All's Wells

Lynne & Bob 2011. Photo by Bob Doran

No North Coast retrospective could be complete without Lynne and Bob Wells.  (That by the way is how the label reads on this site-- "Lynne and Bob Wells." It links to their individual performances as well.)

I've referred to them as the North Coast Lunts (and so had to explain who the Lunts were.)  Dell'Arte honored them in 2011, and I interviewed them on that occasion.

They told me then that they met when they were both cast in a Ferndale Rep production of a Neil Simon play.  In some ways their romance was itself out of a story: the rich girl and the poor boy.  But those circumstances have their unique aspects, and became part of a unique relationship.

It's one of those things that everybody knows but nobody talks about, so I felt a little trepidation in asking them about it.  But I did, and they talked about it easily. There wasn't space in the original column, but that column is structured pretty much as the conversation was, for they kept coming back to the show they were to do when they accepted their award, even when we talked about this.

"He's a poor boy," Lynne said.  "I was very fortunate--I'm a trust fund baby."
"She's a sugar mama," Bob said.
"I'm your sugar mama," Lynne laughed.  "Maybe we should do a bit about that."
"I've never done anything for money," Bob said.  "It has to be something I love.  I worked five years in the Post Office.  But I liked it."
"I never did anything for the money either but I always felt guilty about it," Lynne said, "because it's always come to me.  Always part of me saying, how do I deserve this.  But it's been a great blessing.  It allows me to give, and that's been great."

The family fortune had its roots in, of all times, the 1930s.  "My father started the first car and truck rental business in the United States," Lynne said.  "He started with a taxi, but never got calls for the taxi, just somebody who wanted to rent the car.  He was a man who always said my goal every day is to make a buck and do something for somebody else.  If I do that every day, I feel good."

"We were raised with a very strong work ethic," she said. "But as adults we also came into quite a lot of money when the business was sold.  But it's dwindling."

Once together, Lynne and Bob made an unusual move for actors in plays: a year of study at Dell'Arte.  I also don't know of many Dell'Arte grads who returned to the conventional theatre.  Lynne admitted it took awhile before what she learned there "got incorporated."  Bob remembered being told that it might take five years for what he'd learned to sink in.  "It took me ten."  

"Thinking back on the Dell'Arte experience for me," Lynne said, "we were the oldest ones at the time.  It was a huge accomplishment.  Donald Forrest was our acrobatics teacher, and he was so kind to me--and rough on everybody else.  At the end of an entire year my big accomplishment was that I was able to do a forward roll."  She did it in one show at Ferndale--"and never again."

"Donald Forrest is one of the most excellent actors I've ever met in my life," Lynne added.  "He taught me so much."

They both agreed on their favorite directors: Michael Fields and Rene Grinnell.  Bob added some names from Pacific Arts Center Theatre days: Gordon Townsend, Jeff Peacock.  (They also volunteered their least favorite director, but I'll keep that to myself.)

"I like a director who will come in strong, with a vision and with good direction in the beginning," Lynne said, "but in the last couple of weeks they adore you, they let you go. A director who is picking on you until the last minute, I don't want.  They have to know that they chose somebody for a reason, and at some point they've got to let you go."

in Glorious!

We were talking in the Plaza Grill in the afternoon, and the combination of ambient noise on the recording and my poor notes didn't record what performance Lynne said was "Bob's Hamlet."  But I did hear Bob say that Lynne's Hamlet was Glorious!, the comedy about Florence Foster Jenkins that opened Redwood Curtain's new theatre on Snug Alley.  "Lynne Wells unleashed" was how I described her tour de force performance.

Bob was with her in that production, funny and poignant.  Their most famous performance together apparently was as George and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Doing it was an intense experience they definitely did not want to revisit.  "We didn't realize it was a comedy," Bob said. "There were just four of us, rehearsing that play for six weeks.  We were so into it, it seemed intrusive to have people there to see it."

In my time as columnist, I saw them work together in Painting Churches at North Coast Rep, Glorious! and The Language Archive at Redwood Curtain, and in a couple of Christmas shows at the Arcata Playhouse.  In addition to their skills that create credibility and delight, they do have a kind of mystique that is a delight in itself.

I had the additional pleasure of being onstage with Lynne.  In fact, we played husband and wife for a couple of hours, at the anniversary reading of It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis at Dell'Arte. I got to feel a little of that energy exchange that's an essential pleasure of acting on stage, when it's good.

Among my happy memories of Bob was his singing and dancing performance in North Coast Rep's My Fair Lady.  As I wrote then: "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."

But the first thing I noted about Bob Wells was his speaking voice.  I commented on it first in The Ladies of the Camellias. "Nobody could make the two syllables of 'password' funnier than Wells does."  But then I wrote a column with his vocal work as its theme, and instead of the interview column, that's what I will reproduce below.

I do it to honor both Lynne and Bob, for their approach to the art and craft of acting and performance, their respect for the text and for the audience.

Bob Wells' Vocal Magic  February 2010

According to renowned early 20th century Italian actor Tomasso Salvini, the three most potent elements of acting are: “Voice! Voice! Voice!”

 You might expect that sentiment from an old-school actor like Salvini, or even actor and director John Gielgud, who suggested that while attention is often lavished on other aspects of performance, how the words are spoken “can have more effect than anything else.”

 But open almost any book on stage directing or acting, and they proclaim the importance of voice. The purported Stanislavski “Method” may have enshrined mumbling on American stages, but director Robert Lewis quotes Stanislavski writing at length about vocal acting: “Letters, syllables, words—these are the musical notes of speech, out of which to fashion measures, arias, whole symphonies.”

Harold Clurman (another Method-influenced director) writes about it—even Jerzy Grotowski devotes some 30 pages to vocal technique in Towards a Poor Theatre.

 A revelatory object lesson in vocal acting is available this weekend at the Arcata Playhouse, where Bob Wells performs in a short play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone.

 First of all, every word Wells says can be heard, and every word can be understood. With these foundations in place, Wells goes on to act with his voice—his intonations, pronunciations, the words he stresses hard, the syllables he lets linger and float away.

 Beginning with his surprising “entrance,” Wells captivates, even when he does almost nothing except create this character with sound. He’s masterful: both poetic and clear. We know who this man is, and we attend to what he has to say.

 The play, called Sing to Me Through Open Windows, is more problematic. Arthur Kopit is a contemporary American playwright with a long career that began with revolutionary absurdist romps like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, but more recently has included musicals, including Nine, which reached the silver screen this year with Kopit as an executive producer.

 Whether Kopit has copped out or America has caught up to his absurdism is an open question, but this early play is at best an exercise in poetic symbolism that for me remained fairly elusive in this production. There’s the old magician (Wells), the boy who visits him (played by newcomer Zachery Davis with appropriate vulnerability) and a clown whose relationship to the others is difficult to assess (played with appropriate physicality by Craig Klapman.)

 This is the kind of challenging work that Dan Stone often chooses. Figuring out what was happening was more difficult because Bob Wells was the only one who was clearly audible all the time. Even so, a kind of ambiguity is inherent in this play.

The stage imagery, including the music (all created by Dan Stone), worked well. The lighting was especially clarifying, but other choices (like the puppets) less so. The themes of life’s transitions and mythic cycles are there when you think about it, but the impact of aging was absolutely clear as an experience.

