, Andrew Cutler, Hailey Benbow, Brianna Schatz, Kate Haley, Charlie Beck, and Steve Vergen as young Ralphie. Costumes are by Lori Knowles, lighting by Greta Stockwell, sound by Ian Schatz, and Scenic Charge Artist is Daniel C. Niyiri. The Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s 40th Anniversary holiday production of A Christmas Story runs on weekends including Sunday matinees through Dec. 18st. Reservations: (800) 838-3006 or http://www.ferndale-rep.org/.

The Illustrated Mousetrap

2011-11-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

Anders Carlson and Shannan Dailey in The Mousetrap at NCRT

My NC Journal review, with illustrations...

Joan Hickson

Though Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, I suspect most of us now know her stories principally from the many television and movie versions. Christie herself adapted a dozen or so of her stories for the stage, sometimes ruthlessly. She staged three stories starring her famous detective, Hercule Poirot, but eliminated Poirot. In Appointment with Death she outfoxed her readers by reproducing the novel’s plot and characters but she chose a different murderer. This play premiered in 1945 with a young Joan Hickson in the cast. Christie wrote to her, hoping she would one day play her other famous detective, Miss Marple. Hickson did—in the 1970s BBC series that’s arguably the best of the available DVD sets.

Agatha Christie

Marlene D. in 1957 Witness movie

Stage mystery aficionados rank three of her plays among the best of the genre: Witness for the Prosecution (which was successfully filmed at least twice), Ten Little Indians, and by far her most celebrated play, The Mousetrap, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. The Mousetrap premiered in London in November 1952, where its record as the longest running play in history is unlikely to be broken, especially since to this day it is still running at the St. Martin’s Theatre.

Albert Finney as Poirot

"The Unicorn and the Wasp" on Doctor Who: David
Tennant, Catherine Tate and Fenella Woolgar
as Agatha Christie

With their relatively slow pace and reliance on plot mechanics, stage mysteries aren’t done much anymore. Christie’s plots in particular inspired parody, from the self-consciousness of the all-star movies in the 1970s based on Christie novels (with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov each portraying Poirot) to the hilarious burlesque of Tom Stoppard’s play, The Real Inspector Hound, and an affectionately funny episode of Doctor Who a few years ago.

The Mousetrap is handsomely mounted at NCRT, as directed by Tom Phillips, with set by Calder Johnson, costumes by Shelley Stewart and lighting by David Tyndall. The cast capably provides the required shades of sympathy and suspicion for each character. Shannan Dailey and Anders Carlson are Mollie and Giles Ralston, welcoming a group of strangers into their old Guest House in suburban London during a snowstorm. The guests are Mrs. Boyle, a demanding older woman (played by Toodie SueAnn Boll); Major Metcalf, a retired soldier (Scott Malcolm); Christopher Wren, a fey young man (Selavy Skaggs); Miss Casewell, a mannish woman (Gloria Montgomery, with the best British accent.) David R. Simms plays Mr. Paravicini, a mysterious foreigner who arrives unexpectedly. (Christie hoped audiences would think he might be Poirot.) Jasper Anderton plays Detective Sergeant Trotter, who shows up to investigate a murder.

The characters are recognizable types, and while some of the portrayals might seem over the top, the main task of keeping the mystery alive is accomplished. The first act ends with another murder. By the end, the murderer among them is revealed, but there are enough clues (and enough loose ends left dangling) to lead plausibly to several other suspects.

The Mousetrap includes the sly social commentary that enlivens some of Christie’s stories, and it preserves a sense of the dislocations in British society being felt in the years immediately following World War II. Absent the expectation that it will rival the televised stories, it may provide fun for an entertaining night out.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-11-17T01:21:00.000-08:00

Opening Thursday at North Coast Repertory in Eureka is The Mousetrap, a stage mystery by Agatha Christie. The longest running play by the best-selling author in history, it's a whodunit without Poirot or Miss Marple. Actors Benefit and champagne reception Thursday, continuing Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through December 10.For reservations, group rates, or more information, please all 442-NCRT (6278). http://www.ncrt.net/.

For one weekend only at the Arcata Playhouse, the award-winning Human Nature troupe from Petrolia presents its latest climate crisis comedy, Two Old Birds or Tripping on the Tipping Point. It runs Thursday through Saturday (Nov. 17-19) at 8 p.m. For reservations: the Playhouse at 822-1575.

North Coast Auditions

2011-11-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

Auditions for Redwood Curtain's 2012 acting company will be held Saturday November 19. Details: www.redwoodcurtain.com/auditions.

College of the Redwoods will be holding auditions for their tenth annual spring comedy, The Miser by Moliere on Dec. 1 and 2. Auditions will take place at the CR Forum, room FM103, from 7 to 10 p.m. both nights. No preparation will be required.

HSU Theatre, Film & Dance will audition for its Feb.29-March 4 production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit on Sunday December 4 (4pm-6:30) and Monday December 5 (8-10pm) in Gist Hall 2. Cast is 5 women and two men. Script available at TFD office. Contact: Jyl@reninet.com.

Looks like I missed posting auditions for Ferndale Rep's upcoming musicals and NCRT's Shakespeare production, Much Ado About Nothing earlier this month. Apologies.

Couldn't Resist

2011-11-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

A second comment has appeared at the NC Journal site to my review of The Last Five Years at Redwood Curtain by someone who signs himself as Jonathan. He refers to the program note cited by the previous commenter, "Dianne" (presumably the show's director):

“the action moves simultaneously between the present and the past” is definitely a confusing way of describing what’s going on.

i think what the show needs is a preamble describing exactly how Cathy became stuck in the temporal paradox in the first place. was it a highly localized wormhole creating a parallel universe? a massive breech in the anti-matter containment system that fractured the time-space continuum? the audience is left in the dark."

Photo: The Enterprise-D enters a temporal rift in the classic episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise."

This North Coast Weekend

2011-11-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

At the Arcata Playhouse, Bay Area actor and Celtic harpist Patrick Ball performs his musical tribute to Irish legend Turlough O’Carolan in O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music for one night only on Friday November 4 at 7 p.m.

Opening on Friday (November 4) at the College of the Redwoods Forum Theater is the Humboldt Light Opera Company KidCo production of Alice in Wonderland, Jr. Directed by Cindy Cress, with musical direction by Amy Chalfant, this family musical with familiar characters and scenes from the Lewis Carroll Alice books features children from ages 5 to 17, including Ciara Cheli-Colando, Camille Asbill, Kyra Dart, Rachel Post, Isabella Loch, Lily Buschmann, Kayla Kossow, Gabby Fell, Leah Selcer, James Zwiker, Kalex Sweetfire-Spoon, Allie Sanchez, Estelle Fuller, Anna Vodopals, Erin Casper and Kaylie Doebel. It runs Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 4-5 and 11-12 at 7 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on November 6.

At the Redbud Theatre in Willow Creek, the comedy Academia Nuts by Gregg Kreutz is performed November 4, 5, 11 and 12 at 8 p.m. The cast includes Brian Bottemiller (who also directs,) Roland Grubb, Libby Pinto and Vicki Kurtz.

Continuing at Redwood Curtain, the musical The Last Five Years. See post below.

The Last Five Years

2011-11-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Nanette Voss-Herlihy and Kyle Ryan in Redwood
Curtain's "The Last Five Years"

My review of the current Redwood Curtain show, The Last Five Years, is in the current NC Journal, and here online. If you check the online review at the Journal site, you can also see a "rebuttal" that seems to be from the show's director.

I'll skip over the dismissive tone of her comments to get to the substance. I stand by my experience of the show, both of the outstanding performances (I don't know who she's arguing with there) and the failure of the play. On that I feel even more strongly than I expressed in the review.  On the matter of intelligibility, she seems to think the program statement ("The action moves simultaneously between the present and the past”) clarifies the matter. In my review I said it was enigmatic, and that's being kind. It's meaningless nonsense. It's unintelligible just as a sentence let alone as a description that clarifies the narrative procedure.

She notes that the songs are listed with dates in the program. There is no indication however of what the dates mean (usually it would be date of composition), and they are phonied up anyway for this production. As I suggested in my review, setting this in 2011 has doubtful credibility( based on references within the songs as well as the cultural realities.) Anyway, should we have to be reading the program during the show to understand what's going on?  Let alone the theatre website.

As for the implication that this is just the misjudgment of one cranky reviewer, it isn't. There are other cranky reviewers of other productions who had the same problem. When I'm baffled by something I've experienced, I try to find out if it's something I missed that is clear to everyone else. That's not the case with this play, beginning with the New York Times review of the original production.

It is the experience of the play that strips it of emotional force, except within the context of each song. There is no way to match the perceptions of the two characters in time. Mostly they seem to be singing about a completely different person from the one we just heard sing--which may be part of the point, but as an experience it is simply incoherent. There is no reference point, no ground to stand on. At the beginning of the show it's not at all clear they are even singing about each other--there are no clear indications in the text or the staging.

Basically, the device (of one character starting from the beginning of the relationship while the other character starts from the end) may be clever but in practice, it just doesn't work as a play. Presented in a concert setting perhaps, with titles of some kind to set the time, or people rustling through their programs to find the date, it minimally might. But even then, I doubt it.

There are other problems I didn't get into. The characters are barely credible. Jamie is supposed to be a suddenly successful novelist. The playwright might have known about New York theatre from experience (he's writing about himself apparently, and his relationship at the time) but he's questionable about how things work in the literary world, or even did work in the 90s.  In this production, as wonderful as Kyle Ryan's performance is, his stage persona is a bit too likeable for the character of Jamie. It makes many of Cathy's complaints and characterizations seem delusional.

I'm glad to hear that audiences are enjoying the show. There's plenty in the songs themselves and certainly the performances to enjoy (as the review said.)

Theatre of Meaning

2011-11-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

This is a variation of an original 1936 poster

The reading of It Can't Happen Here at Dell'Arte on October 24 went very well. It was a great experience being part of the reading with such good actors. I was most impressed however by the attentiveness of the audience. There was no scenery, no costumes, no music, not even a microphone, and nothing much was happening on the stage--just fifteen people sitting at tables across the stage, reading the play and interacting as much as they could, but sometimes conducting dialogues at a distance. And people were listening to every word, for 2 and a half hours total, including one 15 minute intermission. I noted in my introduction that the original Federal Theatre showed there was a popular audience for a "theatre of meaning," and this evening indicated that is still true.

Not only the audience but the people on that stage were also attentive to my brief summary of the Federal Theatre Project. Since that evening, I've spoken with Darryl Henriques, formerly of the SF Mime Troupe, who started this national event marking the 75th anniversary of the original Federal Theatre production. He also had been struck by how few theatre people as well as others knew anything about the Federal Theatre. It was a remarkable chapter that has virtually disappeared from American theatre history.

According to Joan Schirle (who Henriques credited with making the event a success, as well as Dell'Arte by lending its institutional name and credibility to the project), there were 24 readings that week. Henriques said there were 3 in Los Angeles alone. He said the one in Seattle was elaborate, with over 300 people attending. And someone brought it in the actual poster that had been in the lobby for the 1936 production there.

Henriques feels that this isn't the end of it either. He's encouraging other readings throughout this year, and he sees growing interest in the subject of the Federal Theatre Project. I feel the same way. Its endlessly fascinating historically and has a great deal to say to us today, in ways we've just begun to explore.

It Can't Happen Here?: Reading at Dell'Arte Monday

2011-10-23T04:30:00.000-07:00

On Monday (October 24), Dell’Arte joins a national celebration of the 1930s Federal Theatre Project with a reading of the play It Can’t Happen Here written by Sinclair Lewis, 75 years after its historic opening in 18 cities simultaneously. This time there will be readings in at least 20 locales, including Blue Lake. Dell'Arte is a national sponsor along with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Darryl Henriques, formerly of the Mime Troupe and Dell'Arte's Joan Schirle are the principal organizers.

Among the 20 or so readings are by theatres including the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Ghost Road Theatre in Los Angeles, Bruka Theatre in Reno, Rogue Theatre in Tucson, the Desert Rose Playhouse in Albuquerque, the Anateaeus Company, DeafWest Theater in North Hollywood, and Locust Productions in Des Moines, Iowa. There will be readings on university campuses, and at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. It will be read in a WPA-built amphitheatre in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Cleveland it will be accompanied by a short play about the original production in that city.

The play dramatizes how fascism might arise in America. Joan Schirle directs Michael Fields, Lynne Wells, Jackie Dandeneau, Marjorie Armstrong and other readers from Dell’Arte and the community, including me. I’ll also impart a little of the history and lasting impact of the Project and this play. It all starts at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. Admission is free but reservations are recommended. Update: As Joan Schirle notes in the comments, the show is almost "sold out" so please call for any remaining reservations. (707) 668-5663. http://www.dellarte.com/.

As usual, I've done way too much research but it's been fascinating. The following posts reflect some of what I've found.

It Did Happen Here: The Federal Theatre Project

2011-10-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

Seventy-five years ago this week, there was a singular event in American history as well as American theatre: one play opened simultaneously in 18 cities, to overflow audiences. It Can’t Happen Here was a play about how a fascist dictatorship might take over the United States, written by Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This 1936 production was the most ambitious effort of the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration which sought to break the cycle of economic depression in the 1930s by employing millions of Americans in construction, conservation and other endeavors, including the arts.

2011-10-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

The two people most directly responsible for the Federal Theatre Project were Harry Hopkins, the Roosevelt advisor who ran the WPA, and Hallie Flanagan, the Federal Theatre’s first and only administrator. They were midwesterners, and had been classmates at a small liberal arts college in Iowa, Grinnell College, where the arts were considered part of the fabric of life and knowledge. After a stint at Harvard studying playwriting, Flanagan returned to teach drama at Grinnell and became one of the first women to receive a Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to observe how theatre was done in European countries, including Russia, during a most creative period.

She then taught at Vassar, where she developed experimental theatre productions. She had just returned from another tour of European theatre, in Italy and Greece, when Harry Hopkins called her to Washington. Hopkins knew theatre and knew her work, but more surprisingly, so did Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. He knew about her because he’d been a Vassar trustee.

But she was doubtful she was the right person, and a little overwhelmed. Hopkins persisted, and brought her to a gathering of people already involved in the Federal Art, Music and Writers Projects. They all had spent some time in small towns, and they talked about the music teachers who had never heard a symphonic orchestra, the drama teachers and the children who had never seen a professionally performed play. She was impressed that none of them doubted that she would find talented actors and other theatre professionals on the relief rolls, capable of creating good theatre, and taking it everywhere. Hallie Flanagan joined up.

2011-10-23T04:21:00.000-07:00

Hallie Flanagan

The Federal Theatre Project had two defining features: its primary purpose was to employ as many theatre professionals as possible, and its mission included making the fruits of their work available to as many Americans as possible.

Together this meant creating theatre across the country beyond New York, and bringing it to the people, with low ticket prices and by taking shows to new venues, including parks, hospitals and the streets for free. There were deliberate efforts to include minorities, as participants and as audiences. Emphasizing employment meant that while there was little money for materials, there were plenty of people to apply their creativity, ingenuity and enthusiasm to create productions with large casts and even larger ambitions.

Harry Hopkins

But those most responsible for the Federal Theatre Project also had large dreams for an American theatre and its role in lifting the country out of its Depression while creating the framework for the future—in the words of Hallie Flanagan, “not an art which would be an occasional unrelated accompaniment to everyday existence, but a functioning part of national life.”

2011-10-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

In a time of relentless hardship for many, with “one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” as President Roosevelt said, many of the Project's original productions were socially conscious. The Living Newspaper wedded journalism to theatre in a new way, and pioneered new multimedia techniques.

But Federal Theatre did much more. The Project produced classic plays for new audiences, such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, featuring Orson Welles in his first starring role. But it didn’t play just to the usual audience for classic revivals, Welles noted. “One had the feeling every night,” he said, “that here were people on a voyage of discovery in the theatre.”

2011-10-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

In addition to integrated productions, there were 16 African American units—or Negro units as they were called then—which offered opportunities for black technicians as well as actors in non-stereotyped roles. They did classics and modern plays, and they did new plays by new black playwrights. The Harlem unit’s Macbeth (directed by Welles) was re-imagined as the story of a Haitian dictator. The Federal Theatre took this powerful and very popular production out on tour, to Dallas, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Cleveland.

2011-10-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Wilmington, Othello in Chicago, Twelfth Night in Oakland--Federal Theatre brought “Hamlet to every hamlet,” as one actor said. But it also mounted the first American production of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. It staged Arms and the Man in San Diego, Ibsen’s Ghosts in Miami, Uncle Vanya in Los Angeles, Ah Wilderness in Des Moines, Room Service in San Francisco, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Springfield, Illinois.

The Federal Theatre brought plays in French to Los Angeles, in German to New York, in Spanish to Florida, in Italian across Massachusetts, and in Yiddish on both the East and West coasts.

There were plays about American history, several about Abraham Lincoln, including one about his early years and his relationship with Ann Rutledge, who was played by her great-grandniece, also named Ann Rutledge. It played for a year in New York and toured across the country in several productions.

There were plays about local history. Several were produced on the very spot they were about, such as one about the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Virginia that proved so popular that it is still running, every summer.

2011-10-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

Federal Theatre broke the barriers between so-called high art and low, by producing slapstick comedy and modern dance, musicals and vaudeville (more than 2,000 performances), and even circuses (one employing the young Burt Lancaster.)

There was puppet and marionette theatre, and the Project introduced the concept of adults performing children’s theatre to America. One of its most popular productions was Pinocchio, a favorite of adults as well as children. Walt Disney and his technical staff saw it eight times in Los Angeles, shortly before Disney made Pinocchio his next animated feature, and copied aspects of the set. (There’s no record however, of Disney attending another Federal Theatre play called The Ballad of Davy Crockett.)

Many productions played for months, and some 45 major productions toured through cities and small towns. 65% of all FTP productions were given free in parks, hospitals, transient shelters, schools and CCC camps.

The total cost of the Federal Theatre Project was estimated at $22 million, or as actor Burgess Meredith said, half the cost of a battleship. Playwright Arthur Miller—who worked in the playwriting unit-- estimated that four or five FTP actors who went on to lucrative careers probably paid back the cost of the entire program in income taxes over the next 15 years. “I’m not exaggerating,” he said. “Their income tax probably paid for the whole damn thing.”

2011-10-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

There were problems—bureaucracy, all kinds of conflict, censorship and internal politics. Federal Theatre in California provides examples of all the dynamics. The structure of Federal Theatre was federal: the policies and final decisions were set in Washington, but states and individual theatre projects had local power. But the Project itself was within the WPA, and the state WPA administrators had power. In southern California it was a Colonel Connolly who ran his WPA with military discipline. However at first he gave administrative responsibility to theatre people, and together with Hallie Flanagan they worked out a plan that (she wrote) was "the clearest and least expensive" and "was responsible for what was for the next two years one of the most vigorous Federal Theatres."

It happened so quickly that the first Federal Theatre show in the U.S. to be staged in a real theatre and charge admission opened in Los Angeles. Together with units in San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, California had everything: classics, modern plays, historical plays, contemporary plays (a musical satire of dictatorship), black theatre, dance drama, plays in French and Yiddish, children's theatre, revues, vaudeville, and the "Theatre of the Magic Strings" marionettes. Shows were popular and lauded in reviews, even in Variety.

kids line up to see Alice in Wonderland in San Diego

But there was also accusations of immorality and subversion, and internally of theft and misappropriation of funds. Everything was investigated, nothing was true. Rivalries and jealousies joined a growing national undercurrent of suspicion (immorality and subversion again), until Colonel Connolly took control. A play by Elmer Rice called (with uncomfortable irony) Judgment Day was cancelled, and Flanagan warned that she considered it censorship and would say so publicly. It then became uncancelled, but postponed. California productions began to turn towards musical theatre, though several superior productions were mounted.

The final glory of the California Project--and in some ways of the Federal Theatre--was at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco, where some of the best of Federal Theatre (together with Music) was displayed, to enormous audiences and acclaim: the Living Newspaper's One-Third of a Nation, the hit musical of the black theatre, Run, Little Chillun, a marionette version of Snow White, the dance theatre's American Exodus. But soon a new state WPA administrator tied everything in knots, a few incompetent people were appointed, and that was the end of California Federal Theatre.

Most of the 12,700 Federal Theatre employees at its
height worked backstage, like these seamstresses

All of this had happened in one way or another elsewhere in the country. Administrators and local politicians who saw FTP as an opportunity to provide jobs for their favorites, and were disappointed, wounded or killed their projects. A single untrue rumor--that a show in a CCC camp featured a fan dancer--resulted in the entire state of Minnesota abandoning Federal Theatre. There was no Federal Theatre unit in Washington, D.C., partly because no play was considered non-controversial enough to risk certain Congressman seeing it. And so on.

But mostly, in the end, the Federal Theatre Project was destroyed after just four years by external politics, by the same forces that would return to create the Blacklist and McCarthyism.

2011-10-23T03:48:00.000-07:00

Inside the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh,
built by the New Deal.