That’s the work of Wells, playing a magician who is in the process of himself vanishing. “Fear is like regret,” he concludes, “only with fear, there’s not much time left.”

 Remarkable words to come from a 22 year-old playwright (as Kopit was when he wrote this), but very powerful when spoken by a veteran actor in conscious control of a superior vocal instrument. I particularly urge young actors to experience—and listen to--this performance.

The Long and Winding Redwood Curtain

I've seen the saga of Redwood Curtain from its public beginning, from its first production at the Eagle House, of A Perfect Ganesh by Terrance McNally.  I still remember that production fondly.  I couldn't anticipate what would happen next, and at least once, I was thrilled by what did.  (Even though in its Internet descriptions, the play sounds awful.)

We saw subsequent plays at Redwood Curtain's first permanent home, in the Henderson Center shopping center.  Their homeless period coincided with the first years of my Stage Matters column.  For awhile they had a property in view, which ultimately fell through.  That's the one described in the interview from 2006 I did with Redwood Curtain's founders, Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik.  I've attached that column to the end of this one.

There were empty years (2006 itself) but also some very good productions at the Arcata Playhouse, though they tended to be very small scale: two of the ones I liked best were basically one person shows: Randy Wayne as genius physicist Richard Feynman (and come on--what other reviewer could comment on how Feynman said "in-ter-est-ing"?) and especially Tinamarie Ivey in Bad Dates.

Then at last in 2010 the strange boxcar-shaped theatre (which could actually have been a trolley barn) on Snug Alley in Eureka.  Redwood Curtain started off gloriously in its new and present home with Lynne Wells' tour de force in Glorious!  

In old home and new, Redwood Curtain seems to have specialized in contemporary domestic comedies of a kind often described as "quirky."  I can't at the moment think of a word I despise more than "quirky."  It's a lazy, smirky way to avoid taking the pains to actually describe something.  It's very much akin to the all-purpose, supposedly neutral but backwards damning "different."

But these comedies do share certain qualities--unusual location (i.e. not Manhattan apartments), and/or characters with perceived social, class or physical disabilities, with narratives that wobble and wander unexpectedly, or are told in a not strictly realistic style.

I was charmed by many of these comedies on the nights I saw them, and some left lasting impressions: Fortune with Clint Rebik and Cassandra Hesseltine; the  historical Hollywood comedy Moonlight and Magnolias with James Floss; The Language Archive with Craig Benson, Terry Desch, Lynne and Bob Wells; and two shows this past season, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and the witty yet substantive Equivocation.

I also recall some charming moments in the virtuoso comedy Almost Maine, the energy in the clever if superficial For Better and Circle Mirror Transformation. I suppose superficial is the right word for a number of these--or Skin Deep as one play was called.  Even when these plays don't have narrative problems of one kind or another, they are like confections: fun at the time, but not very nourishing.

Redwood Curtain doesn't do many dramas, but a couple remain favorites and strong in my memory (I didn't see the most recent show.): The Pitmen Painters, and Craig Benson's direction of A.R. Gurney's Far East. It actually started me on a couple of months of reading Gurney's plays.

Common to all Redwood Curtain productions (even the ones I really didn't like) has been the quality of the acting.  It's the gold standard for the North Coast, and that is beginning to extend beyond acting.  The parts in these contemporary plays aren't greatly challenging, but often require virtuosity and subtlety.  Just physically, the actors are credible as their characters--not a luxury that every theatre hereabouts enjoys.

This 2006 interview refers to the dream or goal of creating "Ashland By the Sea," but at the time I didn't realize how literal that description might be.  For it seems many of the plays that end up at Redwood Curtain were first spotted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Sometimes contemporary plays that arrive via that route (as well as from other regional theatres) are bit homogenized or confused in the "development" process.  They typically have a high concept premise (you know, a quirky one) and include a thesis statement speech in case you missed the point.  They might come stuffed with ideas and bits, per the suggestions of countless workshops, even when the narrative strains to the breaking point.

But where else are new plays going to come from?  Not many from Manhattan anymore.  And some extraordinary plays survive the process.  I'm  not sure extraordinary playwrights do, but that's another subject.

The vision described below from 2006 includes the theatre as tourist destination. Earlier that year I'd proposed something like that independently, in a column about uses of the Balloon Track/Tract that didn't involve a shopping mall:

There's been talk of a bay research facility on the waterfront, and the proposed eco-hostel may include research labs. Maybe there's potential for creating related tourist destinations that show off the science that also shows off this region's natural wonders and independent spirit. Because all the waterfront's a stage.

 There are other possibilities to give people more to do, and more reason to come to the waterfront, like a park, a lively museum of regional history, and -- an actual theatre, on the waterfront. 

I imagine a modest but adaptable theatre space, for a rotating menu of productions by local theatre groups and individuals, with daylight programs of children's theatre, street theatre and short plays based on local history and themes, to give tourists a destination and the North Coast some fun. And to provide theatre people some paying work, assuming they don't all die of heart failure at the prospect.

 It's just an idea, but it might be useful to explore how theatre can contribute to making the waterfront a special, signature place, while working with compatible businesses and cultural attractions beyond the waterfront. With lots of balloons, track or no tract.

So far this hasn't happened, but Redwood Curtain's current location holds that potential.  As described below, their dreams of a theatre and restaurant, and other daring innovations (two multiple occupancy restrooms!) got scaled back, but the artistic goals seem pertinent still.

 I was very impressed with how Redwood Curtain supporters stayed with them through the years of exile.  Now that loyalty is paying off.  Plus there are Klondikes.

  
Ashland By the Sea (2006)

It's been almost exactly a year now since Redwood Curtain closed its last show. A compact legacy of costumes, props and scenery were hauled away from its abandoned digs in a Eureka shopping center and stored. But its current homelessness has not darkened the vision its founders have always had.

 "It's been a roller coaster ride," admitted one of those founders, Peggy Metzger, in a recent conversation on the HSU campus, where she works as Associate Director in the Financial Aid department. "But right now we're in negotiations on a space we really want."

"Our vision has always been to be a professional theatre providing living wages to artists," she said, "and to be a tourist destination — to be part of that economic development world. That's one of the reasons a Eureka waterfront location would be ideal — right where redevelopment is happening."

So no surprise that this is the location of the building that Redwood Curtain hopes to soon inhabit. "It's a big building in Old Town that's been abandoned for years, that's never been a theatre," she said, and laughed. "Even though we can't say what building it is, everybody figures it out pretty quickly from that description."

 If ongoing negotiations are successful (they've been proceeding for about six months), Redwood Curtain has the designs ready for the construction of a brand new theatre. But there's another key piece of the plan as well.

 "We've partnered up with Curley Tate, of Curley's Bar and Grill in Ferndale, who always said, 'wherever you guys end up permanently, I want to be with you.' So half of the space will be the new theatre, and half a fabulous new restaurant."

Besides the negotiations, Redwood Curtain has been active in other ways in the past year. They've ducked out from under the umbrella of the Ink People and are organizing their own non-profit. With Cassandra Hesseltine presiding, there's the new casting agency and a conservatory that's offered acting classes. But always the main attention has been on finally making the theatre vision a reality.