The WPA and New Deal programs in general left a visible legacy with buildings and bridges that still stand and serve, parks that still shimmer in the sunlight, murals that still grace the walls of post offices and court houses across America. While the legacy of the Federal Theatre Project is less obvious, it is just as real.

These 1200 stage productions in 35 states, reaching an audience of 3 million, were only part of what the Federal Theatre Project accomplished. The Project also produced 3 thousand radio programs a year, aired over commercial stations and networks.They included 15 minute programs on public safety, a series on The Seven Arts, on the development of Mayan culture, 12 one hour dramatizations of Ibsen’s plays, programs about the arts, about science, the Repertory Theatre of the Air , dramatized short stories by Scott Fitzgerald, work of Oscar Wilde and Jules Verne, and a series of Shakespeare for the air so popular that commercial networks started their own series.

Together these stage and radio productions inspired major motion pictures, and radio and television formats and shows for at least a generation. The performers, producers, directors and writers it nurtured and nourished went on to great accomplishments in all these media.

2011-10-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

"Power" in Portland, Oregon

The legacy for American theatre itself is wide-ranging. These productions led to innovations in lighting and other technical capabilities, as well as educational and outreach aspects of theatre productions. Its legacy is also found in theatre we take for granted now—Shakespeare in the Park, historical pageants, street theatre.

But the Federal Theatre did more than produce shows. It encouraged community drama and dramatic training. It established a National Service Bureau which sent synopses, scripts, bibliographies and translations to theatres around the country. For particular productions--especially Living Newspaper shows--meticulous research was done to back every assertion with fact. It conducted research into theatre and theatre history, leaving a rich legacy for scholars. It began applying theatre to "psycho-drama" experiments as therapy in hospitals. It published a theatre magazine, and ran playwriting contests in CCC camps and colleges.

So this legacy lives in aspects of theatre education, communication, play translation and even the use of theatre for psychological and physical therapy. In all these ways, the Federal Theatre pioneered aspects of how community theatres operate, how theatres conduct and use research. In the relationship of some theatre units to their communities, they provide insights and experience in locally based theatre and theatre of place.

"Altars of Steel" in Miami

Apart from keeping theatres alive and inspiring new ones through a dark time, this legacy is embedded in new generations of regional and community theatre artists and audiences. Above all, it lives in the unbroken chain of astonishment produced by the artistry, commitment, skill development and mentoring that the Federal Theatre continued and enhanced in those dark days when so much in America stopped.

The Federal Theatre provided a legacy of possibility, including evidence that a theatre of meaning is possible in America, and that it can reach through the fourth wall to engage and enrapture a popular audience. That’s one reason that the production of It Can’t Happen Here remains worthy of celebration.

2011-10-23T03:45:00.000-07:00

Today the themes of It Can’t Happen Here still resonate—with people aligned all along the political spectrum. It’s famous on the Internet for the line, “When Fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” However, that line actually doesn’t appear in it.

It resonates particularly now, with economic conditions uncomfortably reminiscent of the 1930s. Still, it's important to note the differences that bear on the play. Private armies within the U.S. are part of its story--while we got fleeting glimpses of what that might be like in New Orleans after the hurricane, in the 1930s there were fresh examples of the Pinkertons and other private forces, plus the ostensibly public police serving industrialists, used to break strikes in various parts of the country. (All this is noted by Jan-Ruth Mills in her paper, "Not a 'Simpler' Time," issued by the Rogue Theatre in Tucson, in connection with the readings Monday.)

The Federal Theatre production was controversial from the day it was announced. “Some people thought the play was designed to reelect Mr. Roosevelt,” wrote Hallie Flanagan. “Others thought it was planned in order to defeat him. Some thought it proved the Federal Theatre was communistic; others that it was New Deal; others that it was subconsciously fascist.”

The Birmingham production

It was too much for a couple of cities. New Orleans officials feared it, St. Louis officials wanted to change its intent, so both productions were withdrawn. But theatres that embraced it were allowed to make it their own. The all-black production in Seattle emphasized what fascism does to minority groups, as did the Spanish version in Tampa. Each theatre staged it differently—in Birmingham it was done as a big political rally, in the Brooklyn-Queens production, the set suggested a whole town. The Yiddish version in New York, playing to recent refugees from Germany and Austria, was set against an encroaching darkness.

On opening night, the head of the League of New York Theatres called it “a bold adventure in a field we all ought to enter if we really want to keep the theatre throughout America alive.” By night’s end, telegrams from other cities—Bridgeport and Cleveland, Miami and Indianapolis, Omaha and Denver, Tacoma and Boston—told of capacity audiences and popular acclaim.

the Seattle production

Also opening successfully that night were two productions in Los Angeles (one in Yiddish), plus productions in San Francisco, Newark, Detroit, Bridgeport and Yonkers. Federal Theatre productions opened later in nine more cities, including Philadelphia and Des Moines.

It Can’t Happen Here played long runs in New York and elsewhere, and six units took it on tour. It was so popular that in 1938 Sinclair Lewis rewrote the script for a commercial run, in which he played the hero. It was revived several more times.

In fact, the script that most of us will be reading on October 24 is this revised script--it's shortened, more focused and with fewer characters. The original script was by Lewis and screenwriter and playwright John C. Moffitt, which they finished while not speaking to each other--they were ensconced in different hotel suites, and communicated through Hallie Flanagan, who went back and forth. The play wasn't even begun when the production was announced, and they changed it so frequently that they were driving the theatre directors crazy with changes--pages would arrive changing scenes they'd just been rehearsing. Sinclair Lewis was so upset by the set in the big Manhattan theatre that Flanagan had to supervise the making of a new set the night before opening. Some of the readings are using this original script (Cleveland) or scenes from it not included in this version (Seattle.) Both contain elements of the novel, but are quite different.

Yet with the same play in at least 21 theatres in 17 states, nothing like that October 1936 opening night of the Federal Theatre production had ever happened before. And it has never happened since.

Before Brigadoon Disappears

2011-10-21T03:12:00.000-07:00

Update, weekend of Oct. 20:  The 39 Steps continues at Ferndale Rep--my NCJ review is here.  It's the final weekend for Brigadoon at HSU, as per the following post. There's a special event at Dell'Arte on Monday, which I'll post about (a lot) early Sunday.

There have been a lot of musicals in a row hereabouts (with a small one yet to come), but Brigadoon is the only one that's from the classic Golden Age of the Broadway musical, usually considered to be from the 1940s into the 1960s.  It's probably the least known of the first tier of those musicals, which definitely must include two other Lerner & Loewe shows, My Fair Lady and Camelot.

I don't want to get into full review mode here, but I did see it on opening night--and above all, I did hear it, all of it--which has sometimes been a problem in the Van Duzer Theatre. Thanks in part to presentation, and in part to the new miking and sound system, this HSU musical is fully audible as well as visible.  Based on the music alone, I would advise not missing this opportunity. The singing is terrific, and at times wonderful and moving. There are individual songs--yes, real Golden Age songs in a musical!--and some impressive choral singing. The orchestra makes a big difference, too.

There's one more weekend, October 20, 21 and 22 at 7:30 p.m. and a final matinee on Sunday. The village of Brigadoon lives but one day, then disappears for a century.  When this show disappears, it could be a long time before there's another Brigadoon on the North Coast.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-10-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

Who can resist discovering a magic world? Brigadoon is one of the classic Golden Age musicals, but isn't performed as often as the others. Now it's on the Van Duzer Theatre stage at HSU, beginning Thursday (October 13) at 7:30 p.m. for two weekends (Thurs.-Sat.), including two Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. It's the big musical produced by the HSU Department of Theatre, Film & Dance with the HSU Department of Music every two years.

The story: Leaving the cynical city (and its cynical musicals) behind, two New York men drift out of cell phone range into the Scottish highlands, where they discover an enchanted village that lives only for a day every 100 years, called Brigadoon. There they find new love and a different way to live. But can the magic last, and if it’s lost, can it be found again?

Brigadoon is the first Broadway hit by Lerner and Loewe, who later were responsible for My Fair Lady and Camelot. The HSU production updates this 1947 show slightly to make the modern point of view relevant to today's audiences, but the timeless village of Brigadoon--and the great songs and music--remains the same. Brigadoon is co-directed by Bernadette Cheyne and Richard Woods, with musical direction by Elisabeth Harrington. It has the special advantage (for me at least) of a full orchestra, playing the lush score that captures the spirit of Scotland, conducted by Paul Cummings. Jeff O’Connor is the choreographer.

Miles Raymer plays Tommy Albright, a troubled young man from 2011 Manhattan, and Brandy Rose is Fiona MacLaren, the woman who wins his heart in Brigadoon. Philip de Roulet plays Charlie, and Jessi Shieman plays Jean, the Brigadoon couple about to be married as the play begins. Camille Morgan (pictured above) plays the playful Meg, Michael Thomas is Jeff (the other New Yorker), and Fran Whittman is Lundie. There's much more information at HSU Stage & Screen and HSU Music, authored by yours truly.

Opening Friday at Ferndale Rep is the rapid-fire comedy 39 Steps. In his published conversation with Alfred Hitchcock, fellow director Francois Truffaut observed that in the spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hitchcock was willing to “sacrifice plausibility in favor of pure emotion.” “Yes, that’s right!” was Hitchcock’s entire response. On stage, there’s no theatrical form more willing to sacrifice plausibility for emotion than farce, if the result is laughter. And it’s farcical comedy that Ferndale Repertory Theatre presents with Patrick Barlow’s stage version of The 39 Steps, in which four actors play 150 characters.

Well, it’s more like three actors playing 149 characters. Well, really it’s two actors playing 147 characters. You get the idea. There are four actors playing a lot of people—especially spies and femme fatales-- in a lot of different places, including a train and an airplane. The story more or less follows the plot of the movie (and the novel) at breakneck speed, in a script praised for its hilarity. Apparently getting all the Hitchcock references is a bonus.

39 Steps is directed by D'ell Arte graduate Barney Baggett, and stars Gary Sommer (as Richard Hannay), Kyra Gardner (as Annabella Schmidt/Margaret/Pamela), Millie Casillas and Jeremy Webb (as everybody else.)

“What I like in The Thirty Nine Steps are the swift transitions,” Hitchcock told Truffaut. “You use one idea after another and eliminate anything that interferes with the swift pace.” Chances are he would have loved this play. The 39 Steps opens at Ferndale Rep on Friday, October 14 at 8 p.m., and plays weekends through Oct. 30, including Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets and information: (707) 786-5483, http://ferndale-rep.org/.

Quoth

2011-10-03T03:38:00.000-07:00

"Theatre tells us who we are, and the health of the theatre is determined by how much we want to know."

Edward Albee

This North Coast Weekend

2011-09-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

At Dell’Arte for two weekends beginning Thursday (Sept. 29), the physical comedy ensemble Under the Table presents The Hunchbacks of Notre Dame. Yes, that’s “hunchbacks” plural (three to be precise.) It’s an adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic created in Blue Lake with Dell’Arte’s Ronlin Foreman. It’s performed in the Carlo, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., through October 8.

Into the Woods continues at North Coast Rep. My review is in the Journal, along with an unattractively presented October preview.

For the record, Beti Trauth reviewed HSU's Fat Pig in the Humboldt Beacon. (A rave.)

This North Coast Weekend

2011-09-23T02:45:00.000-07:00

Into the Woods continues at North Coast Rep, while Fat Pig is in its final weekend at HSU's Gist Hall Theatre.

There were two reviews of Fat Pig this week: in the Lumberjack (a rave) and the Journal (a pan.) I saw it opening night and for me it was definitely worthwhile. I don't know any of Neil LaBute's other work, and from what I've read about it, I likely won't be seeking it out. But I read this play several times and the writing is intriguing. A very sparse and realistic-seeming style--it's no accident that it's dedicated to David Mamet, who early in his career wrote about people of about this age (in their 20s.) So the sound of it from this cast was interesting to me, and something of a revelation.  The actors made it their own, and made it contemporary in a way that I didn't imagine, so I learned something.

In terms of acting and production, I always discount for opening weekend a little, as a play is finding its feet and the actors are learning more about their characters and how to play them. But from the first beat, Colleen Lacy brought her character alive, which makes the other characters possible. Kyle Ryan has the most difficult part, I thought when reading the play, and he's a gamer. He's up to the challenge. He has to keep this guy on the edge without getting shrill.  He had already found some interesting spaces and ways to explore them.  His performance is alive, and I like being there for that, even when it isn't perfect.  They all have to find a rhythm with this unusual dialogue and play. That's intriguing. And they put the play across clearly enough to communicate it to the audience, which is their basic task.

There was a talkback opening night, and the responses were often more about the lives of the people (mostly students) who talked, than about the play. So they got themselves into the play and its issues, which confirmed my feeling that students are the main audience for this play.  That makes the Lumberjack review (a very rare event) especially appropriate.

My review of Into the Woods will appear in the Journal next week. If you like Sondheim and specifically this play, you'll probably go see it, and you should. It seems an especially good production for children and older kids. The performances, the basic clarity of the direction and the production, all praiseworthy. So if you're inclined to see it, don't wait until next week for any review.  But, you know, read it afterwards.

This (and Next) North Coast Weekend

2011-09-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

Pi Clowns--sorry I missed you guys

I'm more than a little late with this post. Two plays opened this weekend, and fortunately they are both on stage next weekend as well. The same can't be said for Jeff DeMark at Redwood Yogurt on Saturday night, or the Pi clowns at the Arcata Playhouse on Friday and Saturday, now past. My apologies. Fortunately, I included them all in my North Coast Journal column, in print and online.

Into the Woods at North Coast Rep

But: the plays, both of which I saw this past weekend. The skinny: HSU presents Fat Pig by playwright and film director Neil LaBute for two weekends in the Gist Hall Theatre on the HSU campus. Michael Thomas directs. North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka opens the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods, which continues weekends through Oct. 15. Adina Lawson directs.

Fat Pig at HSU

There's actually going to be a review of Fat Pig in the Journal this coming week, though not by me. I'll probably offer an opinion hereabouts after it's out. The following week, my review of Into the Woods is scheduled to appear in the Journal. Meanwhile, you can find out more about the NCRT show at their web site, and about Fat Pig at HSU Stage & Screen.

My review of Yankee Tavern is also in the Journal this week. (Though the title should have read "Cloak & Brew" or "Cloak 'n Brew.") At further remove I'm able to consider that play's possible metaphorical meanings, so perhaps expecting it to adhere to conventional dramatic expectations was missing the point. But I simply didn't find it compelling, nor do I really in retrospect. It might have been different if the script had actually offered a conspiracy theory, rather than just suggesting the government had staged the whole thing. But then its actual story still confuses me, and I'm generally pretty good at scoping out mysteries and complex plots. So I guess that in the end, after further review, the review stands.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-09-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

Redwood Curtain takes a break from comedy to stage a contemporary thriller with political overtones and something of an ultimate in conspiracy theory: Yankee Tavern by American playwright Steven Dietz. “With its subject matter, it was a natural fit to open it right at the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” said Redwood Curtain’s Executive Director Peggy Metzger. “But I don’t want to give away any more secrets than that.” “Every one of us who read it, just could not put it down until the end,” said Artistic Director Clint Rebik.

Jyl Hewston directs a cast that includes Nathan Emmons, Jenner Cohune, Steve Carter and Victor Howard. True to its title, the play is set in a tavern, designed for this stage by Elizabeth Uhazy. Yankee Tavern previews at the Redwood Curtain Theatre in Eureka on Thursday and Friday, September 8 and 9 at 8 p.m., with the gala opening and reception on Saturday, September 10. The play continues Thursdays-Saturdays through October 1, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday September 25.

A Still Edgy Musical Triumphs at Ferndale Rep: A Review

2011-08-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

The stage is crowded and full of shadows as the current and very impressive Ferndale Repertory Theatre production of Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street begins. A thin haze that extends over the seats greets the audience returning for the second act: it symbolizes not the romantic London fog, but the mid-19th century London smog, a killing potion of industrial pollution. It’s a dark Dickensian city of such extreme poverty and wealth that a few decades later H.G. Wells projected it into a future of humanity split into different species, the Morlocks and the Eloi, in The Time Machine. That novel, like this play, involves cannibalism.

The story of Sweeney Todd was first told in this same mid-19th century city. An anonymous serial novel and subsequent London stage melodrama depicted a murderous barber whose victims supplied the substance for a baker’s meat pies. At least six film and TV versions followed. In his 1973 play, Christopher Bond added the theme of revenge.

Both the music and the story of this 1979 musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler were immediately controversial but eventually very influential. Sweeney Todd is credited with beginning the “grusical” trend in stage musical stories, such as The Phantom of the Opera and Little Shop of Horrors. Its operatic use of song rather than spoken dialogue to tell the story was even more widely adopted. (This musical itself has since been done by opera companies.)

This story concerns Benjamin Barker (played by Craig Benson), a skilled barber whose young wife was raped by the prominent Judge Turpin (Steve Nobles.) To cover his crime, Turpin banished Barker to the penal colony of Australia on a trumped up charge. But as the play begins 15 years later, Barker returns to London with a new name: Sweeney Todd.

His goal is to find his wife. But the baker still in business downstairs from his former barber shop (Mrs. Lovett, played by Elisabeth Harrington) tells him his wife poisoned herself, so Todd’s intent turns to revenge.

He resumes business as a barber catering to gentlemen, to get Judge Turpin under his razor. He has him but loses him, and then spreads his vengeance to everyone with money and power. The bodies of his victims provide Mrs. Lovett with the means to turn her failing bakery into a great success, due to the demand for her meat pies. There is of course much mischief, misdirection and misadventure ahead.

The story also involves Todd’s daughter Johanna (Brandy Rose,) who is now Judge Turpin’s ward and intended bride. Anthony Hope (Philip De Roulet) is the young sailor who falls in love with her. Adolfo Pirelli (Luke Sikora) is a competing barber who threatens to expose Todd, and Tobias Ragg (Kyle Ryan) is his assistant who becomes a confidant to Mrs. Lovett. Beadle Bamford (Craig Waldvogel) is Turpin’s enforcer, Jonas Fogg (Ethan Edmonds) is the asylum keeper, and there’s a mysterious mad beggar woman (Elena Tessler.)

This Ferndale Rep production is a success in virtually every facet, including the singing. Craig Benson has a role that allows him to expand and dominate the stage. He has the wattage to embody Barker/Todd's confidence in his skills in an era when a barber could also be a dentist and minor surgeon. Seeing this, we can better understand the power that fuels Todd's self-righteousness.

Well established as a singer, Elisabeth Harrington (who served also as vocal coach for the production) proves to be an astonishing actor who inhabits the role of Mrs. Lovett physically and fully, without yielding to the temptation to overdo it. In fact all the actors show this discipline, a credit to director Dianne Zuleger.

Steve Nobles finds humanity within the twisted creepiness of Judge Turpin. Brandy Rose and Philip De Roulet are stage lovers reunited from last spring’s The Magic Flute at HSU, and their chemistry adds credence to an otherwise formulaic romance. The young Toby Ragg is in some ways the audience’s representative, and Kyle Ryan takes us on his journey convincingly. With his pure and powerful voice, Craig Waldvogel has probably the most memorable musical moment of the show.

Some Sondheim fans consider this his best work, and the large cast of ensemble singers and the small but tasty live orchestra serve the music well. This complex production has a unified result due to (among others) Daniel C. Nyiri (scenic design), Greta Stockwell (lighting), Dan Stockwell (sound), Ginger Gene (producer,) and director Zuleger. The makeup and hair design by Brandy Rose is an especially notable contribution.

This version of Sweeney Todd (which includes a revealing scene cut from the Broadway production) runs three hours with intermission. Not everyone will catch all the lyrics (I didn’t) but the story is clear enough. The lyrics have a strong political edge (“See your razor gleam, Sweeney/Feel how well it fits/As it floats over the throats/of hypocrites”), but even if they go by quickly, they convey the bitter irony. The humor is dark, the laughter often nervous. The theme of revenge is so clear however that some in the audience cheered the deaths of the bad guys.

Though the murders and cannibalism are staged for their fiendish entertainment value, there is somewhere the sense that they channel the cruelty of their social surroundings, taking dog-eat-dog to its logical conclusion. Wheeler and Sondheim certainly make use of the two-dimensional contrivances of melodrama, signalling their irony even in character names (some of which survive from those first penny dreadful fictions.) But they also give the villains some human moments (Beadle Bamford's song at the harmonium, for example) so there's at least some human reality to the murders, and therefore to the horror that drives one character insane.

Even from our lovely corner of the planet we can observe the growing chasm between the wealthy few and the struggling many. This story from a distant context resonates today, though the simplifications of a revenge drama may be an ominous response.

Sweeney Todd continues weekends at Ferndale Repertory Theatre through August 28.

Con-Artistry with Humboldt Light Opera: A Review

2011-08-08T22:44:00.000-07:00

Bill Ryder as Lawrence Jameson and Cindy Cress as Muriel Eubanks in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

The sunny Riviera is a real place. In fact, there are two (not counting the hotel in Vegas or the club in Manhattan): the beaches and casinos of the French and the Italian Riviera.