 "We learned a lot from our last space," Metzger said. "So the playing area we've designed is basically the same — a three-quarter thrust stage — but the backstage will be very different. We've also designed it so it can be used for other events like weddings, conventions and conferences, with catering available from Curley's. We'll build a classroom and rehearsal space, so we can do events in the theatre and still rehearse and hold classes."

But perhaps the most immediate revolution in Humboldt County theatre will be the restrooms: two new ones, each accommodating four people at once.

 Artistically, Redwood Curtain will maintain its niche of offering mostly contemporary plays that haven't been performed elsewhere in Humboldt before. "Fresh, thoughtful and funny, sometimes a little edgy," as Metzger described it.

"Even if we would do a classic, it would be a rethinking of it. We want to produce the highest quality we can manage, using the top talent we can find, even bringing in outside talent."

"Contemporary work that excites our artists and our audience," added Clint Rebik, Redwood's Artistic Director, who joined the interview from his job in the HSU Registrar's office. "Work that we feel a connection to."

 Both Metzger and Rebik travel to other theatres, always looking for ideas they can use at Redwood Curtain. But there's one particular model, or at least ideal. "Ashland has been kind of a guiding force for us," Rebik said, "because of their rural, small-town location, and what they do and how they do it, the venues, how they've grown. Of course, they have a 60-year head start on us."

But that's the nub of the vision, as Metzger described it: "Ashland by the sea."

Eventually they hope to be doing two plays in repertory in the summer, "so that tourists who wouldn't come here for one play might come for two," she said, referring to Ashland's system of multi-play packages that attract visitors from up and down the coast. Restaurants and other businesses in Ashland have adapted to serving visitors that the theatres attract, but Redwood Curtain hopes to build in part of that process with Curley's.

"Imagine having a great grilled salmon dinner," Metzger said, "and when you get your bill, your theatre tickets are tucked under it, and your server tells you, 'your performance starts next door in 10 minutes.'"

Getting a good beginning on this vision may not be so very far away, either. "We're hoping for a 2007 season in our new venue," Metzger said, "four shows, beginning in spring."

Bah Humboldt! Christmas 2006

This is my draft of a column from December 2006: an account of three productions I saw on one Sunday.  It's notable for the Sanctuary Stage commedia del'arte performance at Mazzotti's (what I didn't say was that, the morning I attended, I was the only person there) as well as the Dell'Arte holiday show, and the Redwood Curtain fundraiser.  Plus the Christmas party afterwards, at which I snapped the photos published here, one for the first time. When I realized the Journal wasn't going to pay me for taking pictures for them, I stopped.

 Last Sunday began with Jupiter, Mars and Mercury clustered in the pre-dawn sky -- the first time since 1925, the last until 2053. Not that I saw that particular performance -- getting to brunch for a noon "curtain time" was early enough for me. I was beginning my Christmas show marathon.

 "It's a raincoat and sunglasses day," remarked the woman behind the counter at Arcata Liquor, where I bought my Sunday newspapers (with my book review in the Chronicle) before crossing the Plaza to Mazzotti's Restaurant. There, with your choice of broccoli and pancetta quiche with fresh fruit, or eggs Benedict with prosciuto puff pastry and champagne, you got A Christmas Commedia, served piping hot by Sanctuary Stage.

 The show is itself a mercurial combination of classic commedia dell'arte -- right down to the characters from its Italian origins -- and Charles Dickens' fable, A Christmas Carol. Scrooge as the commedia's Pantalone (also a rich miser who abuses his servants, as Scrooge does Bob Cratchit) is just the starting point of the interplay. Factor in the contemporary references (like the very recognizable face on the Ghost of Christmas Past) and there's another source of unexpected energy, and laughs.

"Bah, Humboldt!" Pantalone shouts, and we're off. The cast is outstanding, led by Tinamarie Ivey in a tour de force as Pantalone. Though all the performers (including Carrie Hudson, Melissa Lawson, Dan and Zachary Stone) have physical comedy skills, and fine comic timing and presence, the intensity shoots up to the roof as soon as Heath Houghton bounds on stage. He's always one of those actors you have to watch, but he adds both an individual and a cohesive energy to this ensemble -- and he does a jump on his knees from the stage to the floor that will drop your quiche-filled jaw.

What most impressed me about this show (scenario by Dan Stone, elaborated by cast improvisation in rehearsals) is the combination of physical humor, verbal wit and a mostly efficient and forward-moving story with the major narrative virtues: You could follow it, and it kept you involved, even when you basically know what's supposed to happen next.

 There's the traditional slapstick, chases and double-takes, but also wordplay, topical asides and in-jokes (anybody who recognizes the "I'm alive" intonation from James Whales' Frankenstein gets an extra laugh) that fly by almost as fast as in a Marx Brothers movie.

Though Dickens' story retains its prominence and power on its own, this is a well-performed, well-crafted entertainment, and an intelligent companion to the Sunday papers on the table. With cleavage and toilet humor, of course.

You've got one more chance to see A Christmas Commedia -- this coming Sunday (Dec.17) at Mazzotti's. Brunch starts at 11, and the show at noon.

 There was a lot of Christmas-related theatre happening on Sunday. I saw three shows and still didn't have time to get to the matinee of Cinderella (packing them in at Ferndale Rep) or the back-by-popular-demand Humboldt Light Opera show, King Island Christmas, both beginning at 2 p.m.

 The next event I could attend was the Redwood Curtain benefit at the Bayside Grange in mid-afternoon. Co-founders Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik seemed overcome by the impressive turnout when they took the stage to introduce a reading of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries, performed by Edward Olson.

"You can brag to your friends you were here for our entire 2006 season," Rebik quipped. Redwood Curtain's year in the dark, and its prospective future, were on everyone's minds. But after referring to the still-ongoing search for new digs, Metzger flat-out promised: "We are going to produce a season in 2007, come hell or high water."

The Sedaris piece is an account of an actor new to New York who takes a job as a Christmas elf at Macy's department store, where an army of elves run a huge, season-long assembly line of kids and their parents past multiple Santas. Olson, having donned the gay apparel called for in the story, effectively rendered the humor and human observations of this pleasant, contemporary tale.

Then while most of the audience moved to the munchies supplied by Curley's Bar & Grill, others went up on stage to be photographed with a leering Santa (Bob Wells) and a sweet Mrs. Claus (Lynne Wells).

 Next I finally caught up with the Dell'Arte Company's holiday show, Entrances and Exits, at the Adorni Center in Eureka, where it had to compete with the entertainment value of the ballet of little birds seeming to glide along the waterline in the darkness, feeding in the shallows of the bay.

The core idea of this show is vaudeville farce, with the inherent impudence of opening, closing and skittering doors punctuating the sketches, along with music and requisite, child-pleasing clowning.

All the members of the ensemble (Tara Cariaso, Carlos Alexis Cruz, Gulshirin Dubash, Kajsa Ingemansson, Morgan Jarl, Andrew Phoenix, Helga Rosenfeldt-Olsen and Freddy Villano) are young, skilled and very appealing. The show itself seemed uneven -- tight and incisive at times, slack and virtually incomprehensible at others. The clarity of situation and form of vaudeville theatre was lacking, and while that may have been part of the experimental intention, easily grasping the premise and form allows the audience to recognize surprise and relax into the laughter.

 But there are plenty of delights anyway. I'd love to see this group do Second City-style improv, especially after a few months in front of audiences. This weekend you can see this very watchable ensemble do the Carlo Theatre version of this show, Thursday through Sunday, Dec. 14-17.

 Finally, very late last Sunday, the hemisphere premiere of the annual Geminid meteor shower began. I didn't see that either. I was writing this column.

This North Coast Holiday Season

 Apart from the deeper meanings, it comes down to: Christmas R toys, right? And not just for children (or do I have to give back my Enterprise com badge and Doctor Who sonic screwdriver?) And what’s better than toys that come alive?

 Among the many shows that play with this idea was Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland. It’s been reworked many times for stage, film and TV, and even though the original script in the Library of Congress reads like one of their own shows, Dell’Arte has reworked it again for their 2013 holiday production.

 “We’re guided by the essentials of the Victor Herbert story,” said director Michael Fields. In the Dell’Arte version, the villainous Barnaby has taken over Toyland and is mass-producing terrible toys. The original Toymaster has disappeared. The various characters (including the Toymaster and a few Mother Goose figures) wind up in the Forgotten Forest, where people don’t remember who they are and have to figure it out. “It’s very funny, it has a happy ending,” Fields said, “ and there’s square-dancing.”

 As always the Dell’Arte holiday show is made to travel, from its compact playing time to the set. “We have to create a visual world that supports the show, but with sets and lights that can be loaded in and out of a truck 17 or 18 times,” Fields noted. This year’s set, which transforms from various structures into the Forgotten Forest, is designed by Lynnie Horrigan, with lighting by Michael Foster and costumes by Lydia Foreman. Tim Gray composed the music and designed sound.

 Cast members are Andrew Eldrege, Darci Fulcher, Billy Higgins, Ariel Lauryn, Allie Menzimer, Lucy Shelby, Jerome Yorke and Emily Newton. “Some years we gone a little dark with our holiday shows,” Fields said. “But this year it’s very upbeat, energetic and bright to look at, with vivid costumes and a vibrant world. It’s in the genre of family theatre, which for me is a kind of European concept of theatre that isn’t just for children but is certainly family-friendly.”

 Or as Fields summed up: “It’s fun. It’s free.” And yes, “certain toys come alive.”

 Babes in Toyland opens at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre on Friday and Saturday, November 29 and 30 at 7:30 p.m., then tours up and down the North Coast before returning to the Carlo for the weekend of Dec. 19. All shows until final weekend are free. You can find the full schedule online at dellarte.com, where there’s also ticket information for the various venues.

 More on other versions...The script of the Victor Herbert original Babes in Toyland at the Library of Congress (and online here) satirizes consumer culture to a remarkable degree, including that new phenomenon, the department store. If this is really the 1903 script (which it may not be—it apparently changed several times), it seems  consumerism (along with advertising, etc.) was already going strong at the turn of the 20th century. The earliest indictment of the consumer economy I’ve read is H.G. Wells trenchant novel Tono-Bungay, first published in 1908.

 As an ordinary part of their creative process, the Dell’Arte troupe researched available movie and TV versions, beginning with the 1934 Laurel & Hardy film. This is the only version I recall, renamed March of the Wooden Soldiers, which I saw on TV a couple of times as a child. Although I was impatient with the singing, I was fascinated and excited by the life-size toy soldiers coming alive to defend the good guys.

 “That movie was directly influenced by the film version of The Wizard of Oz,” Michael Fields pointed out. It's not the first time. Apparently a lot was shared by the stage version of The Wizard of Oz and Herbert’s Babes in Toyland, which premiered the same year.  Which show took from the other is an open question.

 There was a 1961 Disney movie, and TV versions in 1986 and 1997, but before all of these there was a one hour version that was part of a series of dramatized fairy tales hosted by Shirley Temple. She had a series of specials in 1958-59 called Shirley Temple’s Storybook that became a weekly series in 1960, The Shirley Temple Show. It’s unclear whether this was broadcast earlier, but officially Babes in Toyland was seen on December 25, 1960, on a Sunday evening opposite Disneyland. It’s notable for being in color (a year before Disneyland.)

 Shirley Temple hosts it, surrounded by three of her own children, and talking slowly in that goody-goody voice that weirdly reflects her childhood persona. But she also acts and sings in the piece, as a heavily made-up ugly, evil witch. And she’s excellent.

 It also stars Jonathan Winters as the evil Barnaby, comedians Jerry Colonna and Joe Besser (of late Three Stooges) and the young Danny Thomas-era Angela Cartwright. Like most versions after the first, the Toymaster is no longer a villain, but it does preserve some of the baddies with names straight out of Othello, for some reason.  There's one or two jokes about advertising but greed is mostly expressed in other ways. (The DVD suggests where the TV commercial breaks were.)

 Of this version Fields said “It’s really fun and quite a good inspiration for us. You got the tail end of vaudeville with those comedians.”

 Another annual family-friendly holiday show happens at the Arcata Playhouse with a comedy at the center and different guest musicians for each performance. This year it’s Bigfoot Lodge Holiday Jamboree, directed by Jackie Dandeneau. It features Amy Tetzlaff and Ryan Musil as refugees from Wisconsin who come to the North Coast with their strange ways to take over the Bigfoot Lodge, and Bob Wells as the resident Bigfoot expert. Meredith Anne Baldwin and real Wisconsinite David Ferney also perform, with live music by Tim Randles.

 Set and lobby design is by local artists Lush Newton and Malia Penhall, with recycled holiday pieces from Scrap Humboldt. A shadow play by James Hildebrandt is also featured. This year’s guest performances include the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir, Art Jones, Steven Weven, Trish Riel and pooch, Damiian Lange, Julie and Curtis Thompson, Shoshanna, and Pacific Union School Choir.

 Beginning Dec. 5, Bigfoot Lodge Holiday Jamboree runs for two weekends at the Arcata Playhouse, Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday Dec. 8. Tickets are available at Wildberries Marketplace or call (707) 822-1575. You can find more information including a schedule of guest appearances at arcataplayhouse.org.

 The Music Man by Meredith Wilson (script and songs) is the Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s holiday show, though probably not because Wilson also wrote “It’s Beginning To Look A lot Like Christmas.” It’s a big, bright musical from Broadway’s Golden Age, with a love story, children, marching bands, a happy ending, and songs you sing on your way home.

 It’s about a con man, and there’s nothing more American than that. Take the tricksters of folk tales around the world, add capitalism and the con man appears. “Con” stands for “confidence,” which is what the con man has to inspire to be successful. In this story as in many others, the con man is the city slicker who fools the country bumpkins (“clowns” were originally countryfied figures of ridicule.) This theme was clearer when there was a sharper distinction between urban and rural.

 Directed by Dianne Zuleger, the cast of 30 is led by Jaison Chand as the con man Professor Harold Hill who comes to River City, and Caitlin McMurtry as his love interest, Marian the Librarian, and includes Gino Bloomberg, Greta Stockwell, Anders Carlson, Laura Rose and Tyler Egerer. Linda Maxwell is choreographer, Elisabeth Harrington and Nanette Voss are vocal directors, Karen Kenfeld Fuller is costume coordinator, Bruce Keller scenic artist, with sound by Ian Schatz and lighting by Telfer Reynolds.