But there is also the unreal Riviera, bordered in time by the 1920s of Scott Fitzgerald and the 1950s of caper films with Henry Mancini scores. Its heart is in the 1930s and 40s, in stories about rich American women out for European thrills they expect to be expensive. That’s the timeless Riviera (despite the PBS tote bag) of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, now on the Van Duzer Theatre stage at HSU, in a bright and winning Humboldt Light Opera Company production.

This show even has the feel of that era’s classic Hollywood musicals. As in those movies, its plot is mostly a pretext: Lawrence Jameson (played by Bill Ryder) is a mature con man masquerading as a dispossessed king of some obscure principality who meets Freddy (Casey Vaughn), a young and unpolished upstart he eventually takes on as a scoundrel’s apprentice. They combine to get Lawrence out of an awkward situation with an oil heiress from Oklahoma (played by Shaelan Salas-Rich), but become rivals in both love and larceny when the sweet young American Soap Queen, Christine Colgate (Hannah Mullen-Jones) arrives. Complications and comeuppances ensue.

The story of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels comes from the 1988 film of the same name starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin (which in turn was very similar to a 1964 film with David Niven and Marlon Brando.) But it’s a pretext for fun, much of which comes from the witty book for this 2004 musical by Jeffrey Lane, and the equally witty lyrics by David Yazbek, who also wrote the music. (He also wrote the score for the musical version of The Full Monty, which HLOC performed a few years back.) It all could still stumble, if not for the brilliance and buoyancy of this production.

The wit comes in wordplay, both conventional (“Money?” “Her people are in oil.” “Crude?” “Well, she is a little pushy”) and inexplicable (Addressing a letter to a German doctor, Christine asks Freddy, “Do you think I should use an umlaut?” “No, you smell great.”) And if those don’t get you, there’s another joke in the next sentence, including some that are cruder than oil. (Language as much as theme is reason for the not-younger-than-11 age advisory.)

There’s lyrical wit as well, and while the music isn’t especially memorable, it includes some witty parodies, as in the sudden Oklahoma production number, or a 1980s bombastic musical love song, which had the audiences laughing from the first florid note. I also detect some sneaky homage in the splashy “Great Big Stuff” to Steve Martin’s own silly hit, “King Tut.”

The fashionable but thankfully occasional breaking of the fourth wall with comments from the stage is sometimes--not always--also done with wit. For example, when the Oklahoma heiress suddenly announces to Lawrence that they're engaged, he looks out and asks, "Did I miss a scene?" Which is about what the members of the audience are wondering at that point.

There's also physical humor, though that probably derives from the movie, and probably plays better in closeup. But it still pretty much works.

Bill Ryder plays Lawrence as a self-confidence man with a wary eye on his age. Casey Vaughn’s Freddy is an enthusiastic All-American boy whose breezy vulgarity is more appealing than obnoxious. (Vaughn reminds me of John Barrowman, if that's not too obscure a reference.) As Christine, Hannah Mullen-Jones deftly plays the sweet awkwardness that captivates the boys. (Her entrance seems a brief parody of Groucho’s in Duck Soup.) Their sunny sincerity may seem ironic, but it places them in the Hollywood musical tradition.

Also like those musicals there are stars of subplots, like the wonderful Cindy Cress and Jim Buschmann whose minor characters blossom into sympathetic and unlikely lovers. In her few scenes Shaelan Salas-Rich is a skillful skyrocket, but even the cast that fills out the production numbers (including stars of other HLOC shows like Molly Severdia, James Gadd and Fiona Ryder) all contribute to the flowing energy, delightful surprises and winsome appeal.

So does the dancing (choreographed by Lela Annotto-Pemberton, Ciara Cheli-Colando and Shaelan Salas-Rich), including one ensemble number done in striking red and black costumes (by Jennifer Trustem) that especially reminded me of a Gene Kelly film. But for all this Hollywood spirit, it’s the use of the stage that vitalizes the evening. Dominated by a simple but mesmerizing starry sky, Jayson Mohatt’s set and lighting eloquently suggest the fantasy context as they serve the action, while creating assemblages that are elegant in themselves.

The singing is of course excellent and the lyrics and dialogue always audible. The staging is efficient and yet full of fun. That all the elements work together at such a high level is just one of the achievements of director Carol McWhorter Ryder. Justin Sousa conducts the admirable 15-piece orchestra. Molly Severdia and John Chernoff are the musical directors, and Megan Johnson does hair and makeup.

I was completely beguiled by this show, and as Lawrence says, “Fun is not to be taken lightly.” Dirty Rotten Scoundrels plays the Van Duzer Theatre weekends through August 20.

In theme and mood, Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the direct opposite of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It is dark where the HLOC show is light. Its ironies are bitter rather than playful. Yet the current production at Ferndale Repertory Theatre (which I saw on Sunday) is also first-rate in every aspect, with star performances (by Craig Benson and Elisabeth Harrington) and a solid supporting cast. I’ll have a review next week. Sweeney Todd continues weekends through August 28.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-08-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

Hannah Jones in HLOC's "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"

Two musicals open Friday. In the newly renovated Van Duzer Theatre at HSU, the Humboldt Light Opera Company opens Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a jazzy musical comedy about two con men on the Riviera is based on the 1988 film comedy that starred Steve Martin and Michael Caine. Its songs—said to spoof Henry Mancini and other espionage movie composers—are by David Yazbek, who also wrote the music and lyrics for The Full Monty, another Broadway musical based on a movie. Jeffrey Lane wrote the book for this show, which ran on Broadway from January 2005 to September 2006.

The HLOC show stars Casey Vaughn, Bill Ryder, Hannah Jones, Jim Buschmann, Cindy Cress and Shaelan Salas. It’s directed by Carol Ryder, with musical direction by Molly Severdia, choreography by Lela Annotto-Pemberton, Ciara Cheli-Colando and Shaelan Salas. Justin Sousa conducts the orchestra. It plays Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through August 20, beginning with an opening night gala on August 5. Due to subject matter, this production is not recommended for children under 11.

Also on Friday, Ferndale Repertory Theatre opens the Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler musical, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. With its implications of cannibalism, this groundbreaking tale of a murderous barber and complicit purveyor of meat pies was controversial when it opened on Broadway in 1979. But it won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical, and accolades for its stars, Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. After numerous revivals, touring versions and other productions since, this musical thriller has become a Sondheim classic.

The Ferndale production is directed by Diane Zuleger and stars Craig Benson as Sweeney Todd and Elisabeth Harrington as Mrs. Lovett. Also featuring Steve Nobles, Philip DeRoulet, Brandy Rose, Kyle Ryan, Luke Sikora and Elena Tessler, it runs weekends through August 28: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Friday August 12 is Date Night—couples get a complimentary Sweeney Toddy.

Meanwhile, the “extreme makeover” of the Arcata Playhouse, courtesy of the Arcata Sunrise Rotary Club, will be partially complete when it pauses on Saturday, August 6 for a fundraiser to help finish the job. It’s a “Country Cabarette,” an evening of music featuring Cadillac Ranch and the Lonesome Roses, plus guests that include Jacqueline Dandeneau, Rose Armin-Hoiliand, Halimah Collingwood and Steve Irwin. It all starts at 7 p.m., and includes raffles and a chili contest.

Continuing: North Coast Repertory Theatre's production of the comedy The Kitchen Witches. I review it in this week's Journal.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-07-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

North Coast Repertory Theatre opens The Kitchen Witches, a comedy by Caroline Smith that follows cable-access cooking co-hostesses who are old enough to know better, but hate each other anyway. Directed by Carol Escobar, it features Kathleen Marshall, Laura Rose, Daniel Kennedy and George Szabo. Opening night is Thursday, July 28, with weekend performances through August 20.

The Arcata Playhouse hosts Broadway musical performer and Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre grad Gale McNeeley, for two performances of his show, Over the Rainbow, at 8 p.m. on Saturday July 30 and 2 p.m. on Sunday July 31. The show is a tribute to the lyricist and writer on The Wizard of Oz, Yip Harburg, who also wrote the lyrics to “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” and so the North Coast will hear the original version performed just weeks after Jeffrey Hatcher’s parody in NCRT’s The Government Inspector.

North Coast Journal's War on Theatre

2011-07-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

My Stage Matters column in the North Coast Journal appeared this week with one repeated editorial change: every time I wrote "theatre," the Journal changed it to "theater."

This was done without consulting with me or notifying me in advance. I did receive some forwarded emails debating the matter, apparently forwarded by my editor, but these arrived when the column was already being printed.  (In fact, I had no prior knowledge that the column was running at all in this issue. Nor have I had responses to recent emails to my editor asking specific questions, in particular about a shortfall on my last check. These forwards were my first indication in over a week that my editor still existed.)

One of the emails contained the response I believe came from Ryan Burns, recent interim editor and feature writer, who was apparently a party to this discussion. Here's that statement:

"For some time now, Journal style has been to use theatre to describe the art of theatre, which is what every theatre company in Humboldt County does, and to use theater to describe a building - unless of course the theatre company uses the traditional British spelling, which pretty much all of them do. We went through all this years ago when our theatre columnist Bill Kowinski insisted that he prefers to use theatre. Does the Humboldt State Department of Theatre, Film and Dance teach theater or theatre? Do we really need to open up the debate again?"

I can answer one question: the HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance teaches theatre.   The statement is correct about "every theatre company in Humboldt County"-at least every active theatre company uses "theatre."  So what's this all about?

The justification for "theater" is the Associated Press Stylebook, something of a Bible for newspapers, which decrees the use of "theater" except if contradicted by an official name, as in "Van Duzer Theatre." It's become common practice in newspapers, including the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle. So it could reasonably be a move towards standard practice.

On the other hand, in the theatre world, it's still mostly theatre. It certainly is on the North Coast. Even the rule previously followed at the Journal, which is also widely accepted--that "theatre" is the art form, and "theater" is the building--runs into the complications mentioned--that many buildings have "theatre" in their names.

At the Journal, my sense when this topic has come up before--and all I really recall is the sarcasm involved--is the conviction on the part of some of the NCJ hierarchy that using "theatre" is pretentious, snooty and arty--and I suppose by extension, so are the people who prefer it.

The "theatre" spelling comes from British practice, and "theater" from Noah Webster's crusade for American English forms.  Movie theaters have been theaters pretty much from the beginning. But theatre has a different history.

Given the consequences of global warming or of the current march of the morons on Capitol Hill dragging us all into the abyss, the reverse of these two letters is not a compelling issue. It is perhaps a ludicrous one and seemingly a needless one, and I question why it was raised, and certainly how it was handled.

This was also imposed for the first time on a column in which I used the word "theatre" many more times than usual.  It was also rare in that I didn't use the full names of local theatres and theatre organizations, which left untested the principle that the Journal doesn't have the right to change the names that others give to their organizations or venues.

What it did was to change every instance of "theatre" in my signed column to another spelling, without discussing it and without even telling me in advance. What the Journal does in its news columns or listings is not my affair. My column is. So at the very least, I announce to readers of this blog, including those members of the North Coast theatrical community and readers of the North Coast Journal--that I did not approve of the changes in my column. Maybe I could have been persuaded, but I wasn't given that opportunity.

So it's still theatre with me. And it will continue to be. So every time you read "theater" in my column, you may rest assured that I did not write it that way.

And so I post here my column as I wrote it.  I've added one sort of change, though--I use the full names of local theatres, to emphasize the petulant absurdity of this editorial and dictatorial change.

Stage Presence: the Official Stage Matters column

2011-07-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

As the current theatre season winds down, announcements of next season’s offerings on North Coast stages are beginning. Before some of those are revealed later in this column, a few words on the wider context, and a reminder.

The reminder is this: all theatre is local. It’s true that the plays we see here are often done at many regional and community theatres around the country and even the world, for years and even centuries before we see them. It’s also true that some theatrical creations are more local than others—such as Dell’Arte International Theatre Company's Mary Jane: the Musical or The Loggers Project by Sanctuary Stage Theatre, and other “theatre of place” productions created out of local experiences.

But all productions are local in the sense that they are created on stage only by people of the here and now, and experienced by audiences exclusively here and now. That includes the experience of a play from elsewhere, its history and its meaning to us, here, now.

To suggest another meaning of “all theatre is local” consider a play that we won’t see this season or next, or probably ever: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. This current Broadway musical cost $75 million to produce (including $2 million for harnesses and flying rigs), enough to finance all of North Coast theatre possibly until the end of time. Most local theatres would be happy with an annual budget matching the $1.2 million it costs to stage this show each week.

Yet after more than 180 previews, a fired director and a rewrite, it opened to reviews that would likely get a North Coast critic a shove off Trinidad Head: “This singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore,” wrote Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

Other critics wrote: “This effects-driven musical is still situated a wide canyon’s distance from good. “A sad, stilted event that crashes consistently and rarely flies.” “Deteriorated from mindblowingly misbegotten carnival-of-the-damned to merely embarrassing dud.” Entertainment Weekly noted that the common complaints were incoherent storytelling and mediocre songs.

Tickets to see it on Broadway range from $69 to $362 (with broker fee.) In an era when even regional theatre tickets can flirt with or exceed $100, most North Coast theatres tickets are under $20. Obviously a Broadway show or a regional theatre production will be different in many respects. Some will be better—occasionally even the more than the ten times better suggested by the difference in ticket price. But not always. Theatre is an uncertain thing everywhere, all the time.

Even apart from cost, shows will always have different virtues and weaknesses, rewards and disappointments. Because all theatre is local. For instance, one of the repeated rewards of North Coast productions is the person on stage who lifts you out of your seat. It may be a well-known local veteran in a particularly revelatory role. Or it may be a young talent passing through, from local high schools to distant universities, from local colleges to destiny elsewhere, maybe on a bigger stage.

Stage presence is perhaps the most mysterious and most indispensible quality. It express itself as dramatic talent, of power and timing, or a comedic talent, of movement and personality. It may be a speaking voice that commands attention and expresses unexpected emotion, or a singing voice that thrills and touches the heart. Or it can be moments, or an entire production that’s illuminating or moving. But you have to be there. Because all theatre is local.

As for what North Coast audiences can see on stage beginning this fall, here are the next season productions announced by three local theatres.

North Coast Repertory Theatre begins with the Sondheim musical Into the Woods, followed by Agatha Christie’s stage mystery The Mousetrap. Neil Simon has been good to NCRT, so next year features his Laughter on the 23rd Floor. The annual Shakespeare is the comedy Much Ado About Nothing. Next spring the 2003 musical Avenue Q is followed by the comedy The Red Velvet Cake War.

Ferndale Repertory Theatre's season begins in October with a farce in which four actors reenact the Hitchcock film, 39 Steps. A stage adaptation of the viral TV classic A Christmas Story is followed in February by the first Shakespeare at Ferndale in awhile: The Taming of the Shrew. Then three musical productions complete the season: Evita, Cabaret and Woody Guthrie American Song.

HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance has announced its most ambitious season in years: Neil Labute’s Fat Pig (directed by Michael Thomas) in September, the musical Brigadoon in October, followed by Eugene Stickland’s Christmas comedy, Some Assembly Required. Venus by Suzan Lori-Parks is in February, the Noel Coward comedy Blithe Spirit in March, before the spring dance show and 10 Minute Play Festival.

Coming Up: But there are more shows before this season is over. Opening at North Coast Repertory Theatre on July 28 is The Kitchen Witches, a comedy by Caroline Smith, directed by Carol Escobar and featuring Kathleen Marshall, Laura Rose, Daniel Kennedy and George Szabo.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-07-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

This weekend at the Mad River Festival, the Dell’Arte production of Three Trees with Joe Krienke, Stephanie Thompson and Lauren Wilson as wartime clowns in a comic meditation on oppression first staged in January. It returns for four performances, tonight (July 14) through Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo.

Continuing this weekend at Redwood Curtain, the comedy Kimberly Akimbo, which I review below and in the North Coast Journal.

Jersey Safari at Redwood Curtain

2011-07-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

This is a longer version of my review in the North Coast Journal.

Healthy families are all alike, but every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way. Which for playwrights from the Greeks to Eugene O’Neill onwards has been money in the bank. David Lindsay-Abaire studied playwriting at Julliard with Christopher Durang and Marsha (‘Night, Mother) Norman. He wrote the dysfunctional family of Kimberly Akimbo as if he was their love child, combining innocence and addictions, whimsy and noisy desperation in the wilds of working class New Jersey.

The production now on the Redwood Curtain stage in Eureka is introduced by theme songs from 50s and 60s family sitcoms, but this is more like the 1990s Married...With Children meeting the solemn surrealism of 2011 reality TV.

Kimberly Lavaco (played by Adina Lawson) is turning 16, which is the average life expectancy for her rare genetic disorder that causes her to age more than four times faster than normal. Her dad is Buddy (James Hitchcock), an alcoholic gas station booth attendant who promises to take the family to a Six Flags amusement park with a new African safari attraction, but never does. Her mother is Pattie (Elisa Abelleira), who is very pregnant and has both arms in casts from a purported carpel tunnel syndrome surgery. She says she’s dying of cancer (she isn’t) and so must spill her thoughts into a tape recorder for her unborn daughter.

Pattie’s sister Debra (Peggy Metzger) is a homeless petty criminal who has lived in their basement, and is the moving force both in their past and in the crime that is planned and committed during the play. She’s also the closest to Kimberly.

We learn of Kimberly’s condition thanks to the cluelessly sincere interest of her high school classmate Jeff, whose own unseen family includes a criminal brother and neglectful father. He stays afloat with enthusiasms for Dungeons and Dragons and anagrams (the play was written in 2000, before similar teens moved on to newer obsessions.)

Adina Lawson brings Kimberly to life with an adept performance that centers the play. But this is really an ensemble production, and all the actors define specific characters that create both comic and dramatic moments, sometimes simultaneously. Peggy Metzger’s performance is so physically expressive that Debra is wholly convincing from the start. In a contrasting low-keyed style, Kody Dennis brings to Jeff a desperate warmth, a youthful enthusiasm in quiet war with anxiety. He and Lawson play believable age-crossed lovers.

Buddy is the one character who changes surprisingly if modestly, and James Hitchcock ably plays his various colors. Although she changes little, Pattie does have dimensions to reveal, and Elisa Abelleira makes an impression in a difficult role. This emphasis on acting is getting to be a hallmark of Redwood Curtain productions. I suspect a lot of credit goes to director Cassandra Hesseltine.

There’s lots of comedy, even in the talky first act, but this world is so profoundly sad. Amidst all the self-justifying struggle and denial, the family’s happiest moments are playing a nostalgic board game. The best liberation any of them can imagine is Six Flags and Florida.

Playwright Lindsay-Abaire takes a lot of liberties with his stage world. (Maybe that’s what everyone means when they call him “quirky,” a word I’d dearly like to see retired.) But as audience investing belief we have to know the rules of this world, and lack of clarity, plus a certain slipshod relationship to reality, tends to take you out of the play.

Among the problems I had was understanding the rules of Kimberly’s disease (which resembles the rare but real condition of Progeria, but is different in important respects.) It was hard for me to see just what the effects of this rapid aging were supposed to be, since this Kimberly moved like a teenager. If anything, Adina Lawson is too convincing--a living advertisement for her yoga regimen. There seemed to be no visible progression in the disease or other physical effects during the play.

There are reasons why the playwright didn't just use classic Progeria as his protagonist's disease. For one it involves dwarfism. For another it is genetic but not hereditary--that is, it is caused by a genetic malfunction, but not by a gene that is passed down from parent to child or to succeeding generations. This is a common misunderstanding of some "genetic" diseases. This is important here because one of the key questions of the play involves whether the child Kimberly's mother is carrying risks being born with her disease (the disorder in the play is passed on 20% of the time, according to the text.)

There are smaller but suggestive alterations to reality. That Pattie would have casts on both arms for the entire period of the play doesn't pass the smell test, especially since surgery to correct carpal tunnel syndrome is a much more local operation. My point here is that there's always this risk when exaggerating for comic or even dramatic effect: that the suspension of disbelief necessary to make the effect work requires an automatic acceptance of the premise, and if doubts occur to you, or you're thinking about what the rules are, you're not going to be open to the disbelief or the effect.

Does that mean everything onstage has to make sense? Only within the world that's being created. Nobody expects the Marx Brothers world to make literal sense. And while there may be a story (does the opera succeed? Does the boy get the girl?) it's low stakes storytelling, though how that plot meshes with the comedy is the art of it. For me, it works awkwardly in this play.

The virtues of the play are encapsulated in one directorial touch: when Buddy talks into the tape recorder about the disappointments of his life, of having a family before he’s seen the world, he does so with snow falling on him alone in a volume that almost chokes him. The play’s co-dependence of poignancy and absurdity is expressed in this theatrical gesture.