 The Music Man opens at Ferndale Rep on Friday November 29, and plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2 through December 22, with Thursday night performances on Dec. 12 (benefit for cast and crew) and Dec. 19. For tickets call 707-786-5483 or on line at ferndalerep.org

The original production of The Music Man took forever to develop but once on Broadway in 1957 it ran forever. It became a national legacy with the 1962 technicolor movie. It was Robert Preston’s defining role, on stage and on screen.

 On Broadway it was one of the last of the classic Golden Age musicals. The writing was on the wall with the show that was its greatest rival for the Tony that year: West Side Story. The notoriously conservative award went to The Music Man, but that’s not the judgment of history.  It might even be said that one of the last and best of the classic musicals came up against one of the first and best modern musicals.

 While “(Ya Got) Trouble” (“right here in River City”) and “Seventy-six Trombones” are probably the songs most associated with the show, the tuneful score also includes “Till There Was You,” most famously recorded by the Beatles in the early 60s. They didn’t know it came from The Music Man, but Paul McCartney (who sang it solo) found out—and eventually bought the rights to all of Meredith Wilson’s songs. So it seems that some royalties will go from Ferndale right on over to Sir Paul. Merry Christmas to him, and to all, and good night.

The Heir Apparent

The Heir Apparent, now onstage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, is based on a French farce written by Jean-Francois Regnard in 1708. This version is a free adaptation in English rhyme by contemporary American playwright David Ives, who previously adapted comedies by Corneille and Moliere. He adapted this play for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., where it premiered to general praise in 2011. You may want to look up those reviews for responses and points of view different from mine.

 The story involves the stock French farce characters of a dying miser, and the family members, friends and servants who scheme to get his money. It’s seemingly set in the bewigged 18th century French period of the original, though the adapted script makes many rhyming references to modern America, as well as to Shakespeare and French movies. Bodily functions and old age are prime topics for verbal japes and puns, and greed turns out to be vaguely bad.

 The Redwood Curtain production features an elegantly painted set by Daniel C. Nyiri (with a nicely disguised dollar sign as part of the design) and creative costumes by Jenneveve Hood. The actors were energetic in the preview performance I saw, notably Anthony Mankins as the role-playing servant and Kenneth Robert Wigley as the grasping nephew, with Bob E. Wells demonstrating his comic skills as the apparently dying miser whose fortune is the object of the grasping.

 The women in the play have less to do but Chyna Leigh, Leslie Ostrom and Kate Haley contribute to the action and have their comic moments. Brian Walker has an attention-getting turn as a very short lawyer (the script also makes fun of short people.)

 To bill the original play as a masterpiece numbs the word, though it may be the best farce that Regnard produced. He seems more of an imitation Moliere, without much of Moliere’s humanity or characters that are more than cutouts.

 At least the original play provides the framework of a common farce, with the pleasures this form affords. But for me, Ives’ version flattens the farce further by loading it with self-conscious irony and artificiality, and this production only piles on more extraneous weight. I usually enjoy verbal virtuosity. Some may find that Ives’ rhymed riffs add a layer of hilarity, while others—like me— experience the self-congratulatory cleverness quickly becoming smug and cloying, with frequent wince-inducing misfires. The pop culture and high art references that enlivened the rhymes turned into the sweet drone of a junk food binge, before becoming the regretful but relentless aftertaste of the vulgar, facile and pretentious artificial flavoring.

 The overall result is less than uproarious, though there are laughs. Some of the comic business is executed with enthusiasm and flair, however familiar these bits might be. The play might have been fun anyway had it been shorter, but at least in preview, it wandered on and on for a very long two hours plus. In the end, no matter how hard one might try to like it, the script is so in love with itself that no external affection could compete.

 Scatological humor is a dividing line for audiences, I find. There’s a lot of it, especially at the beginning of this script, so those who find it amusing may be gratified while others have ample opportunity to be nauseated.

 The lighting tricks—lights suddenly switching on and off over different parts of the stage, and a weak strobe sequence—seem to strive for cinematic effects and irony, but the idea was probably better than the ineffective reality. Directed by Kristin L. Mack, The Heir Apparent plays at Redwood Curtain Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through July 27, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday July 21.

The Language Archive

In The Language Archive by Julia Cho, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, George (played by Craig Benson) is a linguist studying dying languages, while the language of his marriage dies unnoticed. He does catch on that his wife Mary (Terry Desch) is crying constantly (“She cries making the salad. She cries in her sleep.”) She also leaves him inscrutable notes (“Husband or throw pillow? Wife or hot-water bottle?.. Love or explaining how to use the remote control?”) and then denies she wrote them.

In the elusive safety of his language lab, George hosts the last two speakers of Elloway (Lynne and Bob Wells) who spend the entire session arguing in English, because English is the language of anger. Elloway is the flowing, singing language of love.

 Meanwhile his competent and otherwise sweetly clueless assistant Emma (Christina Jioras) is learning Esperanto (an international language assembled from other languages by L.L Zamenhoff in the late 19th century, to promote world peace) because George loves it, and she (secretly) loves George. There’s wisdom from her Esperanto teacher (Pamela Lyall) and an apparent guest appearance by Zamenhoff himself (Jerry Nusbaum) as the story takes antic and yet believably odd turns, and people change, relationships shift, and life blossoms.

 From the first scene, when George interrupts his conversation with Mary to tell the audience what he’s thinking, it’s clear that this is not a naturalistic presentation but a story that the characters are presenting about themselves. It works because thanks to the actors, these characters are fully believable.

Casting is an imperfect art at best, and the availability of actors is a particular problem on the North Coast. But the stars aligned this time: this has to be the perfect cast for this production. Every one of them creates a memorable character, appropriately funny, poignant, and even inspiring, in a play that supports them. The best I can do is repeat their names: Craig Benson, Terry Desch, Christina Jioras, Lynne Wells, Bob E. Wells, Jerry Nusbaum and Pamela Lyall.

 American playwright Julia Cho is also an actor and writer for film and television. Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced this play last year, but this is the first time I’ve seen it or any of her stage plays (she’s written four more.) It’s two and a half hours with intermission, but it needs that generosity to create its worthwhile world.

Sometimes when a play has a governing concept (like the very real disappearances of languages) it feels artificial, or half-baked. But in this play, it is fully baked. Cho has thought through many of the human dimensions of language, and celebrates them. In Esperanto, the word “esperanto” means “one who hopes.”

 Director James Floss balances the lyricism with the reality, the comedy with the emotion. Daniel C. Nyiri designed the elegantly modular set, Michael Burkhart the lighting, Lydia Foreman the costumes, Jon Turney the sound. The Language Archive plays weekends at Redwood Curtain through March 10. One bit of advice for when you go: make sure to have plenty of fresh bread at home for after the show. Tickets: 443-7688, www.redwoodcurtain.com.

Additional Notes

First, on the playwright's strategy of having the characters tell the story retrospectively, while acting it out.  It's an interesting narrative strategy, with levels of ambiguity--are we seeing what actually happened, or what the characters remember as happening, or even what they wished had happened?  But it is also a dramatically tricky strategy.  What really is the dramatic action?  Strictly speaking, it can't be the action we're seeing, because that action is being remembered and narrated.  The dramatic action is people remembering the past.  That's what is happening in the present, what's being enacted on the stage.

This also leads into la-la lands of representation and so on--the dramatic action of a play purporting to be the action we see is really actors performing, and so on.  But what's more to the point in the experiencing of it is how well does this approach work?  Contrast this play with Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor, recently at NCRT.  In a formal sense, it also is a story being told by one of the characters, who occasionally steps out of character to narrate, usually to fill in action we don't see.  In that production, due to the writing or the direction or both, it was awkward and distracting. (The play was funny, in spite of this and other deficiencies.)  It was not as well integrated as The Language Archive, where it gave that play the sense of a fable, of a kind of contemporary fairy story told by a community of people.  (And like real fairy tales, it included unfortunate events.)  For me, the occasional narration did not disturb the presentness of the action, but in Laughter, it did.

The other thing I kept thinking about is the way director James Floss and actor Craig Benson chose to play the character of George, the language archivist.  I read that in the New York production, George was played as cold and emotionless, especially towards his wife.  At Redwood Curtain, Benson plays George as confused and conflicted, but not cold.

First of all, this is a difference that recurs frequently.  Characters that New Yorkers accept--obnoxious, aggressive, cold and calculating--are usually given a different interpretation on the North Coast.  They're usually more "human" you might say, or you might just say they're "nicer," more recognizably  North Coast. 

Frankly, I think that works better most of the time, and specifically, it really works better in this play.  First of all, George being caring but confused and exasperated in his reactions to his wife Mary's strange expressions of unhappiness is funnier than it would be if he were cold and remote.  His internal struggle is part of the couple's struggle, for she is also conflicted (leading to those cryptic notes which she denies writing.)

But besides mirroring Mary in a distorted way, this also parallels the cluelessness of Emma, his lab assistant who doesn't recognize that she's in love with George for a long time after it is apparent to the audience.  All of this brings both a warmth and a shape to this play, which otherwise defies definition.

Yule Tales

Some Assembly Required

What’s behind the coincidences of Christmas shows? There are perennial themes such as family and Christmas itself, as exemplified this year by A Christmas Story at Ferndale Rep, and Eugene Stickland’s Some Assembly Required at HSU, which could be considered a slightly askew sequel. (I wonder if audiences anywhere else in North America have the opportunity to see these two shows in this same season.)

Opening Thursday at HSU was the contemporary holiday comedy, Some Assembly Required by Canadian playwright Eugene Stickland. 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.

As for the two shows reviewed here today, the common economic theme is expressed in the title of one of them: A Playhouse Recessionary Christmas, currently at the Arcata Playhouse. That’s pretty clear, but it also suggests to me that the economy might have been a subtle factor in the shows of Christmas past.

 Back in 2007, when the economy was seemingly riding high, fueled mostly by the fantasy of making money by moving money around with no visible means of support, we had our fantasy-laden Lewis Carroll Christmas at Dell’Arte and Ferndale Rep. But in 2009, after it was all exposed as illusion and the Great Recession was underway, we had our Dickensian Christmas at NCRT as well as Dell’Arte and Ferndale, with children in rags ignored by the 19th century 1%.

 As do the first two shows mentioned, A Playhouse Recessionary Christmas portrays a family preparing for the holidays. This time the parents, Esther and Frank Happy (played with sweet hilarity by Lynne and Bob Wells) are taking in adult daughter Violet (Jackie Dandeneau) because her house is in foreclosure. Her wild younger sister Rose (Amy Tetzlaff) is already there, and Violet brings her two children, Lily (Amelia David) and Daisy (Cora Dandeneau.)

 But the script by Tyler Olsen doesn’t dwell on the foreclosure situation directly, though the payoff at the end concerns recessionary gifts. The story goes off in other twisted sitcom directions, including Rose’s green wax obsession and Frank’s campaign to unmask Santa as an alien in league with corporations. It’s all also a pretext for music, including a unique “Twelve Days of Christmas” by Lynne and Bob, songs by Jacky and by the band of Tim Randles, Tim Gray and Marla Joy (“Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” is one) and by different guest artists at each performance. The kids (Amelia and Cora) are delightful troupers already.

 The show is directed by Lydia Foreman (who also designed the costumes), with set by Lush Newton and lighting by David Ferney. There are surprises and silliness for the whole family, for one more weekend at the Arcata Playhouse.

 Meanwhile, the Dell’Arte holiday show is on the road. This year the textual victim is The Nutcracker, as three poor mice turn to crime and learn who their real oppressor is (the dirty rat) in The Nutcaper.

 With the comic ballets to that familiar Tchaikovsky music, this has the gentle charm of shows that kids put on for themselves. Performed with Dell’Arte School skill, it’s probably the most child-oriented of the Dell’Arte holiday shows I’ve seen, though there are of course a few class warfare jokes for grownups.

 Meredith Anne Baldwin, Rachel Brown and Meghan Frank are the lovable mouse trio. Myque Franz is the Nutcracker (who turns out to be another exploited worker) and Pratik Motwani is the suitably sinister Rat King who might remind older kids (really older) of the Blue Meanies. Joan Schirle directs, with choreography by Laura Munoz. Daniel Spencer designed the sets, Lydia Foreman the costumes, Michael Foster the lighting, Tim Gray the sound.

Meanwhile, back at Ferndale Repertory Theatre by popular demand is A Christmas Story. 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. 18.

Lynne & Bob Wells: All's Wells

Lynne & Bob in Glorious!

At Dell’Arte this weekend Bob and Lynne Wells are being honored for their acting achievements and contributions to local theatre over a generation. But the thread that ran through our conversation at the Plaza Grill in Arcata last Friday did not concern the past. It was all about the next show. Especially since that would be their Lifetime Achievement dinner this coming Saturday (June 25).

 Lynne had assembled video and photos from past performances, but Dell’Arte Producing Artistic Director Michael Fields wanted something live. So they had to decide “What do we want to say at this point?” Lynne said. “Who are we still?”
 Both professed to be frightened by the prospect. “We’re being honored so we want it to be good. It’s kind of like, are we really worth it?”

 In just the past year North Coast audiences have seen the Wells in performances that would be on anybody’s highlight reel: Lynne’s bravura star turn as Florence Foster Jenkins in the Redwood Curtain production of Glorious! (with Bob’s comic support) and Bob Wells singing and busting some dance moves as Eliza Doolittle’s father in NCRT’s My Fair Lady.

 But these are just the latest occasions of more than twenty years onstage in Humboldt County. For in 1984 Bob Wells was “a furrowed-brow actor” when he wasn’t being music director and drive-time DJ at KINS in Eureka, and Lynne was a mother of three on an organic farm in Petrolia.

 Thanks to an acting class at College of the Redwoods, she was seeing a new world open up to her, and she got a part at Ferndale Rep in Neil Simon’s I Ought to Be in Pictures. Bob, who swore he’d never be in a Neil Simon play, didn’t want to audition and didn’t want to do a play right then, auditioned anyway and got the role. Within a year, he and Lynne were a couple.

 “It was cosmic,” he said. “It was supposed to happen.” “Warm water!” Lynn exclaimed, hearing this. “That’s what’s missing! In the opening piece we’re doing at the dinner—there’s something missing, and that’s it—warm water! We always used to say, we’re in warm water together.”