The problems with the play are suggested by another gesture: Kimberly persuades her parents to drop nickels into a can whenever they use foul language. On this stage, the tin periodically pops out the nickels like popcorn. It’s a funny bit, but it is ignored by the characters and seems to have no reality or function other than as a funny bit that takes us out of the play. Maybe I'm not sufficiently postmodern to accept this.

I saw this at first preview and I also felt a lack of pacing, which may emerge as the cast feels the rhythms of performance. But that's fairly common onstage hereabouts--there is this sense of just getting through it, as quickly as possible. Pacing is a tool for emphasis, for directing the audience's attention. So is staging. The wide and shallow Redwood Curtain stage presents particular challenges. Generally the way to direct the audience's attention is to stage the most significant scenes as close to downstage center as possible. To me the pivotal scenes took place in Kimberly bedroom, which was upstage and stage right. I felt it was too remote.

Jody Sekas designed the inventive set that creates an appropriate crowdedness for this claustrophobic family world. Meeka Day and Jayson Mohatt designed the lighting, Gail Holbrook the costumes, John Turney the sound. Kimberly Akimbo continues at Redwood Curtain Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. until July 30, with one Sunday matinee on July 24 at 2 p.m.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-07-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

A little late this weekend, but--At Redwood Curtain, Saturday is the official opening night of Kimberly Akimbo, a comedy by David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s Redwood Curtain’ s third Lindsay-Abaire play. “This playwright’s works are a perfect match for our uniquely twisted sense of humor,” said Artistic Director Clint Rebik. Adina Lawson plays Kimberly, with James Hitchcock, Elisa Abelleira, Peggy Metzger and Kody Dennis. (Photo at left.) Cassandra Hesseltine directs. The show continues Thursdays to Saturdays through July 30. Thursdays are cheap date nights. There’s one Sunday matinee, on July 24 at 2 p.m.

The Mad River Festival in Blue Lake continues this weekend with A Suicide Note from a Cockroach, a circus theatre spectacle performed by Pelu’ Theatre, a company based in Portland but rooted in Puerto Rico. Billed as putting a comic twist on being an immigrant in a U.S. city, it’s presented in Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre July 7-10 at 8 p.m.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-06-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

Joan Schirle as Mary Jane. Bob Doran photo.

Mary Jane: The Musical continues outdoors in the Dell’Arte Rooney Amphitheatre tonight (June 30) through this Sunday, July 3. My review is in this week's Journal.

Red Light in Blue Lake, Dell’Arte’s adults-only cabaret, happens in the Carlo Theatre on Friday, July 1 at 10:30 p.m.

For North Coast Repertory Theatre, the first thing on the July agenda is keeping the lights on. In an already challenging economy for local theatres, NCRT urgently needs to replace lighting equipment that’s 40 years old. So the first of two fundraisers this month is Keepin’ the Lights On, a musical revue featuring show tunes performed by lights-out singers Katy Curtis, Evan Needham, Nanette Voss, Craig Waldvogel and Andrea Zvaleko, with musical accompaniment by Laura Welch. It’s on for two nights, Friday and Saturday, July 1 and 2 at 8 p.m. in the North Coast Rep theatre. Suggested donation is five bucks.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-06-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Mary Jane: The Musical premieres at Dell’Arte’s (outdoor) Rooney Amphitheatre, kicking off this summer’s Mad River Festival on Thursday night, June 23 at 8 p.m. Produced by the Humboldt Growers Association, this Dell’Arte production promises to explore the many dimensions of Humboldt’s major cash crop, primarily through songs by—among others-- Lila Nelson, Joani Rose, Tim Randles, Joan Schirle, Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbors (who also appear in the show), and a Busby Berkeley-style production of a song by Jeff DeMark. Michael Fields directs, and Joan Schirle plays Mary Jane, a pioneer in the local Industry.

Mary Jane: The Musical continues through July 3. The sun goes down in the second act, so prepare for chilling out.

The Lifetime Achievement Awards dinner for Lynne and Bob Wells is at Dell’Arte on Saturday (June 25) at 5 p.m. The $75 admission includes that night’s performance of the Mary Jane musical. For reservations call (707) 668-5663. I interviewed them for this week's Journal Stage Matters column.

Meanwhile, The Sugar Bean Sisters completes its run at Ferndale Rep this weekend, as does The Government Inspector at North Coast Rep. On that subject a correction: in my Journal review of the NCRT show I inadvertently left Brian Walker off the cast list. Sorry about that—but he did get into the photo and caption, so he wasn't completely neglected.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-06-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight (Friday, June 10) Ferndale Repertory Theatre opens The Sugar Bean Sisters, a comedy of “romance, murder and alien abduction” by contemporary Florida-born playwright Nathan Sanders. This mix of down-home Southern humor, pop culture weirdness and the supernatural is Sanders' first play, and a relentlessly marketed prize-winner that's produced a lot in regional and community theatres. Judging from reviews, it's a play you either love or hate. But enough have loved it that it has a sequel, Sugar Witch, that was seen in the Bay Area last year.

The sisters are played by veteran performers Marilyn McCormick, Marilyn Foote and Dianne Zuleger. The cast also includes Jeremy Webb and Janet Waddell. Carolyn Jones directs, with scenic design by Daniel C. Niyri, lighting by Greta Stockwell, costumes by Laura Hussey and Donna Bowen, and sound by Jim Barry.

The Sugar Bean Sisters plays until June 26, on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and on Sundays at 2 p.m. Friday June 17 is Ferndale Rep’s Date Night: all couples will receive a complimentary glass of Sugar Bean “Sugar Brew.” Information and reservations: 1-800-838-3006 or visit http://www.ferndale-rep.org/.

Gogol's The Government Inspector continues at North Coast Rep, reviewed below.

The Government Inspector at NCRT

2011-06-09T01:37:00.000-07:00

NCRT production

I review the North Coast Rep production of Gogol's The Government Inspector (also known as The Inspector General) in the North Coast Journal this week. I'm reproducing that review below--unchanged from the print version, except for these photos--because I want to add something about the process, that may (or may not) reveal something about the process applicable to other plays.

As I've written here more than once, my approach to reviewing is the Stoppard system of expressing my response to the performance I see.  I add to this my belief that information about the play and other productions are of interest to readers, both those who have seen or will see this production, and those who won't.  Also because that information is of interest to me, and part of my experience of the play.

There are some reviews that are relatively easy to write: I responded to this in this way, and to that in that way, etc.  Most often it's not that easy, and sometimes it's really difficult. This was one of those times.

I went to opening night: Thursday, June 2.  In many respects the production went very well. The performers accomplished the physical and verbal humor with efficiency and style. I laughed (even when no one else did--at some of Hatcher's more obscure jokes, apparently.)  So much slapstick can get wearying, and it seemed some of the audience felt that way as well as me. But there was a lot to like. So why didn't I like it more than I did? There just seemed something empty about it. It seemed like some postmodern pastiche, yet this was a greatly praised play.

And so I spent the entire weekend trying to figure that out. I couldn't put my finger on a reason, except maybe a mood I brought with me to the theatre that the show couldn't entirely shake.

I was pretty much in despair about this, as in the middle of the night I was barely keeping my eyes open as I scanned reviews of other productions of this play, especially of this particular adaptation, on the Internet. That's where I got my clue.  I noticed that several reviews singled out two characters for praise: the Postmaster (a choice role, and a standout in the NCRT production, too) and the Mayor. Rather, I absorbed this without particularly noticing it.

But then, moments after I'd left the computer it came to me. The character they didn't name was the supposed government inspector. That seemed odd, because the NCRT production really featured this character. Then I realized why I felt that sense of emptiness. The play I saw was the story of the faux inspector--how this rogue used this opportunity. But the Gogol satire wasn't about him, it was about how the town leaders behaved. It was the Mayor's story, and apparently other productions had emphasized this, probably through casting, staging, costuming, etc. And with that small difference, it becomes a different play.

That may or may not be a correct perception of this production---but at least now I understood how I had experienced it, and why it left me feeling the way I felt. Apart from any other moods. This idea allowed me to write the review.  The whole review was made possible by this idea. But it is stated in one sentence, at the end of the review.  I didn't need to say anything more about it.

The process of experiencing the play goes on after the performance, and in this case, after the review deadline.  Another bit of my research was about how to characterize the comedy. The playbill and actors' statements called it a farce, and it certainly had some of the characteristics of farces. But strictly speaking, it probably isn't a farce. The style is farcical, but there can be differences between farce and satire. Anyway, this led me to read Eric Bentley, who in his The Life of the Drama has separate chapters for Farce and Comedy, and points out various differences. It's a bit abstruse, and a little too Freudian for me to follow completely. Plus he gets pretty elliptical. At one point he lists playwrights who write comedy rather than farce, and Gogol is on that list. But he doesn't say specifically why he is on that list.

It was Monday by the time I thought of one possible reason.  The various town leaders--not just the Mayor but his wife and daughter, a teacher, head of the hospital, merchants, etc.--sometimes speak mournfully about the position they're in. It's all part of the general high hilarity on stage, but people who feel they are stuck in provincial Russia and long for the city and nobility--those are characters in Chekhov, too. So it is this Chekovian humanity in these otherwise absurdly small-minded and corrupt characters that might be why this is comedy rather than mechanical farce. Fortunately, that possibility is implied in the review's final sentence--an elaboration of the comic complexity.

So with too much introduction, here's the review....

Meyerhold production 1926

 The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol’s mid-19th century surreal satire, has been called the greatest play in the Russian language by no less than mid-20th century prose stylist Vladimir Nabokov. Over the decades it’s been translated and adapted many times in many countries, but it seems particularly popular right now. A version that’s just opening in London is the second new adaptation in the UK in just the past few years. In 2008 American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher adapted it for the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and Milwaukee Rep. Perhaps reflecting current attitudes towards government, the style of all these recent versions tilts decidedly towards farce.

premiere of Hatcher adaptation, Guthrie Theatre, MN

Even before the current North Coast Repertory Theatre staging of the Hatcher version, there have been other productions here this year, sort of. Just last month, Northcoast Preparatory Academy used the Gogol play as the framework for their pastiche, Russian Promenade, at the Bayside Grange. Dan Sullivan’s play Inspecting Carol borrows from the framing story of The Government Inspector, as presented last December at the Arcata Playhouse by the Rialto Theater Company in a production that included no fewer than six participants in this North Coast Rep show, including four cast members.

current London production of a different adaptation

The play’s premise is simple: the Postmaster of a Russian village, who reads everyone’s mail in advance (which is why the mail is often late—he falls behind in his reading) tells the Mayor that a government inspector from the capital is secretly visiting towns in this region. But the news is months old, so the stranger from the city who has been staying at the inn is quickly identified as the government inspector.

Of course he isn’t—he’s a minor bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur and a gambling problem. But the Mayor and other officials ply him with bribes, while the Mayor’s wife simultaneously offers him her daughter and herself.

Groucho sings 'Lydia' in "At the Circus"

Mistaken identity is only the beginning. There is ample opportunity for slapstick, pratfalls and other shtick, and in this production, no such opportunity goes begging. The resulting mayhem is like a collision of classical Greek and Roman satire, French bedroom farce, absurdist commedia and American vaudeville. Meanwhile, Hatcher supplies verbal wit, both gross and subtle, with echoes of Jonathan Swift and anticipations of Stephen Colbert. But even though it’s no Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers as reining spirits are made explicit in the faux inspector’s improvised love song to the Mayor’s daughter—with nearly identical lyrics and the same melody as Groucho’s second-most-famous tune, “Lydia, The Tatooed Lady.”

The cast performs with unflagging energy and style: David Hamilton is the pretend inspector, Scott Malcolm the Mayor, Rae Robison the Mayor’s wife; Anders Carlson and JM Wilkerson are the Russian Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Also essential and entertaining in other roles are Daniel Amaral, Rebecca Caswell, Dave Fuller, Brittany Gonzales, Lexus Landry, Scott Malcolm, Scott Osborn, David Schlosser, David Simms, Jennifer Trustem, Brian Walker, James Wright and Andrea Zvaleko. Samuel Clemens Cord struck a notable balance as the comic Postmaster—a sunny, believable person, yet a few stops past eccentricity.

As North Coast Rep actors, director Adina Lawson and assistant director Evan Needham are both acquainted with what’s possible on this particular stage, so the orchestration of the action is flawless. Calder Johnson provides a handsome open set as well as lighting, Lauren Wieland and Rae Robison the costumes, Brittany Gonzales and Michael Thomas the sound. Together they present a funny and theatrical evening. I did feel that the production emphasized the phony inspector’s story: how a rogue improvises advantages from the mistaken identity. But it’s the Mayor’s story that’s the soul of the play, and through it the complexities of small town pretension, corruption and selfish ambition are satirically exposed and elaborated.

North Coast Rep in Eureka presents The Government Inspector on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through June 25, with Sunday matinees on June 12 and 19 at 2 p.m., and a Thursday evening show on June 23. 442-NCRT; ncrt.net.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-06-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Hatcher

Jeffrey Hatcher looks eminently professorial in photos these days, and when I met him some years ago he already exhibited an impressive theatrical intelligence. But he also seemed a Noel Coward kind of guy, meant to greet you with a cocktail in hand.

So it’s not surprising that his version of The Government Inspector, Gogol’s comedy involving greed, corruption and mistaken identity, is noted for its wit. According to an interview in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Hatcher had his eyes on this play since he acted in it in college. He thought: “Good construction. Could be funnier.” His approach was to keep the situation in historical period but update the dialogue. “A hundred and forty years ago in Russia, saying ‘That fish has three eyes, my friend’ was hysterical. And now it’s like, ‘What the hell?’”

Hatcher’s adaptation of The Government Inspector opens at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka on Thursday June 2, and plays weekends through June 25 at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on June 12 and 19. Reservations: 442-NCRT.

Tinamarie Ivey is back in town from Oregon with The Logger Project: Bringing to Life Logger Stories of the Pacific Northwest. A combined effort involving Ivey and hubbie Dan Stone’s Sanctuary Stage, the Ink People and Arcata’s Four on the Floor (among others), it’s a script by Jacqueline Dandeneau based on interviews with local loggers and their families as well as historical research, that focuses on the lives and hardships of early loggers and subsequent generations. It’s the northern California edition of a planned three-part project, eventually encompassing Oregon and Washington. “This project is not meant to be a platform for political bantering about ethical logging nor the effects of logging on our northern forests,” the press release sternly warns. “It is meant to capture a glimpse of the history, day-to-day lives and experiences of the men and women who call themselves loggers.”

Following up on the successful collaboration with L.A.’s Cornerstone Theatre in 2009, this production (which includes music) will be at the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park in Eureka, Friday through Sunday, June 3-5. Friday and Saturday shows begin at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m. Admission is $10 or pay-what-you-can. More information at http://www.sanctuarystage.com/.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-05-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

The Dell'Arte School graduating class of 2011 presents The Finals--their ultimate small ensemble work, beginning Thursday, May 26 through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. Admission is pay what you can. The audience will get the chance to give their own grades for what they see, on a Report Card tucked in the program. But I don't think it goes on anybody's Permanent Record.

Jeff DeMark is performing his annual reprise of his first show, "Writing My Way Out of Adolescence," at Redwood Yogurt (16th & G) in Arcata on Friday (May 27) at 8 p.m. There is no admission charge, but the room is small so come early. Jeff is working with a band he put together that he really likes, so the music is part of the attraction.

I might also mention the appearance of North Coast pianist and HSU alum Ryan MacEvoy McCullough at HSU's Fulkerson Recital Hall on Friday at 8 p.m. Among the pieces Ryan will play is a piano sonata by his friend and fellow HSU alum Dante De Silva, subtitled "Arcata." More (of my) info at HSU Music. Proceeds go towards bringing other guest pianists to Humboldt.

KCACTF Commendations

2011-05-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's National Selection Team just announced their individual commendations for participants in the Region 7 festival held here at HSU in February.

Special commendations went to two cast members of Xtigone from California State College East Bay: Chalia La Tour as "Tigs" (the Antigone character: pictured here) and Carlos Martinez as LeRoy. Other actors similarly honored are Liam Callister of St. Mary's College (Angels in America: Millennium Approaches) and Lanny Langston, Angela Vogel, Phoenix Tage, Brittany Brook, Rachel Rosenfeld, Nicholas Witham and Adrian Crookston of the University of Idaho for Distinguished Ensemble Performance in Up.

Also for Up: Anthony Brinkley for Distinguished Achievement in Scenic Design,Laura Berkompas for Lighting Design, Mike Locke for Sound Design, Adriana Sanchez for Costume Design and Kim Bell for Hair & Makeup Design.

Other awards: Laura Elaine Ellis (Xtigone) for Distinguished Achievement in Choreography, Matthew White of Ohlone College (The Time Machine) for Sound Design; Ted Crimy for Sound Design and Robert Broadfoot for Scenic Design--both of St. Mary's (Angels in America.)

In addition there were two awards for a show not seen on the main stage but presented in a reading: Angela Santillo was cited for Distinguished Achievement in Playwriting for the play, Sera, and Rebecca Engle for Distinguished Achievement in Directing for New Play Development. Both are from St. Mary's College of California.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-05-11T23:37:00.000-07:00

North Coast Prep presents A Russian Promenade at the Bayside Grange, beginning May 11. Director Gretha Omey Stenger uses the framework of Gogol’s play The Government Inspector with characters from two Chekhov plays and a number of his short stories to create a dramatic world that both the actors and audience will literally walk through as they promenade to scenes featuring characters from all walks of 19th century village life. Audience members who prefer to sit still will have the option of watching it all from one location, but those who join the promenade and the shifting audience space might interact with the characters, as they all prepare for the arrival of the government inspector.

A Russian Promenade plays Wednesday May 11 through Saturday May 14 at 7:30 p.m., with an additional 1:30 p.m. matinee on Saturday.

Beginning Thursday May 12, the graduating MFA students at Dell’Arte School present their thesis projects of original work in The Thesis Festival : A Tuesday, a one-act dark comedy in which Death has a speaking part; Master of All Splendor, an adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth; and Land of Dreams, a two-clown show suggested “for couples who drive each other crazy.” Sounds like date night! All three of these shows play Thursdays through Sundays May 12-15 and May 19-22 at 8 p.m. in the Carlo.

Continuing: Almost, Maine at Redwood Curtain in Eureka on weekends through May 21, with a special “cheap date” price on Thursdays — and this is another date night play if there ever was one. My review is at the NC Journal.

McCarthyism in America

2011-05-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

The City University of New York has refused to give playwright Tony Kushner a planned honorary degree because a member of its board of trustees objects to Kushner's views on Israel.

Now historian Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva University is returning her CUNY honorary degree in protest, with a very pointed statement. According to Salon, her statement reads in part: "I received my honorary degree from CUNY because of my scholarship on the McCarthy period, when over one hundred professors (including at least fifteen from the New York City municipal colleges) lost their jobs for political reasons," writes Schrecker. "I assume that no one within CUNY’s Board of Trustees or administration wants a repeat of those dark days."

Justification for this response is inherent in the statement made by the objecting board member, who wrote in a New York Times oped that Kushner's "libelous statements against Israel were made by anyone outside the Jewish community, that person would be correctly labeled an anti-Semite." This is precisely the kind of inflammatory charge that McCarthyism represented.

Quoth

2011-05-03T19:54:00.001-07:00

"Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art."

Konstantin Stanislavsky

This North Coast Weekend

2011-04-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m. Redwood Curtain begins two nights of previews for the comedy Almost, Maine by John Cariani, directed by Gail Holbrook and featuring Dmitry Tokarsky, Daniel Mariscal, Wanda Stapp and Brittany Williams. Official opening is Saturday, and performances continue Thursdays through Saturdays through May 21, with a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee on May 15. I'm intending to review this for next week's NC Journal.

On Friday (April 29) and continuing Fridays and Saturdays at 7 PM, Sundays at 2 PM, through May 8, Humboldt Light Opera presents a version of Mozart’s comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro, in the Forum Theatre at CR. Director Carol Ryder has condensed the basic love-and-marriage story to an hour of dialogue with all of Mozart’s musical “hits.” “We're not performing it as high opera,” Ryder said. “Instead it's musical theater with fantastic vocalists.” Mozart is paired with a modern take on the same marriage theme: The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown. Both are fully acted productions, with costumes by Kevin Sharkey and lights by Justin Takata. James Gadd, Essie Bertain, Bill Ryder, Katherine Kinley, Sarah Benzinger, Bonnie Cyr, Jim Willits and Mira Weidman are the “Figaro” cast, with Kevin Richards and Molly Severdia starring in The Last Five Years.

Dell'Arte's first year students present the self-explanatory Clown Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. Native Stories: Basically Factual by California Native performance artist James Luna (Luisueno) visits for one night only, Friday at 8 p.m. in HSU’s Gist Hall Theater. It's free and doors open at 7:30.