 They talked about that, in a combination of couples and actors shorthand. They’re planning a kind of physical theatre piece (Lynne won’t call it a clown piece—“I flunked clown!”) to reflect their Dell’Arte background.

 Together they attended a year at the Dell’Arte School in 1988, and Bob returned for another year, appearing in both the student and company productions of Joan Schirle’s Punch that traveled all over the state. Bob also did Out of the Frying Pan, which toured for two years, including a month at Park City, Utah, home of Sundance.  Both have performed in Dell’Arte shows since. But they seem unusual for Dell’Arte grads in returning to conventional theatre.

 Bob’s favorite acting role was as Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Lynne’s was in an all-woman production of the musical Quilters. Both productions were at the late lamented Pacific Arts Center Theatre.

 They’ve acted together, notably as George and Martha in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Asked to do something from this play at the dinner, they demurred—they just didn’t want to go to that intense and unpleasant place again. But what they remember about performing it is the surprise of hearing the audience laugh. They hadn’t quite realized its comic aspect.

 “How people respond—it’s always unknown but it’s always what we as actors live for,” Lynne said. “The breathing, living relationship that happens.” “That’s the best time,” Bob agreed. “When the audience is right there with you, and you get the back and forth. It doesn’t always happen but it’s great when it does.”

 “That’s what’s so scary about doing this one-time thing, “ Lynne said, returning to the dinner performance. “It’s beyond my comfort zone,” Bob admitted.

 But along with anxiety, there’s gratitude. Even though he doesn’t consider himself a singer, he’s planning to sing “A Song For You,” as done by Leon Russell. “I love that song so much,” he said. “It fits what I’m trying to say.”

 The song begins: “I've been so many places in my life and time I've sung a lot of songs/ I've made some bad rhyme I've acted out my love in stages/ With ten thousand people watching/ But we're alone now and I'm singing this song for you.”

 The Lifetime Achievement Awards dinner for Lynne and Bob Wells is at Dell’Arte on Saturday at 5 p.m. The $75 admission includes that night’s performance of Mary Jane: The Musical. For reservations call (707) 668-5663.

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.
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Glorious Debut for New Redwood Curtain Theatre

Lynne Wells plays Florence Foster Jenkins, the operatic singer who was so bad she was great, in Glorious!, the comedy that inaugurates Redwood Curtain’s new theatre in Eureka.

 Jenkins, who died in 1944, was a real if forgotten footnote to the New York City musical and society scene, until she became the subject of three plays in this decade based on her life, or at least her legend. The North Coast has now hosted two of the three.

 In 2008, Humboldt Light Opera did Souvenir by Stephen Temperley, with Carol Ryder as Florence and Kevin Richards as her longtime piano accompanist, Cosme McMoon. As I recall, it was told mostly from McMoon’s perspective, and accented by Jean Bazemore’s direction and Gerald Beck’s moody set, it maintained a sense of wonder about this woman and her effect, and explored what I suspect most musicians fear: that what they hear in their head is not what comes out of their mouths or their instrument.

 Glorious! is different—it is completely a comedy, adding three comic characters to the mix. Bob Wells plays St. Clair, a British-born itinerant actor who is Florence’s companion. When he learns the young McMoon grew up in Chicago during Prohibition, he exclaims “You must be thirsty.” That pretty much sums up this character, and Bob Wells performs it with judicious hilarity.

 Dorothy is a middle-aged friend with her own artistic pretences (and a dog), played by Bonnie Halverson with an oblivious bright-eyed enthusiasm that’s mesmerizing. Maria is the Spanish-speaking maid no one understands, and while this is hardly original or even very funny in itself anymore, it’s amazing how the old bits can still work, and Elisa Abelleria skillfully plays them with the attitude and timing to earn the laughs. Pamela Lyall has an effective scene as the comic villain, Mrs. Verrinder-Gedge.

 Directors Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik have nicely balanced the comic tones of the characters. This script (by Peter Quilter) gets around the mystery of why Jenkins was such a sensation by suggesting her biggest fans (like Cole Porter) were gay, so she was camp. He accents this by emphasizing that pianist Cosme McMoon is gay and that Florence has no idea that he or anybody is, or what it means. Again the jokes aren’t original, and Larry Pitts as McMoon plays them pretty broadly, but the general comic energy seems to propel them well enough.

 So with the Manhattan society version of the cast from You Can’t Take It With You for support, Lynne Wells is free to build the central character as clueless but not really guileless. The comic moments of the exposition-laden first act, and even a well-managed big comic twist, are all just preliminaries to the musical numbers.

 Since Carol Ryder is principally a singer, Souvenirs provided a certain substance to exploring the musical mystery of Florence. But Lynne Wells is principally an actor, and appropriately so for Glorious!, she goes full out for comedy in these numbers, accentuating Florence’s dramatic seriousness and determination, as she not only sings expansively but acts out operatic scenes in astounding costumes.

 She has the audience rooting for her. These scenes are well supported by the direction and Amy Echeverria’s costumes, but basically they are Lynne Wells unleashed. Particularly in the Carnegie Hall concert scene, she careens across the wide stage, singing with full-throated sincerity and outrageous awfulness. Florence’s triumph is doubled by that of Lynne Wells, in a stellar performance.

 Scenic design is by Daniel C. Nyri, lighting by Michael Burkhart, sound by Jon Turney. And if you haven’t figured out the play’s meaning, not to worry, the author spells it out for you at the end.

 As for the new theatre, it’s been a long time coming, but Redwood Curtain finally is in its new theatrical home down on the waterfront in Eureka, between C and D on First Street. There’s parking on the side and nearby, with the walk-in entrance in the back, from Snug Alley. Because the building is long and narrow, the stage configuration is unusual—very wide, not very deep, facing the eighty or so seats on the other wide side.

 I still remember the first Redwood Curtain production I saw, which I believe was also their first: Terrence McNally’s provocative, dour yet oddly exciting A Perfect Ganesh, in the Eagle House. I was new to the North Coast then, and so much seemed possible.

 Glorious! at Redwood Curtain continues Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights through May 15.

 Coming Up: Pig Tree, an apocalyptic comedy by Dell'Arte International faculty member James Peck, plays May 6, 7 & 8 outdoors behind the Humboldt Creamery Building, in conjunction with the Arcata Playhouse.

 The HSU 10 Minute Play Festival does its final weekend, Thursday through Saturday, at Gist. Humboldt Light Opera Company continues The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee in the College of the Redwoods Forum Theater Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30, and Sundays at 2, until May 16.

The Lunts

In the review below, I mention this couple: "I’d call them the North Coast Lunts if I thought anyone knew anymore who the Lunts were." So this isn't Bob and Lynn Wells, but Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, known as the Lunts--the most famous American acting team, who starred in more than two dozen Broadway plays from the 1920s into the 1950s. They did Shakespeare, Chekhov and Shaw, and contemporary playwrights. They're especially famous for how well they worked together and how quickly they picked up each other's lines, especially in Noel Coward. Coward wrote Design for Living for them, and for himself as their co-star. The Lunt Fontaine Theatre on Broadway is named for them. But I have to admit that I first heard of them when Holden Caulfield goes to a matinee of one of their shows in Catcher in the Rye.