Othello winds up its run at North Coast Rep, and South Pacific ditto at Ferndale Rep.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-04-21T03:19:00.000-07:00

The HSU Opera Workshop presents Mozart's opera The Magic Flute for three performances this weekend: Friday and Saturday (April 22, 23) at 8 p.m., and Sunday (April 24) at 2 p.m. in Gist Hall Theatre. Students Brandy Rose and Philip de Roulet, and community singers Nanette Voss, Christopher Hatcher and Steve Nobles sing the principal roles. With dialogue in English, it’s relocated by director Elisabeth Harrington and scenographer Rachel Parti to the Mayan culture, which adds color and imagery (a leopard, a lion and lots of birds) and strengthens a nature-based emphasis. “It’s a show for all ages,” Harrington said, “with magic and comedy and drama, but focused on love and friendship, nobility and bravery.” Paul Cummings, who directs the accompanying 20-piece orchestra, says the music is among Mozart’s best. More info.

The Fence In Its Thousandth Year by contemporary British playwright Howard Barker is presented at Dell'Arte Thursday through Sunday (April 21-24) at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. According to Dell'Arte: "Written in 2005, Barker's play is a powerful theatrical journey into the borderlands between social classes, metaphorically presented as a literal fence where the powerful and the powerless exist in a tense, emotional symbiosis. Sexually explicit, viscerally emotional and hauntingly poetic, Barker's imagined world speaks to our contemporary social and cultural divisions through the heightened language of the theater." This project on tragedy by the Dell'Arte School's second year MFA's is directed by Stephanie Thompson.

Continuing: Final weekend for the HSU dance concert Gravity Defined in the Van Duzer; Othello continues at North Coast Rep, South Pacific at Ferndale Rep.

Auditions

2011-04-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

Open auditions for the musical Brigadoon to be produced by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance and HSU Music departments in October: Thursday and Friday April 28 and 29 from 6 to 8 p.m. in Room 131 of the Music Department annex. Prepare to sing one refrain from the musical theatre canon, recite a one minute monologue and participate in group movement. This is a large ensemble show, with characters ranging in age from teens to 50s. More information: 826-3566.

The North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for the comedy The Kitchen Witches by Caroline Smith, directed by Carol Escobar. There are roles for two women (ages 40-60), one man (age 20-40) and one man or woman (age 18 or older.) Please come prepared to read from the script. Auditions will take place Saturday, April 30 from 3pm to 5pm and Sunday, May 1 from 6pm to 8pm at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. A copy of the script is on reserve at the Eureka public library. Production dates are July 28 through August 20, 2011. Please call 268-0175 if you have any questions

This North Coast Weekend

2011-04-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

Opening this weekend for two weekends--Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 in the Van Duzer Theatre--is Gravity Defined, the annual HSU dance concert. While that begins this weekend in the Van Duzer, the HSU 10 Minute Play Festival has its final 3 performances in Gist Hall, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and 2 pm on Sunday.

Continuing: Othello at North Coast Rep (see review below) and South Pacific at Ferndale Rep, directed by Ginger Gene, with musical direction by Dianne Zuleger, choreography by Linda Maxwell, scene design by Daniel Nyiri and lighting by Greta Stockwell. Headlining the large cast are Brad Curtis, Christina Comer, Brian Morrison and Spanky McFarlane.

Othello in Eureka

2011-04-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

This is a very slightly extended version of my North Coast Journal review. There are a number of other posts on this site about Othello, especially the film versions. They don't cover the most recent, called "O," which I haven't seen. There's also a review of the previous David Hamilton/Jabari Morgan collaboration on this play. (Clicking this link will start you out with this review again--just move on down the page for the rest.)

For those seeing their first production of Shakespeare’s Othello, North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka provides stylish and vivid entertainment as well as impressive individual moments and plenty of food for thought. But there are reasons that people return to this play (and other classics) even when they know the story of Othello the Moor, General of the army of Venice, and his trusted aide Iago, who leads Othello relentlessly into a fatal jealous rage.

With the same Shakespeare text, a different combination of actors and other theatre artists make their production unique, providing the audience with opportunity for different impressions and insights. That’s true at NCRT even though the director (David Hamilton) and lead actor (Jabari Morgan as Othello) collaborated on the last local Othello, at the Arcata Playhouse in 2007.

For example, Iago’s unwitting co-conspirator Roderigo is sometimes portrayed as completely clueless, but Victor Howard plays him as passionate, not entirely trusting Iago but willing to believe what is to his advantage. Ethan Edmonds gives Cassio substance and a reality that justifies him as Othello’s lieutenant. As Emilia (Iago’s wife and confidant of Desdemona, Othello’s young wife,) Megan Johnson releases suppressed and imposing power.

But the most telling portrayal is by Calder Johnson in an impressive performance, who plays Iago not as a capering fiend or bitter conniver but as mostly calm and deliberate (with only a few strangled moments of self-betrayal), worriedly helping everyone get what they want, while manipulating every willing victim to serve his evil ends: pretty much the model of a modern major psychopath.

Jabari Morgan is compelling and masterful as Othello, raising the game of everyone around him. Claudia Johani Guerrero is a lovely Desdemona, the still center of these crazed storms. JM Wilkerson gets the play off to a confident start with his authoritative Brabantio, Desdemona’s father. David Hamilton’s mostly solid and at times provocative direction, Pat Hamilton’s sumptuous costumes together with Daniel Lawrence’s somber and elegant set as well as Gabriel Groom’s sound and music and Bridget Barsotti’s lighting, all combine with these stellar performances for an accomplished production of high quality.

Audiences can also see this play differently in the changing context of the times. Racist anger directed at a black General plays differently when we have a black President. But whether on first or repeated view, theatre has been powerful for so many centuries because people learn something about themselves there, as individuals and societies. Drama and other literatures don’t always depict tragic consequences of ungoverned passions and weaknesses just to confirm they are human nature. The act of consciously portraying them suggests consciousness as itself a vital part of human nature as well.

Everyone in Othello is prey to passions, even the coldly calculating Iago. (As Robert Heilman notes, "Of the insights that create Iago, none is deeper than the recognition that a cool rationality may itself bring about or serve the irrational.") But the tragedy in this play results from the characters’ decisions. The thought may occur of applications beyond this story: becoming conscious of our powerful unconscious and how it works is essential to the human future.

Othello is at NCRT weekends through April 30.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-04-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

As local theatres compete for actors and audience, naturally they schedule their plays all at the same time. So after a relatively motionless March, we have the avalanche of April.

Opening Thursday (April 7) is Shakespeare’s Othello at North Coast Rep for a four-weekend run ending April 30. Director David Hamilton and actor Jabari Morgan as Othello reunite from their Shake the Bard production of this play in 2007. The cast also features Calder Johnson as Iago, Claudia Johani Guerrero as Desdemona and Ethan Edmonds as Cassio.

Also opening Thursday is the popular HSU 10 Minute Play Festival, which runs for two weekends in Gist Hall Theatre, Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30, with a Sunday matinee at 2 on April 17. It features seven student-written, directed and acted plays with the usual mix (and collision) of comedy and drama, of new takes on universal themes and up-to-the-second topical treatments. This year there’s a comedy about a guy addicted to milkshakes from Toni’s in Arcata. I’ve written more about the festival on HSU’s dime at HSU Stage & Screen.

Also on Thursday, Brooklyn's Under the Table opens Mad Dog and Big Guy Are: “In the Box” opens a three-night run at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre. Two Dell’Arte grads are the clowns who enter the stage and do their best to leave, despite obstacles. Showtime Thursday though Saturday is 8 p.m.

Then on Friday (April 8), Ferndale Rep opens South Pacific for a four-weekend run, closing May 1. South Pacific is a big, colorful musical — its most recent (and award-winning) New York revival boasted a cast of 40. It’s probably unique for being a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical play based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (by James Michener), and its Rodgers and Hammerstein songs quickly became standards in the 1950s. Its World War II story about U.S. armed forces personnel (especially lots of sailors) and the natives of a South Pacific island won praise for confronting racial issues, but in more recent years there have been complaints about racial and gender stereotypes. So navigating through all of that while preserving its romance and high spirits should be an interesting creative challenge.

I've received no photos or information on this production, but the Ferndale website flashes some photos that suggest that two of my favorite local performers, Brad Curtis and Christina Comer, are featured.

And this is just the beginning of the April avalanche. Stay tuned.

Stoppard's Start

2011-03-31T19:27:00.000-07:00

[This is an expanded version of my North Coast Journal review of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead at the College of the Redwoods, where it completes its run this weekend, April 1-3.]

Celebrated for his erudition and wit, British playwright Tom Stoppard never went to college. Admired for his stagecraft, his only experience in theatre was as a newspaper drama critic. His “overnight success,” Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, took years before an Oxford student group did it in 1966. It nearly failed, until rescued by praise in a newspaper column. Audiences, tipped off that it’s a comedy, came and laughed. Then Kenneth Tynan (another drama critic) got Laurence Olivier and the National Theatre interested, and Stoppard has been a major playwright ever since.

2011-03-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

Stoppard’s m.o. is as a clever wordsmith, but it’s not just the vocabulary or even the ideas—it’s the rhythms. They make his plays appealing to actors (for the movie version of R&G, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth kept exuberantly running scenes even after they’d been filmed) and especially appealing to read. That’s fortunate, because Stoppard’s plays aren’t often available to see.

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Above left--the original National Theatre production.
Above right, the New York premiere program. John Wood
played Guildenstern in New York, and he would become
the lead that Stoppard preferred for subsequent plays.

But there were new dimensions suggested by seeing the current College of the Redwoods production of R&G. As on the page, it’s still an “elsewhere in Elsinore” story while Hamlet is center stage. It’s still Samuel Beckett meets Beyond the Fringe (or perhaps Firesign Theatre—Stoppard was writing its prototype while in a traveling fellowship program with Firesign’s Peter Bergman.)

But on the stage it’s also Laurel and Hardy as scripted by Oscar Wilde. There’s the same fabled existential situation of two lost souls swept along in an indifferent world. But it occurred to me that there’s also a class aspect: they are powerless middle class gentlemen caught in the struggles of royals.

Not that this is necessarily the CR version’s viewpoint—it’s just a product of seeing live actors perform it. The mesmerizing words reveal structure and metaphor. These two characters are so gripped in the logic of fate, of formal tragedy, that time itself is disappearing, like an episode of Doctor Who (already a BBC hit in the 60s when Stoppard started writing for that TV network, around the time that R&G was first produced.)

In particular, the correspondences and refractions with the Players who entertain at Elsinore are more robust on stage than on the page. Rosencrantz and Gilderstern find themselves as trapped in their roles at court as actors in a play—which of course, they also are. They speculate that they could have refused the summons from the King, and they ruminate on decisions they could make, but in the end they are exactly like the Players—they have some latitude in what they play, but they are fated to be players at the beck and call of their patrons.

2011-03-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Except for some edited (or dropped) speeches, some funny physical business and the larger crowd scene for the ending eliminated, CR honors us with the whole play. The physical comedy written into the play but not played is a real loss, though. Stoppard’s theatricality is not just verbal: his early plays are full of physical humor. Sometimes he employs variations on tried and true gags (there's even a pants falling down scene in R&G) but often the visual and physical jokes are outrageous and completely integrated into the plot.

He added even more to R&G in the movie version, which he directed, including a running gag of Rosencrantz offhandedly inventing all kinds of things, including the Big Mac. (The movie DVD, by the way, is well worth obtaining, especially for the extensive interviews with Stoppard, Roth, Oldman and Richard Dreyfuss, whose performance as the Player is terrific.)

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At CR, Daniel Lawrence provides a simple set and Kjeld Lyth directs a straightforward production. Lexus Landry as Rosencrantz and Charlie Heinberg as Guildenstern are a physical contrast, and they use this for character as well as comedy. Landry, like Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy) is a big person who moves delicately, and that’s on view in his many tip-toe strides to see and report what’s happening elsewhere in Elsinore.

The two keep up with the relentless dialogue for the most part, and make its humor and rhythms sing at certain moments—even in the third act, remarkably, for this play takes stamina to perform.

The other key character is Dmitry Tokarsky as The Player, who provides crucial connections. Tokarsky is a seasoned actor, so he communicates what’s needed from this character, though he didn’t look entirely comfortable on that stage. Aaron Thiele as Hamlet and Jesse Chavez as Polonius make the best of their fewer moments. Other roles are played by Jonathan LaValley, Levi Goldin, Morgan Johnson, Raylene Henderson, George Thorpe, Laurene Thorpe and Amanda Wood. Many of the supporting players are CR students in their first post-high school shows. Denise Ryles and Rosemary Smith provide the theatrical costumes.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead completes its run this weekend, April 1-3 in the College of the Redwoods Forum Theater.

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Stoppard by now has an impressive body of work. A rough count of his original plays still available for performance plus his adaptations that have supplanted the originals in performance comes to about 30.   Some of his 1970s plays require large casts and elaborate staging (one calls for a symphony orchestra onstage), and so are done rarely (though ACT in San Francisco did Travesties in 2006. See photo at right. They also did Stoppard's Rock & Roll in 2008.)

But beginning with The Real Thing in 1982, even his full-lengths--which sometimes received elaborate staging in London or New York--were contained enough and with small enough casts that smaller theatres could do them. But (except perhaps for The Real Thing), theatres seldom do.  Hereabouts, not even the Oregon Shakespeare Festival does them--one in 1997 (Rough Crossing, an adaptation--it was my first summer here and I was tremendously jealous of people I knew who could afford to go up to see it)  and another adaptation, On the Razzle in 2007, which I happily did see. So I guess we can expect another in 2017?

I'm not aware of another North Coast production in the past decade.  Not even one of Stoppard's outrageously funny short plays. The Real Inspector Hound, for example, is perfect for community or college theatre. I saw it only once, a student production in western Pennsylvania, and I don't know why it isn't done more often. (This is from a production in the Boston area.)

Addendum for Stoppard Scholars

2011-03-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

Another factor in Tom Stoppard success--or at least a big part of his reputation from the beginning--was that he gave good interview. There are filmed or videoed examples on youtube, though most are recent, but the influential and substantive interviews were for print. The University of Michigan Press collected about 40 of them from 1967 to 1993 (though some are quite short) in Tom Stoppard in Conversation. This volume includes 3 interviews by Mel Gussow of the New York Times. Gussow published a separate book, Conversations with Tom Stoppard (Limelight Editions, 1995) that includes four more, plus Gussow's introductions and afterword. Gussow was always the Times second string critic, and really prospered in that position. Without the pressure of the Times lead reviews, he could pursue enthusiasms and delve in depth. He put together similar volumes of conversations with Harold Pinter, and with (and about) Samuel Beckett. I consider his career exemplary. (Apparently this book is out of print now--I see on Amazon it's alarmingly expensive.)

There's a good biography: Tom Stoppard, A Life by Ira Nadel (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002.) The biographical chat at the beginning of this piece is based largely on this book.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-03-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

College of the Redwoods presents Tom Stoppard's first hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, about what's happening elsewhere in Elsinore during Hamlet, in the CR Forum Theater on March 24-26, March 31-April 2 at 8 pm, with Sunday matinees at 2 pm on March 27 and April 3. Info: 707-476-4558.

Response

2011-03-16T21:51:00.001-07:00

It's time for me to answer the comments of Janet Waddell on my review in the North Coast Journal of the Ferndale Rep production of Amadeus. Those comments appeared first here at this site, then on the North Coast Journal site, and this week in the print edition. Apparently as a matter of Journal policy, I am not given an opportunity to respond along with the letter itself.

First I'll reproduce her comments in full, as they appear here and on the Journal site. The editors evidently cleaned up the misspellings for the print edition:

It makes me sad to see actors who go to work, school, and travel on a shoe- string budget trying hard to contribute to high quality productions only to be upstaged by a mediocre review. Mr. Kowinski's review of Ferndale Rep's "Amedeus" was mainly devoted to a detailed account of Kowinski's discomforture and annoyance at having to drive to Ferndale to review a show. It makes one wonder why others can drive to Ashland to review plays with out a feeling of martyerdom.

Then Mr Kowinski felt the need to tell us that he had seen the show years earlier in London and therefore there were no longer any surprises. The on-going ontological debate (Salieri vs Mozart) has ended by local proclamation. Has the rest of the world been informed? Should the MLA Abstracts be revised?

Kowinski should devote more time to writing plays. I've been in one of his and his his skill is in writing more than reviewing.

Janet R. Waddell

Janet Waddell does not disclose that she acted in this production. My review doesn't mention her. She had a leading role in Doubt at North Coast Rep last spring, a performance I complimented in my review.

I want to respond to the factual claims only. Here's the first one: "Mr. Kowinski's review of Ferndale Rep's "Amedeus" was mainly devoted to a detailed account of Kowinski's discomforture and annoyance at having to drive to Ferndale to review a show."

Here in total is the portion of my review, in which I name the day I saw the play: "(That was on Sunday — and with a 90-minute round trip and a nearly three-hour play, it pretty much was Sunday.)" This parenthetical expression in a review of some 490 words is what she refers to as a "detailed account" that the review was "mainly devoted" to. Her description is longer than this sentence.

She devotes a paragraph of comment on this assertion: "Then Mr Kowinski felt the need to tell us that he had seen the show years earlier in London and therefore there were no longer any surprises."

Here is the relevant part of my review: "I saw the play in 1982 at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, with original cast members Simon Callow and Felicity Kendal joined by Frank Finlay as Salieri. Such early productions and certainly the movie were memorable for their spectacle. The Ferndale Repertory production, entering its final weekend, does not have that luxury — even with Daniel Nyiri’s handsome set and Lori Knowles’ sumptuous costumes. But guided by visiting director Karma Ibsen, it has the virtue of being clear."

My judgment on the production was this: "This production provides an enjoyable community theater experience, with impressive presentations by Craig Benson, Kyle Ryan and the entire cast." I suggested that the play itself is mediocre.

She ends her letter with this: "Kowinski should devote more time to writing plays." On this we totally agree. She finishes with the opinion that "his skill is in writing more than reviewing." I can only hope this is true.

Race and the North Coast, & the KC 4, An Introduction

2011-03-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

photo: CSU--East Bay cast of Xtigone

From my latest Stage Matters column about the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival productions at HSU, the North Coast Journal cut a paragraph that had to do with race.

The paragraph followed the description and review of Xtigone, produced by CSU—East Bay. Here is the paragraph:

At the standing ovation the cast seemed relieved as much as elated. The journey from East Bay to Arcata was in some respects a long one. Those involved in the production were a diverse but largely black and Latino group, so they made sure all of their vans had at least one white passenger. Even so, one van was stopped by police.

The editorial objection was to the implication that the van was stopped as racial profiling, without providing evidence that this was the case. The objection was communicated to me in a couple of emails and a phone message. I responded by asking whether this editor knew of a case in which the police admitted to racial profiling. But I added that I could confirm nothing beyond what I wrote, so if the last sentence was objectionable, they might drop it. I assume it was then felt that the rest of the paragraph didn’t make much sense without it, so the whole graph was cut.

The paragraph doesn’t in my view assert any fact about racial profiling, one way or the other. It is about the expectations and experience of the people from East Bay who came here.

I was told by an East Bay faculty member about making sure every van had a white person in it, and that a van was stopped by police, much closer to Arcata than to Oakland. She also said that students were upset by seeing a Confederate flag in a store window in another town along 101.

Xtigone is a play about urban gun violence, brought to HSU and presented by a highly diverse cast from another CSU school in a very different part of California, the East Bay or Oakland area. By all accounts, the cast and other members of the production were very committed to what the play had to say. It took courage for them to bring it to this festival audience—which included a lot of schools in non-urban areas, and which looked largely white. And though it may surprise people on the North Coast to know this, it took courage to bring it to this part of California.

That idea, however, and trepidations based on race may surprise people here, and even offend them. But apart from the well-known fact that even well-heeled African Americans have been pulled over at least once for driving while black, perhaps I can illustrate my limited understanding of their point of view with this anecdote that happens to also involve theatre.

I was at the Eugene O’Neill Center during a summer National Playwrights Conference, one of four people who piled into a station wagon one afternoon to go into the nearest town of Waterford, Connecticut. Three of us were white, one of us was not, and he was August Wilson, the double Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. (By the way, I've embarrassed myself by referring to this summer as "ten years ago." It was 20. That's hard for me to fathom.)

We all had various errands, and eventually we all had to find cash machines. In those days not every bank card worked in every machine, so this involved several stops. Finally only August and I hadn’t gotten cash, and we searched with increasing urgency for another bank before they all closed. We found a small one, just at closing time. There was no bank machine outside, so we all rushed in the building, looking around frantically for one inside.

The people inside looked startled, and for a moment it crossed my mind that we might be giving the impression we were up to no good. After seeing there was no machine I was ready to dash out to the car and continue our search, but I saw August talking earnestly to one of the bank employees. He was patiently explaining what we were doing. He even introduced himself. The employee smiled, and said something to the effect that I know who you are, Mr. Wilson. If for no other reason, I realized, than we were all still wearing our name badges, which everyone was required to wear every day at the O’Neill.

Back in the car, August and I confirmed that we had the same thought simultaneously—that we may have looked a little like bank robbers for a moment. I thought it was very funny. August Wilson did not. It was not an impression that a black man could take lightly, he more or less said.

Sometimes you can imagine what things look like from another’s perspective. Sometimes you can’t. You just have to listen.

Of course it doesn’t take being black to see that racism is still real. Since some people woke up to understand that the President of the United States is black, it’s arguably gotten worse, or at least more overt. You can argue that the police have lots of reasons to stop a vehicle, and that the Confederate flag is a novelty item. I think you can also argue that the Old South does not have to rise again. In significant respects, it never left.

I will say that even this hearsay evidence is enough to concern some people at HSU, who see this with the perspective of a school that is trying to encourage diversity.

Now I’ll wind up these posts on the KCACTF productions by clarifying how they came to HSU. Throughout the year, schools (from community colleges to large universities) invite “respondents” from KCACTF to visit at least some of their productions. The respondents (who used to be called adjudicators) view the production one night and talk to the members of the production afterwards. I’ve been to several of these at HSU, and they are always interesting and valuable. In fact, I suggested to the student critics at our first session that they would find it helpful to attend such a session. The respondents, who are usually theatre faculty from various member schools, describe their responses in great detail. (And as a sidelight, the two respondents who came to HSU most recently to see An Evening With Rumi were Joseph Gilg and Bill Wolack. These two veterans of KCACTF were also the only two awardees of this year’s District 7 Golden Medallions, which I gather is the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award.)

Then before the regional festival, a committee of respondents selects four productions out of all they’ve seen to be “invited productions,” which means they are brought in to the festival. This year, the four plays I write about in the following posts were selected. Often this happens weeks or months after the play was originally produced, so everybody has to be gathered together again. Then they have to figure out how to re-mount their production to fit the host theatre, and to fit into the available trucks. At the festival they have a set number of hours to “load in” and set up the production, set their lights and sound, their projections and so on. And then they have a certain time to tear down and “load out” after the show.

This is quite a task under any conditions, but additional problems do arise. There were some lighting glitches for the second show (Xtigone) which I heard were at least partly due to a burnt-out circuit. Whatever it was, it seemed to also affect the third show (The Time Machine), which was still getting ready at show time. It began late, which in addition to further frustrating the crowd that in some cases stood for an hour outside or in the corridors, it probably penalized the production.

For after all the shows, another festival committee decides which of them should be “held,” or made eligible for selection to go to the national festival at the Kennedy Center in April. That doesn’t mean it will go—only four or five productions from all 8 regions are invited. But it seems that everything counts in determining the production to be “held,” including efficiency. That makes a certain amount of sense—because efficiency will be even more important to successfully mounting a show way back East at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

But it’s also worth noting in terms of this year’s festival productions. While Up was the production that was held—perhaps for the reasons I suggest in my post on it below—I wouldn’t call it the most significant production at the festival. In my view, that was Xtigone. This was a new production of a new play, ambitious and intriguing in both form and content, that’s clearly the first step for a play with a bigger future. More about that in the following post.

The K.C. Four: Xtigone

2011-03-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

This post and the following post are about the two original plays seen at HSU in mid-February as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. They are slightly longer versions than published in my Stage Matters column last week in the North Coast Journal. One of them is in fact shorter in the Journal than I’d planned. I will publish here the paragraph that was cut, and an explanation, early next week. Also a kind of introduction, explaining how these four plays came to the Van Duzer stage as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

It was not the production selected to be considered for presentation at the Kennedy Center in April. But in my view it was the most significant of the four productions, and one of the most significant to be produced on the North Coast in years: Xtigone, a re-telling of the Antigone myth (and the Sophocles play) to address urban gun violence, by Chicago playwright and actor Nambi E. Kelley, presented here by California State University—East Bay.

“This play is my response to the gunshots I hear outside my window,” Kelley wrote to me in an email, “and is for the children I see hanging in the streets with guns in their back pockets with no one stopping them from hurting themselves and each other.”

At the same time that Kelley was confronting such issues in Chicago, East Bay director Darryl V. Jones wanted to address gun violence against youth in the Bay Area. L. Peter Callendar, Artistic Director of the African American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, brought the two together, resulting in this production of Xtigone.

The play’s future already includes a staged reading at LaMaMa in New York (with the playwright playing Xtigone), and a full production in the fall by the African American Shakespeare Company. Though essentially a workshop production, the East Bay staging was finished enough to be judged as one of the four best college shows in the 9-state region this year.

I understood the story to be this: Marcellus (Ray Holston III) is the new mayor of Chicago, but his two nephews, each the head of a rival gang, are gunned down just as they were ending their violence at his behest. It turns out that Marcellus himself arranged the hit. His financial support comes from those who profit from guns. Tigs--the Antigone figure (Chalia La Tour)-- sister to one of the nephews, defies Marcellus and causes a community uproar. Marcellus condemns her to a living death, but when his reign and his family is threatened he relents, though too late to prevent a series of tragic consequences. The chorus implores him to “Listen to the people.”

Why address this topic using Antigone? “Because to me it is a play about a single voice affecting change, and about how revolution comes at the hands of the young,” Kelley responded. “I believe our children in this country, certainly in my city, are in a war, and the people who are supposed to protect them, don't.”

The rapid first act of the East Bay production revealed an idea whose time has come—the natural affinity of classical verse with hip hop rhythms and rap rhyming. Even when the words went by me, students around me were responding to them. (Tommy Shepherd contributed original music and sound.) Another impressive element was the integration of dance into the drama, choreographed by Laura Elaine Ellis.

There was a central set that suggested Greek theatre, with tall, narrow screens behind it that effectively projected images of the city. Three tall platforms in the back were home to the singers and dancers of a Greek chorus. After the gun murders there was a particularly haunting moment when the female chorus voices became sirens, wailing like the approaching police and emergency vehicles, while retaining the weary sound of repeated human pain.

The pace slowed in the second act, as the tragic story unwound. Bay Area star Donald Lacy as the seer had one of several tasty acting moments. Apart from technical mishaps, there were issues of clarity in presentation and story. But the energy and focus on stage was electric. It was an exciting event, with great potential.

The KC Four: The Time Machine

2011-03-05T23:49:00.000-08:00

The other first production of a play was The Time Machine or Love Among the Eloi by Seattle playwright Edward Mast, presented by Ohlone College of suburban San Francisco. I was told that this re-imagining of the H.G. Wells novel was written years ago but revised for this first staging.

The basic Wells’ story is there: an Edwardian era inventor travels to the far future and finds a beautiful but simple race, the Eloi, only later to discover a separate race of Morlocks for whom the Eloi are literally their lunchmeat. This play focuses mostly on the Eloi, giving them an invented language that’s chiefly about sex.

This imaginative production directed by Tom Blank had a sprawling set that encouraged a very acrobatic young cast. While their physical performances and the invented language itself were mesmerizing for a time, it all got repetitive. This may have been part of the point, but several of the student critics couldn’t get beyond their reaction to the one dimensional nature of this invented world, and how long the illustration of it went on.

The Eloi section was bookended by scenes in the inventor's home, somewhat as in the Wells novel. (It’s moved forward in time a couple of decades into the early 20th century, and the Traveller—as he was known in the novel—is given a name.) The time travel lighting effect itself was dazzling. It was probably a fairly simple computer program but unlike any I’d seen before.

In his re-telling, Mast seems to be playing mostly with ideas about Eden and the Fall, and only someone who already knows Wells’ intent to take the severe class divide of the industrial age to its logical future conclusion is likely to pick up its subtle presence in this production. One such correspondence is interesting—Mast makes the Morlocks literally the mealtime servants of the Eloi, though they are seemingly invisible to the Eloi. Back in his own time and house afterwards, the time traveler is startled when his own “invisible” servant speaks, and he looks at him with a bit of alarm.

The KC Four: Angels in America

2011-03-02T00:45:00.000-08:00

from the St. Mary College of California production of Angels in America

Under different circumstances, the four plays that HSU hosted during the mid-February Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival would be major theatrical events on the North Coast. In addition to attending the plays, I had the benefit of reading a dozen or so opinions of each from students who reviewed them as part of the festival (I was their guest critic) and also of asking questions and picking up stray facts during the week.

Of the four plays, two were first productions: Xtigone by Nambi E. Kelley, presented by California State University—East Bay, and The Time Machine or Love Among the Eloi by Edward Mast, presented by Ohlone College of suburban San Francisco. I wrote about those two in my North Coast Journal column that comes out this week.

The other two productions were of plays that some readers may have seen: Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and Bridget Carpenter’s Up. I’m posting here about those two. Once the column comes out about the first two, I’ll post it here with additional observations I couldn’t include within my word count.

Several years ago HSU presented both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America in the intimacy of Gist Hall Theatre, directed by John Heckel. It was a great way to experience the intensity of these plays and the richness of Kushner’s language. St. Mary College of California’s production of the first play, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches in the 800-seat Van Duzer Theatre emphasized its epic quality, with a staging that was probably more like its most prominent U.S. productions.

The large but light and quickly shifted sets with the American flag motif, and especially the use of music made it dynamic as well as big. Apart from some issues with articulation, and within the age constraints of college actors, the performances were convincing enough to make the characters and their relationships credible. But it was the overall scope of the show, directed by Reid Davis, that helped to relate these characters to the larger world and the times.

This was a 20th anniversary production. While faculty members at the festival expressed wonder that the play and what prompted it was that long ago, it meant their students hadn’t lived through the time when AIDS was a plague killing thousands and threatening everyone. The St. Mary’s cast and other production members learned about it by working on this play, meeting doctors and nurses who served in AIDS wards, and finally in an hour’s discussion with playwright Tony Kushner. Through seeing the play, many other students at the festival learned about it as well.

As a play reflecting an era, but also as a work of theatre and dramatic literature, Angels in America remains powerful—a great American play.

The KC Four: Up

2011-03-02T00:07:00.000-08:00

This is the closest I can come to a relevant photo. It's from the 2009 Syracuse Stage production of Up, in which Christopher DuVal appeared (though not in this photo.) DuVal directed the University of Idaho production, featured at the region 7 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

The other play that some readers may have seen before was Up, by American playwright and TV writer Bridget Carpenter, presented at HSU by the University of Idaho. It is one of several works inspired by the true story of Larry Walters, who soared to 15,000 feet in the air in a lawn chair tethered to weather balloons. To further confuse matters, its subtitle--“The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair--” is the title of an apparently different play. (It also has nothing directly to do with the recent Pixar film called Up.) This play takes place 15 years after that flight, when “Walter” is searching vainly for his second act, while life goes on for his wife (a postal worker and chief breadwinner) and teenage son.

It’s been produced several times, including at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2006, where I saw it. It’s likely where the Idaho director, Christopher DuVal also saw it. He was acting at OSF that year—I saw him play Aytolycus in The Winter's Tale. He later acted in the 2009 Syracuse Stage production of Up.

As the play opens, Walter is working on a new invention, desperately seeking inspiration and support from another dreamer—Philippe Petite, then in the news for walking a tightrope between the Manhattan Twin Towers. Meanwhile his wife Helen supports the family by walking a postal route. Their teenage son Mikey meets the new girl in school, a smart and sunny outsider with a dark past, glorying in her pregnancy. She lives with her Aunt Chris, who involves Mikey in her home-based sales business.

Maybe because I’ve been seeing a lot of older multi-act plays forced into today’s two-act structure, I found myself especially impressed by how Carpenter ends the first act, with a promising moment of bliss: Mikey had made a lot of money from Aunt Chris, he and Maria are in love and he’s volunteered to be a father to her child. Even Walter is cheerfully going off to work each day and bringing home the bacon.

It’s not how you’re supposed to end the first act, which is with some crisis to entice the audience back to see the resolution. But this works in the odd way the whole play works. Emotionally, you are thrilled because everything is coming up roses, so you start intermission with good feeling. Yet there’s also nowhere to go but down, and you have to know that there’s an entire act to come, and probably lots of trouble ahead. So the expectation of the crisis that needs to be resolved is there, even if the crisis is just potential, just implied in the fact that this is a two act play.

And of course the second act reveals that little is as it seems, and every character hurts another. But by now, we care for these characters—or at least one of them. The teenage son (Mikey) changes more visibly than any other character (to Michael). This is a great acting role, and the actors in both productions I saw (Phoenix Tage for Idaho) made the most of it, winning audience affection with the gangly teen of the first scenes, through his transformations and trials.

If memory serves (and by now it’s mostly feeling memory), affection for the other characters was mixed at OSF. Audience loyalties divided on Walter the dreamer vs. Helen the responsible if disillusioned and perhaps distant wife. There was similar ambivalence about Maria, the unwed mother-to-be. But in the Idaho production, all of these characters were sympathetic.

That’s how they were played, aided by the rest of the production. The sets at OSF were more detailed and realistic—a fully equipped kitchen, a realistic living room for Aunt Chris. The portrayals also seemed to go deeper into drama, into character and relationship flaws, particularly in the wife Helen, and her seemingly quirky habit of referring to her “real husband” and “real family” when her actual husband and son weren’t living up to her expectations. There was more pain and portent in this production.

The Idaho set was simpler, more symbolic, and dominated by a luminous sky blue backdrop. The characterizations were equally luminous, seemingly bathed in sunlight. As Maria, Brittany Brook was especially ethereal, almost saintly. But this otherworldly, lit-from-within quality was in all the characters, with the exception of Aunt Chris. The fall for the family was violent, but this transcendent quality seemed to reappear immediately.

As the director’s notes indicate, the Idaho production explores the act of dreaming—a spiritual act that gives meaning to a person’s life—within the context of everyday demands and relationships. The metaphor of flight, of transcendence, is inherent in Walter’s great ascending moment, just as the metaphor of balance is suggested by the tightrope walker, who appears now and then in imagined dialogue with Walter. (This was the part that director DuVal played in Syracuse, played here by Nicholas Witham.)

But one of the student reviewers suggested another idea: drifting. Walter went up in his balloon-tethered lawn chair, but he also drifted through the air, and his life since then has been a kind of drifting, in search of another defining act. Drifting of that kind is often an essential part of creativity, and the one that causes the most trouble.

Almost everything the family had at the beginning of the play was lost by the end, including their home and their illusions. Their re-starting point was Walter’s original dream, by now a memory. In the OSF production, the function of saving the scene of his triumph for the end seemed mixed: nostalgia, lost youth and faith, as well as possible renewal. The Idaho production, especially through the luminous portrayals, was clearly focused on renewal. But it still can’t be called a happy ending.

Seeing it for the second time, I admired Up more as a play. It presents compelling characters and narratives, and for the most part interweaves them effectively. The characters and situations are recognizable—even archetypal-- and yet not predictable. They are believable even when a bit fantastic. It's a big enough play to allow these different interpretations, with their respective rewards. It’s one of those plays that raises more questions than it answers.

As several of the student reviewers noted, the Idaho production had some timing and audibility problems related to this new staging in a larger space. This was a common problem. Xtigone was originally designed for a thrust stage, not the proscenium of the Van Duzer. The Time Machine probably had the most radical change—born in a 100 seat theatre, where the audience was immersed in the action, it made the transition to a larger space and only then to the much larger Van Duzer stage.

Still, in terms of technical and scenic demands, Up was by far the simplest of the four productions. While the actors were very good, they also had very good characters to play. Combined with a play that’s been refined and tested, it’s no surprise that Up was the production that got “held”: sent on to the national judges who will consider it as one of the four or five plays out of the eight regions that will be produced at the Kennedy Center in April.

New and Old Business

2011-02-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

photo: Craig Benson and Kyra Gardner in Amadeus at Ferndale Rep.

The new business: I've changed the template for this blog, under some duress--the old one, which I liked, wasn't working anymore, at least with my browser. I selected this one in a hurry, so it may change again. Update 4/2: I have changed it again; I like it better.

The old business: Since a comment on the previous post by a cast member of Ferndale Rep's production of Amadeus complains about my North Coast Journal review of that show, I thought it best to reproduce the review here as well. I usually expand on the Journal reviews when I post them here, but in this case I will post the Journal review as published. (I hadn't posted a photo from the show before because I didn't have one. I stole this one from the Journal site. What gets sent to the Journal doesn't necessarily get sent on to me. And there were no photos on the Ferndale Rep web site.)

Mozart Is Obscene But Still Heard at Ferndale Rep
In the 1980s Amadeus — both play and movie — caused a sensation. When British playwright Peter Shaffer portrayed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his 20s as an “obscene child,” and the forgotten composer Antonio Salieri as his murderer — either literally (in the movie) or figuratively (in the play) — many splashy media debates ensued. (The cause of Mozart’s death at age 35 is uncertain. Shaffer’s play takes many liberties with known facts.)

But mostly Amadeus put a human face on this classical composer and both provided and inspired new exposure to his music. I don’t think it goes too far to say that Mozart’s standing with the general public today would not be as high without Amadeus in the ‘80s.

I saw the play in 1982 at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, with original cast members Simon Callow and Felicity Kendal joined by Frank Finlay as Salieri. Such early productions and certainly the movie were memorable for their spectacle. The Ferndale Repertory production, entering its final weekend, does not have that luxury — even with Daniel Nyiri’s handsome set and Lori Knowles’ sumptuous costumes. But guided by visiting director Karma Ibsen, it has the virtue of being clear. Craig Benson as Salieri and Kyle Ryan as Mozart speak and act so that every word can be understood. The rest of the cast does likewise (with the unfortunate exception of Kyra Gardner’s final speech as Constanze, Mozart’s wife. But Gardner is otherwise a convincing and audible Constanze.)

The play itself is very straightforward in form. It begins with a lot of exposition, and alternates explanation and illustration with little suspense while it hammers at its themes: the infantile genius Mozart who turns the mundane into legend, and the conniving and conventional Salieri who turns legends into the mundane, paralleled by their imagined relationships with God.

There are subtle layers, and the play does attempt the difficult combination of comedy and melodrama. But it is remarkably static, with little visible character development, at least when I saw it. (That was on Sunday — and with a 90-minute round trip and a nearly three-hour play, it pretty much was Sunday.) The production includes some recorded Mozart but especially in comparison to the movie, too few notes. There are also important plot elements that screenwriter Peter Shaffer turned into major movers of the movie’s considerable drama that playwright Peter Shaffer left ambiguous or oddly vague.

The play remains informative, with three wonderful speeches about Mozart’s music that still sing. This production provides an enjoyable community theater experience, with impressive presentations by Craig Benson, Kyle Ryan and the entire cast. But its particular impression on me was in confirming what I suspected in 1982, more obvious now that it is stripped of its initial shock value. At play’s end, Salieri describes himself as the patron saint of mediocrity. He therefore may also be the patron saint of this play.

Amadeus completes its run at Ferndale Rep this weekend, ending Feb. 27. [note: that means the show is now over.]

This North Coast Weekend

2011-02-23T23:31:00.000-08:00

The Dell’Arte Cabaret is Friday through Sunday (Feb. 25-27) at 8 pm in the Carlo Theatre. This evening of favorite scenes and new stuff includes a sneak preview of Mary Jane: A Musical, being developed for this summer’s Mad River Festival. The cabaret is especially notable for featuring a veteran Dell’Arte lineup not often seen together these days, including Joan Schirle (that's her in the photo--a piece she did at HSU for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival), Michael Fields, Tim Gray, Barbara Geary, Joe Krienke, Lauren Wilson and Ronlin and Donlin Foreman. There may be few opportunities like this again.

Mama Juggs: Three Generations Healing Negative Body Images, a one-person show by 'rie Shontel plays Thursday and Friday at 8 in the Studio Theatre at HSU.

Amadeus plays its final weekend at Ferndale Rep Friday and Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2. I review it in this week's Journal. Craig Benson's performance as Salieri is interesting--his Italian is excellent. He seems to play him as a jolly bureaucrat sort of mediocrity, without the darkness or the appreciation that Murray Abraham brought to the character in the movie--but then the movie offers so much more opportunity for those colors, and for drama, than the play. Kyle Ryan has perfected the Tom Hulce/Mozart giggle.

The Lawn continues at Redwood Curtain, My Fair Lady at North Coast Rep. Quite a few choices this weekend.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-02-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

Dell'Arte International school second years present Adaptations Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 17 -20 at 8 p.m. Amadeus continues at Ferndale Rep, The Lawn at Redwood Curtain and My Fair Lady at North Coast Rep.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-02-09T00:17:00.000-08:00

photo: Donald Forrest in The Lawn at Redwood Curtain

North Coast Prep presents Shattering Silence, its annual senior/junior class production Wednesday Feb. 9 through Saturday Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in HSU’s Gist Hall Theatre. Director Jean Bazemore and students have drawn elements from The Marriage of Figaro, Les Miserables and Burning Patience, a tribute to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda by playwright Antonio Skarmeta, for this new piece. For information or reservations call Eve at 822-1670.

Thursday Feb. 10, Redwood Curtain opens its 2011 season in Eureka with a world premiere: The Lawn, a new comedy by Los Angeles-based playwright Cody Henderson, directed by Dell’Arte’s Michael Fields. Described as an irreverent take on 1950s suburbia, it features local all-stars Donald Forrest, Lynnie Horrigan, Clint Rebik and Christina Jioras, as well as newcomers Barney Baggett and Molly Armstrong. After two nights of previews, the playwright will be there for the festivities on Saturday, the official opening night.

On Friday, Feb. 11, Ferndale Rep opens Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, a play with elements of drama, intrigue and comedy which speculates on the rivalry between court composer Antonio Salieri and the impetuous genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This production features Kyle Ryan as Mozart, Craig Benson as Salieri, and Kyra Gardner as Mozart’s wife Constanze. Karma Ibsen is guest director.

Check back late Sunday for the lineup of visiting productions at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival regionals at HSU starting Monday. Or go over right now to HSU Stage & Screen.

This North Coast Weekend

2011-02-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

Dell’Arte International first year students present their evening of Commedia with “lovers, thieves, irate fathers, non-stop talkers, posers, zanies and charlatans” this weekend, Thursday through Saturday (Feb. 3-5) at 8 pm in the Carlo.

My Fair Lady continues at North Coast Rep in Eureka through February 26.

Classy Lady

2011-02-03T03:27:00.000-08:00

I neglected to herald the opening of My Fair Lady at NCRT last weekend here. So to partially make up, I'm posting a longer version of my Journal column on the production. Update: I've added a final thought on the structure and length.

The 1956 Broadway production of My Fair Lady, written by Lerner and Loewe, with legendary director Moss Hart and costumes by Cecil Beaton, won lots of theatre awards. But it was a national phenomenon in ways that that can never happen anymore, regardless of how much money Broadway blockbusters now collect. Its stars (especially Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews) became staples on the three television networks’ variety shows, its songs became radio hits. The original cast album was the second biggest seller of 1956, and #1 in 1957. A cover version of “On the Street Where You Live” was a top- forty single when “Hound Dog” led the charts. In subsequent years when Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Nat King Cole, Dinah Shore and Rosemary Clooney each had TV shows, they all sang and recorded songs from My Fair Lady.

So it was that these songs (“I Could Have Danced All Night,” “I’ve Become Accustomed to Her Face,” etc.) were imprinted on my childhood, even if I was impatiently enduring them, waiting for the next comedian on Steve Allen or Ed Sullivan. Such American as well as Broadway standards are probably still at least vaguely familiar melodies, but today’s audiences have the opportunity to experience My Fair Lady afresh.

There are hints of their recorded forbearers in the current North Coast Repertory Theatre production: a little Rex Harrison in some of Michael Thomas’ Henry Higgins scenes, a touch of Julie Andrews in Caitlin McMurtry’s Eliza Doolittle, even some Jeremy Brett tremolo in Kristopher Buihner’s young Freddy, Eliza’s callow suitor. But mostly they make this show their own. Thomas brings out Higgins’ irony, and McMurtry has such glowing energy that she seemed ready to burst the confines of the set as she brings new life and reality to “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

In the story, lightly adapted from G. B. Shaw’s play Pygmalion, professor Henry Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering pick up a lower class flower seller, and through linguistic training convince upper class Europeans that she’s one of them. As Pickering, Jim Berry has the delightful advantage of being English, as well as an amusing and convincing actor. His wife Isobel Berry did wonderful work as dialect coach, especially with Catlin McMurtry who had to learn two classes of British accents. This was just one aspect of her scintillating vocal and acting performance.
[continued after photo]

2011-02-03T03:14:00.000-08:00

The style and care in the set (Daniel Lawrence) and the costumes (designer Marcia Hutson and a host of milliners responsible for those fantastic hats) are remarkable. Sitting closer to the stage than usual, I couldn't help noticing how even the painted cobblestones were carefully and even artistically done.

With musical direction by Molly Severdia and David Powell, there’s fine ensemble singing. Director Rene Grinnell pulled it all together. But attention must be paid to that fabulous song and dance man, Bob Wells. From his opening number (“With A Little Bit of Luck”) his performance as Eliza’s father was astonishing. It did better than stop the show—it energized it forward.

Given that this North Coast Rep stage limits any production, and has unfortunate if inevitable consequences, such as wasted downstage space and confined upstage sets in this show. And it won't be mistaken for a professional production, with some obvious musical problems. Nor is it the best musical I've seen there. But...My Fair Lady is a solid NCRT production, with the kind of shining moments that make live theatre unique and necessary.
[more]

2011-02-03T02:42:00.000-08:00

There’s more Shaw in My Fair Lady than you might expect in a musical adaptation. A lot of lines—especially in the early scenes--are straight out of Pygmalion, together with what Shaw wrote for the 1938 movie version. Apart from the still-infectious songs, the chief difference is the ending, which is left open in the musical, favoring the idea that Eliza remains with Higgins. Shaw opposed this. He wrote a prose coda for the play in which Eliza stays friends with Higgins and Pickering, but she marries Freddy and they open a flower shop together, which prospers in part because of an encounter with H.G. Wells. Very Shavian.

There's a BBC film production of the actual play Pygmalion from the 60s or 70s with a delightful Lynn Redgrave. It includes a photo montage at the end that gives the outlines of Shaw's prose ending--principally Eliza's wedding to Freddy and their flower shop. The 1938 movie produced by Gabriel Pascal dropped some scenes and Shaw added others, plus (as I mentioned) an ending he didn't like. However he did get an Academy Award for the adaptation, and the film was nominated for several other main Oscars. I haven't seen it in awhile but I recall Wendy Hiller (who had done the role on stage) as a striking Eliza, partly because of her unique looks--she's not Hollywood pretty, and can look pretty severe. Anyway she produced a relationship with Higgins with a very different feel, especially at the end, which was also influenced by Leslie Howard as Higgins.

However at the moment I'm watching the 1941 film of Shaw's Major Barbara, also produced by Pascal and also starring Wendy Hiller. Her costar is Rex Harrison (who would star in My Fair Lady on screen as well as on stage), and this time Pascal also directs.. But what a production! Music by William Walton, David Lean as an assistant director, Ronald Neame as cinematographer, Vincent Korda art director, Cecil Beaton costumes, with Robert Morley, Sybil Thorndike and a very young Deborah Kerr. And written as no one else could write it, by Bernard Shaw. And it was shot in London during the Blitz. Amazing!

Shaw was quite serious about the importance of standard spoken English. "German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners," he wrote in the preface to Pygmalion, "English is not even accessible to Englishmen." He thought the problem was non-standard spelling, and the solution was phonetics. Perhaps he hadn't realized how influential mass media would be in standardizing both spelling and pronunciation. Class differences in speech persist, perhaps in England more than in other countries, but dialects are everywhere.

One more thing: about dramatic structure and time. Pygmalion is in five acts (which in classic dramatic structure means one act each for exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.) My Fair Lady, it seems to me, has a natural three act structure: the bet and the education of Eliza, ending with the "Rain in Spain;" the second act is the testing of her success, especially in the party; the third act is the resolution (or lack of it) between Eliza and Higgins. But these days everything gets poured into two acts, and My Fair Lady--like a lot of plays--is awkwardly divided.

NCRT has the additional problem of long intermissions when it has a full house, because of limited rest rooms. (It's certainly not unique in this regard locally.) So the second act also suffers from all this, as the evening starts to drag. In this situation there's no reason for the second overture at the start of the second act. Suffering through one is enough.

Shakespeare Naked

2011-01-24T23:07:00.000-08:00

Could it be a trend, oh pretty please say it is. Ben Brantley in the New York Times reviews a production of Shakepeare's Cymberline by the Fiasco Theater, and contrasts it with the megaproduction literally next door to it--Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark--as well as the prevailing fashion for producing Shakespeare. First, Spidey:

"Credibly portraying incredible feats of derring-do; bringing elaborate battle scenes to life in ways in which you can tell who’s on what side and who’s winning; organically blending music into the action and fluidly evoking shifts of time and scene: with a cast of exactly six and a budget that (I feel safe in assuming) is the merest fraction of the $65 million lavished on “Spider-Man,” the Fiasco Theater makes such accomplishments seem like child’s play in its charming production of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.” True, unlike the aerially acrobatic “Spider-Man,” this show offers nothing that flies — unless you count the spirits of the actors and the audience watching them."

(In case you haven't been following this, the Spider-Man production has been plagued with problems, the most obvious of which (apart, apparently, from the script) has been trouble getting Spidey's wall-crawling and flying through the air accomplished without splattering the actor. That's the background to Brantley's joke, though it isn't really funny that several people have been injured already, one of them seriously.)

Then...

The Fiasco “Cymbeline,” like the British director Declan Donnellan’s version of several years ago, starts from the premise that a complicated story is best told simply. There is next to no conceptual varnish on this production, which is directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld... The stage at the New Victory is correspondingly naked. The set (designed by Jean-Guy Lecat, lighted by Tim Cryan) is made up of two crates, a sheet and what is accurately described in the program as a “fabulous trunk” (designed by Jacques Roy), which figures significantly in the headless corpse scene. The costumes (by Whitney Locher) are a comfortable medley of breeches, shirts and dresses that suggest a fairy-tale timelessness. The acting is similarly free of elaborate interpretive flourishes...Though everyone speaks the speech with clarity and feeling, no one is serving up complex psychological portraiture. Nor is anyone doing the sort of cartoonish goofing on their characters that has become all too common to Shakespeare these days."

His conclusion: "Despite the doubling, tripling and quadrupling of roles, I have never seen a “Cymbeline” as easy to follow as this one. The music (overseen by Mr. Steinfeld and performed by the cast), which ranges from Renaissance madrigals to hillbilly ballads, unobtrusively signals changes of tone and scene.

And while the few props and sticks of furniture are put to wonderfully multifarious use (that multi-paneled trunk really is pretty fabulous), there’s none of the aren’t-we-clever, self-congratulatory spirit that often accompanies such acts of theatrical legerdemain. For once, the play itself really is the thing, and nothing is allowed to block its view, even actorly vanity."

Anyone hereabouts contemplating such an approach has to appreciate first that doing theatre simply and cheaply is a very good strategy for theatres without a lot of money. But also that such theatre depends on really knowing and exploring the text with really good actors. When I see Shakespeare full of gimmicks, the first thing I think of is that Shakespeare scares these folks half to death.

Brantley's review and this production are both worth considering. They suggest to me the possibility that this naked approach could come back into style, as it was briefly in the early 60s, which at least grants the permission of fashionability to the insecure. But it's also worth noting that Cyberline is judged a minor work, and simply telling the story has befuddled a lot of earlier attempts (though I doubt there have been that many.) Something slightly different might be necessary for one of the major plays. But the idea is sound. The play's the thing. Not the bells and whistles.

This North Coast Weekend--and Beyond

2011-01-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

Dell'Arte opens Three Trees: A clown play with rats and guns tonight (January 20) for two weekends, Thursday through Saturday nights at 8 pm in the Carlo, ending Jan. 29. The show is for mature audiences, and reunites Stephanie Thompson, Lauren Wilson and Joe Krienke from their Dell'Arte school days, when they first clowned around together.

With this show the post-holidays January lull ends and theatrical (and related) activity begins to pick up. Next weekend is already full: North Coast Rep opens My Fair Lady, and there are not one but two benefit events on Saturday (Jan. 29), the Redwood Curtain live radio show and dinner, and the Arcata Eye Ball at the Arcata Theater. More on those anon.

North Coast Theatre and Journalism

2011-01-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

In my year end column, I mentioned the shrinking attention to theatre in local media. Some of it is the product of how the newspaper business is playing out locally. We had for awhile what was probably an artificial abundance, as two Eureka dailies were battling each other. So for a few years, a show could get as many as four or even five reviews, though three was more likely. That newspaper war, plus other economic and media factors, ended one of the dailies and wounded the other.

Then the Eureka Times Standard further wounded itself by turning over its weekly arts magazine to some rap-enthralled white kids who ignored local theatre almost totally. Community and university theatres that used to get Northern Lights covers for almost every production never got covers for anything again, and only sometimes got any kind of story inside. The daily outside the magazine ignored them as well.

After that experiment failed, the Times Standard abdicated local performing arts coverage altogether--a stunning act for the only daily newspaper in the area. They pushed off their weekly magazine to a supermarket giveaway, the Tri-City Weekly, which several years later still gets spotty circulation here in Arcata and I suspect elsewhere. It also has a peculiarly long lead time, which means that shows with a two week run may not get reviewed at all before the show is history.

Meanwhile, the Arcata Eye was forced by its economic plight to cut staff and pages. I can't remember a theatre review there in the past couple of years. While the Humboldt Beacon (now owned by the same company as owns the Times Standard and the Tri-City Weekly) has the biggest and best arts section of the three, it also has spotty circulation outside its main focus of southern Humboldt. My twice monthly (on average) Stage Matters column in the North Coast Journal is supplemented by occasional brief previews in the calendar section. But theatre is not much of a priority. Nor is my column, which seems to be the only regularly appearing column that the Journal doesn't promote.

Part of all this is probably the consultant-driven attitude that younger readers are the hope of the media, as opposed to older audiences who typically attend theatre. Advertisers like younger readers because they are more susceptible to their claims--for example, the idea that using a particular product might make them more attractive. Of course demographics suggests that older people are the ones who actually read newspapers, and that this is a pretty big group in Humboldt, but these tend to be overlooked if not ignored.

But to me the most disturbing aspect of this situation is the apparent dearth locally of young writers who can write about theatre, or any of the arts outside of popular music and maybe movies. I don't see the high school newspapers so maybe there's some hope there, but the HSU Lumberjack is appalling in this regard. A competently written arts article or review is so rare in that paper that I can't think of a single one in the past ten years. The Lumberjack pays little and usually no attention to the theatre and music events partly created by fellow students in the university which presumably is its focus. Its few attempts have been either embarrassingly inept or at best just substandard journalism, even in comparison with the rest of the newspaper.

I've made the argument in the past that ignoring these events is bad journalism because the Lumberjack fails to inform its student readers of events that they have already partly paid for (through the same activity fees that partially fund the Lumberjack), and many of which they can consequently attend for free. But after all these years I suspect it goes deeper. Does the HSU journalism program even attempt to teach arts reporting or criticism? If so, what does all this say about the effectiveness of that teaching?

Right now there are but two people in all of Humboldt County who write regularly about theatre. Beti Trauth, long a champion for local theatre, writes for the Tri-City Weekly and the Humboldt Beacon. I write for the Journal. Neither of us is a salaried full time staff writer. We're piece workers. I don't know for sure about Beti, but I don't get health care, and I don't even get mileage or expenses. There is to my knowledge only one radio show that interviews theatre artists regularly, and that's Artwaves on KHSU, hosted by Wendy Butler who used to write theatre reviews for the Beacon, and was the arts editor at the now defunct Eureka Reporter. When the three of us wise up and go, who will replace us? I would be happy to learn that I'm wrong.

Year's End

2010-12-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

My year end column is in this week's Journal. It's accompanied by a front page hah-hah apparently about the supposed elitism of spelling theatre with an "re," and I'm not sure why the editors chose to italicize "frontier theatre" as if I was naming a new TV show. But then, I suppose I don't understand them any better than they get me. The column selects Dell'Arte's Blue Lake: The Opera (photo above) and the HLOC's Pirates of Penzance for the most ink, mostly because they are the productions I most clearly remember. Although this was supposed to be about the calendar year, I could hardly remember last spring. Whatever. So ringing out the old, and this portentous decade. And sappy blue ear everybody.

Stage Matters?

2010-12-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

Stage Matters from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.

I was on the road when "Dell'Arte" left a comment on this blog pointing me to this video, and I've only now gotten around to checking it out. It's a nice TCG piece and an appropriate video to post while I contemplate my end of the year entry in my column, which is called...wait, I know it, it's...oh yeah, Stage Matters.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-12-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

Second years at Dell'Arte International School present their Character Projects this weekend, 8 pm in the Carlo on Thursday (Dec. 9), Friday and Saturday.

Meanwhile, Dell'Arte's Christmas Show, The Musicians of Bremen continues on the road (Thursday at 7:30 in Scotia's Winema Theater, Friday at Orick Elementary at 6pm, Saturday in Port Orford at the Community Center at 7:30, and Sunday at Trinidad Elementary at 7:30.) Permission to revise and extend my remarks? Furthering the cartoon style theme, the old Comicolor cartoon version of the Town Musicans of Bremen has a musical score by Carl Stalling, who also did the music for the classic Warner Brothers cartoons (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.) This cartoon--as many Warner ones do for decades--begins a scene in the country with a bit of the beginning of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. In fact the Morning section of the suite is familiar to several generations mostly from these cartoons. And sure enough, the Dell'Arte show begins with this music...Coincidentally enough, this weekend (Friday and Sunday nights at 8pm in Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus), the Humboldt Symphony is playing the entire Peer Gynt Suite. Later they're joined by the Humboldt Chorale and University Singers for some bang-up orchestral and choral Christmas carols.

Also at HSU, An Evening with Rumi completes its two-weekend run (photo above) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm in the Gist Hall Theatre. I saw it last weekend and apart from serving up more profundity per minute than any other show of the past year, it features some excellent individual performances from both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Two of the best come from the veteran Bernadette Cheyne and the youngest cast member, Erin Harris. But they aren't the only ones. There's some fine ensemble work as well. I had moments of illumination and appreciation, and I'm sure in savoring these I missed others. This is a show that would repay more than one visit. There is music, though why this play got dumped into the Music listings in the Journal I don't understand.

Also continuing this weekend: Amahl and the Night Visitors at Ferndale Rep (Thurs-Sat at 8, Sun. at 2), Charley's Aunt at North Coast Rep (Thurs-Sat at 8) and the Rialto Theatre's Inspecting Carol at the Arcata Playhouse (Fri-Sun at 8.)

This North Coast Weekend

2010-12-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

If you wanted one word to describe the poetry of the Sufi mystic called Rumi, it might be “praise”—for the fullness of existence and the given world. But his words can be surprising and bracing, ironic as well as ecstatic. They often get to the heart and soul of things.

Beginning Thursday at HSU, a theatre piece created by North Coast actors and musicians will use only Rumi’s words, as rendered by Coleman Barks whose The Essential Rumi and other books helped make Rumi the best-selling poet in America. The cast of students, faculty and community members chose the verses most meaningful to them, and director John Heckel guided the theatrical exploration, with music by Seabury Gould and the cast.

An Evening with Rumi runs Thursday through Saturday for the next two weekends (until Dec. 11) at 7:30 pm in the Gist Theatre, with a matinee this Sunday at 2. There’s more information (which I assembled on HSU’s dime) at HSU Stage and Screen.

Also opening this weekend is Inspecting Carol, a comedy with a Christmas theme by Dan Sullivan, produced by the new North Coast outfit called Rialto Theater Company. Directed by Samantha McLaughlin, it features Rae Robison (also costumes), JM Wilkerson, Megan Johnson, Calder Johnson (also lighting), Jennifer Trustem, Victor Howard, Chris Redd, Alex Jones, Joseph Waters, David Hamilton and Shirley Santino. Beginning Thursday, it plays for three weekends at the Arcata Playhouse, ending December 19. Info: http://www.rialtotheatercompany.com/.

Humboldt Light Opera's youth Production Workshop (ages 11-18) presents A Frank Loesser Review (with music from Guys and Dolls, Most Happy Fella and other Loesser musicals) at 7:30 p.m. Friday, December 3rd and 2 p.m. Saturday, December 4th, at the Redwood Curtain Theatre in Eureka.

Then Saturday night, HLO’s female ensemble, the Babes, will perform holiday songs at the Morris Graves Museum as part of Eureka Arts Alive, 6-9 pm. Joining them will be The Babe Magnets quartet as well as featured HLOC singers Kevin Richards, Katherine Kinley and James Gadd. http://hloc.org/.

And somewhere near you (if you're in Humboldt County) there will be a performance of Dell'Arte's Christmas Show, the Musicians of Bremen. I review it in this week's NC Journal, and there are lists of where the free shows will be performed at the Dell'Arte site and the Journal. Donations of canned food are accepted for distribution to local food banks.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-11-24T22:22:00.000-08:00

Two holiday productions begin this weekend. Dell’Arte’s touring show this year is The Musicians of Bremen, based on a tale first recorded by the Brothers Grimm. It's directed by Michael Fields, with music by Tim Gray. I'll be reviewing it in the NC Journal next week.

Ferndale Repertory Theatre presents the Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors (photo above) by Gian Carlo Menotti. It was written for network television in 1951, so it’s short enough for children. The Ferndale production features soprano Elisabeth Harrington, Jacob Smith (as the boy Amahl), Luke Sikora, James Wright and Steve Nobles. Dianne Zulegar is music director, Daniel Nyiri scence designer, and Linda Maxwell choreographer. Justin Ross and Jonathan Webster accompany on keyboards.

I was a child when Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered on TV. I remember that my (Italian) grandmother loved it, and it was shown on TV every Christmastime during the 50s--sometimes called the Italian Decade in popular music, not only for crooners like Sinatra and Perry Como but for the popularity of opera music. After all, the first million selling record in America was by Enrico Caruso, and operatic voices like Mario Lanza were often heard on radio in those years.

But even in these different musical times, the Three Tenors phenomenon suggests openness to the operatic. Opera is also generally more exciting live--including the singing. Amahl and the Night Visitors is sung in English, and since the story that involves the three Magi and the Nativity is told from a child’s point of view, it remains a family Christmas classic.

Amahl and the Night Visitors opens at Ferndale Rep on Friday November 26 and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm until December 19. The Musicians of Bremen has its opening weekend Friday (Nov. 26) through Sunday evenings at 7:30 pm in Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre before heading out on its traditional North Coast tour, returning to the Carlo Dec. 16-19. Continuing: Charley's Aunt at North Coast Rep (my review is in the Journal this week.)

This North Coast Weekend

2010-11-18T19:55:00.000-08:00

North Coast Rep opens the comedy Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas, directed by Nathan Emmons on Thursday November 18, and continues Fridays and Saturdays through December 11 at 8 pm, with one more Thursday performance on December 9. The cast features Anders Carlson, Jasper Anderton, Neal Schoonmaker, Jackie Bookstein , Lanelle Chavez, Kathleen Marshall, Brittany Williams, David Moore, David Simms, and Phil Zastrow.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-11-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

Jeff DeMark performs his original They Ate Everything But Their Boots at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre Friday through Sunday (Nov. 12-14) at 8 p.m. There will be more music than in earlier incarnations, DeMark says, this time provided by Tim Randles as well as Matt Knight. “I’ve edited parts of it, I wrote a new ending and generally just tried to find the truth and humor in it. I’ve realized it’s really about things other than the search for a house, though that is certainly in it, and the whole process and madness of rehabilitating a 100-year-old Victorian. It’s about the journey of trying to find a place to fit in, to feel home, and with that comes a lot of feeling of destiny, luck or lack of luck. There are thoughts about synchronicity and how little logic has to do with our lives as compared to chance and fortune.”

The set is by Michelle McCall Wallace, her spouse Jerry Lee Wallace appears in a cameo. DeMark has dedicated the first night as a benefit for Arcata House, which provides transitional housing to local families.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-11-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

Redwood Curtain opens Humble Boy, a 21st century comedy by Charlotte Jones, featuring Susan Abbey, Theresa Ireland, Christina Jioras, James Read, Garry Summers and Dmitry Tokarsky, directed by Cassandra Hesseltine. Previews are Thursday and Friday Nov. 4 &5, with gala opening on Saturday Nov. 6. Performances continue Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights through November 20th, with a Sunday matinee on Nov. 14 at 2.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-10-27T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dell'Arte continues its 40th season with a second visiting group, this time the hot young company from Portland, Hand2Mouth Theatre, with their self-created Everyone Who Looks Like You on Friday and Saturday (Oct. 29 & 30) at 8 pm in the Carlo. I messed up here last week by not posting the first visiting group, Independent Eye, but I did review their show in this week's North Coast Journal.

Meanwhile, The Brides of Dracula continues at Ferndale Rep over Halloween weekend. Gee, what a coincidence.

This N.C. Weekend: Brides of Dracula

2010-10-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

Two shows open this weekend--M. Butterfly at HSU and Brides of Dracula at Ferndale Rep. I preview M. Butterfly (which I've now seen--an excellent production) in the post below. In this post I preview Brides of Dracula, expanded from my NC Journal column. It opens tonight.

The currently popular vampire genre has a long history that began in the sunny Swiss summer of 1816, with a group of young visitors: the Shelleys (Percy Bysshe and Mary, and Mary’s sister Claire), Lord Byron and his secretary, John Polidori. There was sexual tension amidst the forays into nature and the literary and scientific talk: Polidori had a crush on Mary, while Claire was pursuing Byron, and would eventually have a child by him. One night as thunderstorms broke a spate of oppressive weather, Lord Byron challenged them all to write a ghost story. The most famous outcome was eventually Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But another begun that night would result in The Vampyre, the first vampire story written in English and the first to center on a Dracula-like figure, suggested by Byron but written by Polidori.

Its more famous literary descendant at the end of the century was Dracula, by theatre business manager and pulp novelist Bram Stoker. Stoker’s hopes for a stage version starring his friend Sir Henry Irving were never realized, but various 20th century movie versions made Dracula a cultural icon ever since.

In considering the Stoker novel David Nyiri became interested in a theme that the movies ignored—the implications of immortality-- and characters that Stoker didn’t develop: namely Dracula’s three brides, who appear only briefly in the novel. “They’ve had hundreds of years of interpersonal history with Dracula,” Nyiri said. “I’m interested in how that drives everything they do.”

But Nyiri still uses the basic Bram Stoker plot. “It’s almost like two versions working simultaneously, where you have the familiar story, but you’re also seeing the offstage incidents and scenes, which are now actually propelling it forward. Also I re-imagined pretty much all the major characters in light of the themes I was trying to put forth.”

The Brides (played by Kyra Gardner, Elena Tessler and Heather Wood) represent failed attempts by Dracula (played by Charlie Heinberg) to find his perfect soulmate--and none of them are happy about it. Nyiri’s play begins when all their “dissatisfactions and disappointments and anger are coming to a head.”

A monster of evil or a master of dark sex, each time Dracula returns with a different emphasis. The current vampire craze focuses on romance, a theme Nyiri traces back to the Frank Langella version on Broadway in the 1970s, when “Dracula was re-imagined as a kind of Byronic figure—more haunted than haunting.” Though his play is in this mold, “I semi-jokingly refer to it as Twilight for intelligent adults.”

Nyiri is not interested in either Hollywood or Halloween caricature. “I’ve told my actors repeatedly, these aren’t monsters—they’re fully dimensional individuals” who are dealing with the search for the perfect partner with which to be happy literally ever after, amidst a basic conundrum: “the tradeoff for potentially an eternity of romantic bliss is that you also have to become a rampant serial killer.”

Nyiri is Ferndale Rep’s resident designer this season, so in addition to writing and directing, he’s designed sets, costumes and lights. Other cast members include Rachel Cardoza, Jeremy Webb, Craig Waldvogel, Steven Carter, Thomas Tucker, Alaina Ross, Devin Galdierie and Danielle Cichon.

Brides of Dracula opens at Ferndale Rep on Friday (Oct. 15) at 8 pm., and plays through October 31 on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoons at 2.

This N.C. Weekend: M. Butterfly

2010-10-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Two shows open this weekend--M. Butterfly at HSU and Brides of Dracula at Ferndale Rep. I preview both of them for the NC Journal this week. Since M. Butterfly opens first (Thursday at 7:30), what follows here is slightly expanded from what that column says about it, but there's much more on the show at HSU Stage & Screen, which I wrote for HSU. Tomorrow I'll post an expanded version of the Brides of Dracula preview here. It opens Friday at 8.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, opening at HSU’s Van Duzer Theatre, is based loosely on a true story. In Hwang’s now-classic 1988 play, a French diplomat in China named Gallimard thinks he’s living the imperial romance of Madame Butterfly (the submissive Eastern beauty happily yields to the powerful Western man) but he’s part of quite different stories, including Cold War manipulation and intrigue. Though the powerful image of perfect love is explored along with issues of colonialism, race and gender, the first question remains: how could he not know his perfect woman was a man?

“That question carries us through the whole show: how could this be?” said Michael Thomas, otherwise known as Managing Artistic director of North Coast Rep, who is directing his first HSU play. Further complications include Gallimard’s wife, his mistress and his boss, not to mention the Vietnam war.

Gallimard’s perfect love is Song Liling, a Chinese opera performer he first sees in a production of Madame Butterfly, so the color and music of theatre are intrinsic to the story. But more questions ensue from that first one, and for Thomas this is a virtue. “If a play gives us some juicy things to think about, to ponder,” he said, “then that’s a wonderful and successful evening of theatre. I think this play does that.” That intention seems to be something else these two productions have in common.

Lincoln Mitchell plays Gallimard, and Kyle Ryan plays Song Liling. Other cast members are Chelsea Snyder, Eva Rismanforoush, Denise Truong and Matt Kirchberg. Scenic designer is Calder Johnson, costumes by Amy Echeverria, lights by Kevin Landesman and choreography by Danielle Cichon.

M. Butterfly opens on Thursday (Oct. 14) at 7:30 pm in the Van Duzer Theatre, and runs this weekend and next, Thurs. through Sat. evenings, with a Sunday matinee on Oct. 24. There is some nudity as well as adult themes, so director Thomas recommends the show for high school age and older.

One intriguing historical note about the play: M. Butterfly opened on Broadway in March 1988, just days before August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opened at another Broadway theatre. Both were finalists for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in drama, but neither won. (M. Butterfly did win the Tony for Best Play.) Instead the Pulitzer went to The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein. All three of these plays are now recognized as classics of the 20th century, and particular classics of the American stage. Years go by, even a decade, without a single play that has the impact of any of them. Yet there they were, one after the other in 1988.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-09-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

If it’s major league baseball playoff time, it’s time for Jeff DeMark’s baseball show, Hard as Diamond, Soft as the Dirt. It was at the Arcata Theatre Lounge last year but this time DeMark is accompanied by The Delta Nationals several blocks away at the Arcata Playhouse in the Old Creamery building, on Saturday September 25 at 7:30 p.m. And this year you can also take the show home: a DVD of the performance of three years ago will have its official release at this same event. More information: http://www.jeffdemark.com/.

David Powell, singing star of the summer's hit Blue Lake: The Opera, performs the music of his Boston Conservatory teacher, composer Mohammed Fairouz, at the Arkley Center on Sunday at 5 pm.

Continuing: Company at North Coast Rep and Moonlight and Magnolias, final weekend at Redwood Curtain. Both are reviewed in posts below.

Sondheim's Company at NCRT

2010-09-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

Below is a slightly different version of my review of Sondheim's Company now at North Coast Rep.

Bachelor Bobby’s 35th birthday is celebrated by his married friends at the beginning of Company, the Steven Sondheim musical now playing at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. That makes Bobby five years younger than this musical, which had its premiere Tony Award-winning run on Broadway in 1970. Though the NCRT show seems based on the revived and apparently revised 1995 version, there are aspects of this earlier origin that still set this musical apart.

After costly late 1960s failures, Broadway musicals were open to experimentation. One prescription was to make them more contemporary in content, with subjects and treatment that reflected real issues of that tumultuous time. Another was to become more contemporary in form, acknowledging non-naturalistic trends revolutionizing non-musical theatre ( Theatre of the Absurd, Beckett, Albee, Pinter, etc.) and the related attention to earlier European influences (especially Brecht), which were coming to New York on stage but also in foreign films, not only the 60s French New Wave and British comedies but film classics made in the 50s and before, but not widely available in the U.S. until the 60s.

Finally there was the call (championed by an influential New York critic or two) for new approaches to the music in musicals, or at least new blood. It had often been said that while popular music had been transformed in the decade of the British Invasion, Motown, Dylan and folk rock, etc., the music in musicals was lost in the past.

So in 1970, Company comes. With book by George Furth, it has no single story in traditional narrative terms, and even time doesn’t progress in expected ways. For example, Bobby’s birthday is celebrated three times, each with slight variations, but they may all be that same 35th. There are other story aspects that contradicted expectations then, and still do. Critic Frank Rich later characterized the overall approach as Brechtian, presumably meaning the famous alienation effect. (Sondheim later agreed with this characterization.) It’s probably best for today’s theatregoers to understand this going in. But it's interesting that while this approach continues to influence all kinds of theatre, it hasn't become standard. People still expect linear time (or at least clearly demarcated flashbacks) and a story through-line.

Other innovations have become more familiar. By dealing with the holy cow of marriage frankly and ironically, this show opened the musical to new possibilities (and paved the way for Woody Allen.) While its observations sometimes seem time-bound, there’s a lot that’s apparently universal. Steven Sondheim’s musically sophisticated mixing of classical and popular influences is comfortably postmodern today, though back then it was just being more like Paul McCartney.

Sondheim at that point was a successful lyricist (West Side Story, Gypsy) and composer (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), but Company defined what would be forever known as Sondheim.

At NCRT, the set by Daniel Lawrence is composed of handsome marbled but monochromatic platforms of various heights, with a backdrop of a city skyline. Director Tom Phillips arranges and nimbly moves a large cast across spaces representing various apartments and other locales in Manhattan in the mid 1990s: five married couples and three of Bobby’s girlfriends.

The 1970 Broadway production was characterized by Michael Bennett’s lavish dances (he later did A Chorus Line), and the most recent 2006 version (which local Sondheim fans may have caught on PBS) by the novelty of the cast also being the orchestra. This NCRT production has neither. Nor can it match the edginess or the New York cynicism. The North Coast is just too nice. Frankly, I’m not complaining.

Even with a certain dramatic slackness, this production uses the show’s basic form—a series of scenes, with each couple having at least one—to provide notably enjoyable individual moments. Among them, there’s Bobby’s three girlfriends (played by Molly Severdia, Lisa McNeely and Katy Curtis) doing 1940s Andrew Sisters harmonies and 1920s dance steps in their song, “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.” There’s the well-executed coupling-by-karate, performed by Megan Caton and Jasper Anderton. There’s a funny first pot-smoking experience with Caitlin McMurtry and Frederic Belanger. There’s the dynamic performance and show-stopping voice of Katy Curtis as the youngest girlfriend Marta, singing “Another Hundred People.” Marta idolizes New York as a woman all in black at the end of the bar crying. In a subtle (perhaps Brechtian) touch, she later anonymously lives the image.

There’s Christina Comer (of NCRT’s recent Gypsy) revealing yet another talent—for screwball comedy—with a hilarious, Carole Lombardian scene in a wedding dress. Dianne Zuleger (also the show’s music director) performs the most storied of Company’s songs—“The Ladies Who Lunch”—with raw verve. Kevin Sharkey has the thankless task of playing Bobby, the supposed central character who especially in this production is mostly an uncertain cipher of sincerity, defined by the shifting expectations and projections of his married friends. His progress towards definition is at best cumulative. But when he defines his own emotions and expresses them, particularly in his final song (“Being Alive”), Sharkey delivers.

The remaining cast members--Shaelan Salas, Evan Needham, Craig Benson and Daniel Kennedy--have their character and vocal moments as well. The orchestra of Justin Ross, Joe Severdia, Julie Froblom, Hilson Parker and Molly Adams play a deft and fittingly understated accompaniment, visible just in shadows behind a half wall at the back of the stage. Lauren Wieland provided the realistic costumes, David Tyndall some tasty lighting.

Company continues at NCRT Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 16, with three Sunday matinees and one Thursday night performance.

This show opens NCRT’s 27th season, which will also include Charlie’s Aunt, My Fair Lady, Othello, Gogol’s The Government Inspector and The Kitchen Witches by Caroline Smith.

War on Tara at Redwood Curtain

2010-09-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

The following is a slightly extended version of my Journal review of Moonlight and Magnolias, which runs one more weekend at Redwood Curtain. The additions are mostly a little more Gone with the Wind lore. The published version contains one slight error: while U.S. standard spelling--and spell-checks--decree that "traveler" has but one "l," the title of the show based on H.G. Wells followed the 1890s British spelling, so it is indeed The Time Traveller.

Moonlight and Magnolias, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, is a play about a movie. In playwright Ron Hutchinson’s fanciful retelling, the epic 1939 film Gone With the Wind emerged from a marathon five day session of invention, fueled only by bananas and peanuts, with producer David O. Selznick acting out scenes with his new director, Victor Fleming, while his new screenwriter, Ben Hecht typed away, between complaints, fights and paeans to the wonder of the movies.

You remember the movie—Rhett Butler, Scarlet O’Hara, the plantation of Tara, Civil War, tomorrow is another day, frankly my dear... An almost accidental Hollywood classic as fabled for its tortured history as for the way it tortured history.

As the play begins, the movie is in crisis. Obsessed with the epic he’d pinned his future on, Selznick had just fired his first director (George Cukor, of The Philadephia Story, The Women, Adam’s Rib, etc.) and had a pile of scripts that weren’t working. He pulled action director Victor Fleming off the picture he was completing (a little film called The Wizard of Oz) and hired former newspaperman Ben Hecht, a versatile screenwriter (Scarface, The Front Page, Wuthering Heights) valued for speed as well as quality.

Their manic writing session in paradigmatic Hollywood practically breeds comedy, from one-liners to falling-down farce. Hecht hadn’t read Margaret Mitchell’s huge best-selling novel, but that was no barrier. “You’re butchering the script!” director Fleming cries. “I’m here to butcher the book,” Hecht retorts. “I’ll leave it to you to butcher the script.”

Hutchinson glues the bits with social significance: Hecht worries about the portrayal of blacks, and chides Selznick for not seeing the parallels with the treatment of Jews in Germany just before World War II as well as in the U.S. Beverley Hills, Hecht points out, was developed as a place where rich Jews could live because they were kept out of L.A.’s choice neighborhoods. Besides the gently cynical Hollywood humor, there are soliloquies on the movies, trembling—like Hollywood movies themselves—between the insightful and the sentimental.

The three main actors at Redwood Curtain are terrific. As Fleming, Ron Halverson is funny to watch, and as Hecht, Jerry Nusbaum is funny to listen to. As Selznick, James Floss looks and carries himself like a 1930s man, which produces all the period credibility the play needs. Floss, who as an actor isn’t seen enough here, gets a line about the movies being the one real time machine, a fortuitous reminder of his signature H.G. Wells portrayal in his one-person show, The Time Traveller. Halverson, also long absent, is another actor to see more often.

An actor I’ve admired in musicals, Andrea Zvaleko plays the smaller role of Selznick’s secretary, and while she performs ably, the character’s part in all this remains puzzling. At the first preview, the production directed by James Read was still finding its timing, but even then, the start of the second act suggested it could get funnier with each performance.

The production is enlivened by Daniel Nyri’s sets, Catherine Brown’s costumes, Michael Burkhart’s lighting and Jon Turney’s sound design.

Now you’ve seen the play—what was the reality? Hutchinson’s general history is pretty good, but like a Hollywood movie, he fudges for effect. In the play, the trio debate how to handle the scene in which a main (white) women character gives birth and the slave girl midwife is slapped. In fact, George Cukor had already shot this scene as it appears in the movie. The playwright squeezes some laughs out of the three stumbling towards the movie’s most famous line, but “My dear, I don’t give a damn” was already in the Margaret Mitchell novel. It’s possible if unlikely that Selznick was the one who added the “Frankly.”

Also like a Hollywood movie, the play and this production give us basically likeable characters, though their models maybe weren’t. While there were all-night sessions over two weeks (not five days), the diet of bananas and peanuts Selznick enforces in the play lacks his key ingredient: Dexadrine. Apart from reputedly being an overbearing egomaniac, Selznick was a speed freak seen licking bits of crushed Benzedrine from his own hand. Hecht feared for his sanity and fled.

The play has Fleming saying he needs this success so he doesn’t have to go back to being a limo driver. The real Fleming was a former race-car driver and veteran cameraman as well as director, also known as virulently anti-Jewish.

Hecht was a prolific and valued screenwriter, but his basic contribution to Gone With the Wind seems to have been the same as another of its contributors, Scott Fitzgerald: both told Selznick to go back to Sidney Howard’s original script, which had ballooned to 800 pages basically because Selznick insisted on adding scenes. Whatever his views on this movie, Hecht did become one of the strongest voices in America warning of the Holocaust, and a Civil Rights activist.

Fleming was also openly homophobic, as was the movie's male star, Clark Gable, though there was some rumored homosexual activity in his past. But it was Gable's rebellion against director George Cukor--essentially because he was gay--that got Cukor fired. None of this is mentioned in this play. Nor is the reputed racism (Fleming again), though it was Clark Gable who insisted that the African American cast members were treated as equals on the set. He was good friends with Hattie McDaniel, who became the first black recipient of an acting Oscar; their scene together is generally lauded as one of the best in the movie.

Among the sources for this background are Frankly, My Dear by Molly Haskell, and George Cukor: A Double Life by Patrick McGilligan. But as these books contradict each other on some points, let's just say it's Hollywood lore.

Moonlight and Magnolias continues at Redwood Curtain for one more weekend, Friday and Saturday September 24 and 25.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-09-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

North Coast Rep opens the Sondheim musical Company this weekend, Thursday to Saturday at 8. Shows continue Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 16, with Sunday matinees on Sept. 26, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10. Also a 8 pm Thursday performance on Oct. 14.

Moonlight and Magnolias continues at Redwood Curtain. My review in the Journal is here. I'll try to post a longer version here soon.

This North Coast Weekend

2010-09-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

Moonlight and Magnolias, a comedy by Ron Hutchinson about a crisis in making the epic film Gone With the Wind, opens at Redwood Curtain in Eureka this weekend. Directed by James Read, it features James Floss, Jerry Nusbaum, Ron Halverson and Andrea Zvaleko. Previews are Thursday and Friday, with premiere and reception on Saturday at 8. Performances continue Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights through September 25, with a 2pm Sunday matinee on September 19.