Why Howe: Painting Churches 2009

Bob Wells, Jolene Hayes, Lynn Wells at NCRT

Tina Howe nearly nabbed the Pulitzer for Painting Churches in 1984, and by 1986, when I saw the Virginia Stage Company production in Norfolk, this play was on its way to becoming a regional theatre staple. (I saw Broadway veteran Avril Gentles, regional theatre stalwart Wyman Pendleton and young Jordan Baker, familiar now from TV, especially a recurring role in The New Adventures of Old Christine.)

Unlike one of Howe’s earlier plays, which had a cast of 44 (“The seventies—those were the days,” Laurie Anderson used to say in the eighties), Painting Churches has a cast of three and a single set, and so has tempted many unwary theatres with the idea that it’s simple to do.

The story is easy to outline—a young painter (Margaret Church, called “Mags”) returns from Manhattan to Boston to help her aging parents pack up their house for a permanent move to the country, and also to paint their portrait. Her parents are blue-blood aristocrats peculiar to Boston: well-born, highly educated, even famous (Mag’s father, Gardner Church, was a prominent poet who did win Pulitzers) but with depleted financial fortunes. Tina Howe’s father, broadcaster and writer Quincy Howe, came from such a Boston breed, and Gardner is said to be based on him, though it seems there’s some echoes of poet Robert Lowell as well.

Though homey comedy is emphasized in the beginning of the play, the drama that accrues involves both the consequences of uneven aging, and the unresolved relationship of parents and daughter.

The current North Coast Repertory Theatre production features Bob Wells as Gardner and Lynne Wells as his wife, Fanny. It’s a treat to see them act together (I’d call them the North Coast Lunts if I thought anyone knew anymore who the Lunts were.) Bob slithers and squints, balancing the comedy with the character’s residual gravity. Lynne is a fine comic partner but can cause shivers with a look--and she keeps the most consistent Boston accent. Jolene Hayes is energetic and emotive as Mags, and has her own solid comic as well as dramatic turns, including some physical moments.

Director Renee Grinnell propels them all around a simple but evocative set by Katie Pratt, filling the stage with motion and emotion. There are harrowing images, like the scattered manuscript pages and the disordered end of an honored life summed up by books being piled according to color.

But for me, these praiseworthy elements—plus this much-praised play—did not come together, when I saw it opening night. It could be that the tone this play needs is harder to achieve than it might seem. Or maybe this play’s time has passed, and it is too overwrought and overwritten to be more than sentimentalized melodrama.

There’s some fine writing, there are moments to admire, and aspects of the characters that may well spark responses and recognitions in the audience. It’s certainly worth going just to see Bob and Lynne Wells perform. But the play and the production did not work for me as a whole.

I frankly don't know how to disentangle my responses. Even before going, I wondered how a North Coast audience would warm up to such an East Coast and specifically Boston class as the Churches. (The folks in Norfolk seemed to, as I recall, but then southern gentility had some things in common.) This North Coast Rep production seemed to go for universality (though they tried the accents), and casting a well-known North Coast couple automatically relocated it a bit. But in doing so, it lost some subtlety that may be necessary.

On the other hand, how much is in the script, and how much was deeded by the original cast and production team? Tina Howe has written often about art and artist (as well as about aging), but I found the notions of art (of painting and of poetry) in this play pretty simplistic. Or are the relevant lines meant ironically? Hard to tell.

The problems and terrors of aging are real (though this play is not explicitly or even necessarily about Alzheimer’s Disease, despite some statements to the contrary.) But in general, its approach to aging seems a bit antique. It may be that Painting Churches is a younger woman’s play about old age. More than a quarter century later, Tina Howe is in her seventies, with perhaps a different perspective in her new play, Chasing Manet, which has just opened at Primary Stages in New York. It’s about two women who escape from their old age home.

Choice Voice: Sing To Me Through Open Windows

According to renowned early 20th century Italian actor Tomasso Salvini, the three most potent elements of acting are: “Voice! Voice! Voice!” 

 You might expect that sentiment from an old-school actor like Salvini, or even actor and director John Gielgud, who suggested that while attention is often lavished on other aspects of performance, how the words are spoken “can have more effect than anything else.”

 But open almost any book on stage directing or acting, and they proclaim the importance of voice. The purported Stanislavski “Method” may have enshrined mumbling on American stages, but director Robert Lewis quotes Stanislavski writing at length about vocal acting: “Letters, syllables, words—these are the musical notes of speech, out of which to fashion measures, arias, whole symphonies.”

Harold Clurman (another Method-influenced director) writes about it—even Jerzy Grotowski devotes some 30 pages to vocal technique in Towards a Poor Theatre.

 A revelatory object lesson in vocal acting is available this weekend at the Arcata Playhouse, where Bob Wells performs in a short play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone. First of all, every word Wells says can be heard, and every word can be understood. With these foundations in place, Wells goes on to act with his voice—his intonations, pronunciations, the words he stresses hard, the syllables he lets linger and float away.

 Beginning with his surprising “entrance,” Wells captivates, even when he does almost nothing except create this character with sound. He’s masterful: both poetic and clear. We know who this man is, and we attend to what he has to say.

 The play, called Sing to Me Through Open Windows, is more problematic. Arthur Kopit is a contemporary American playwright with a long career that began with revolutionary absurdist romps like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, but more recently has included musicals, including Nine, which reached the silver screen this year with Kopit as an executive producer.

 Whether Kopit has copped out or America has caught up to his absurdism is an open question, but this early play is at best an exercise in poetic symbolism that for me remained fairly elusive in this production. There’s the old magician (Wells), the boy who visits him (played by newcomer Zachery Davis with appropriate vulnerability) and a clown whose relationship to the others is difficult to assess (played with appropriate physicality by Craig Klapman.)

This is the kind of challenging work that Dan Stone often chooses. Figuring out what was happening was more difficult because Bob Wells was the only one who was clearly audible all the time. Even so, a kind of ambiguity is inherent in this play. The stage imagery, including the music (all created by Dan Stone), worked well. The lighting was especially clarifying, but other choices (like the puppets) less so.

 The themes of life’s transitions and mythic cycles are there when you think about it, but the impact of aging was absolutely clear as an experience. That’s the work of Wells, playing a magician who is in the process of himself vanishing.

 “Fear is like regret,” he concludes, “only with fear, there’s not much time left.” Remarkable words to come from a 22 year-old playwright (as Kopit was when he wrote this), but very powerful when spoken by a veteran actor in conscious control of a superior vocal instrument. I particularly urge young actors to experience—and listen to--this performance.

 This Sanctuary Stage production plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 at the Arcata Playhouse.

 Speaking of voices, the Arcata Playhouse recently hosted a live original radio comedy, broadcast on KHSU. Both Ferndale Rep and Redwood Curtain have done these, and the full house at the Playhouse also attests to their popularity. What’s weird about watching a radio show is that it isn’t weird at all. The talent—too numerous to name—was great, the script (a detective story parody involving KHSU) was mostly funny, pocked with puns and other psychic detritus (you know, crazy people from Detroit.)

 Afterwards some participants recalled the great audio artists called Firesign Theatre, of “Temporarily Humboldt County” and “Nick Danger, Third Eye” fame. Get their CDs—still funny, and not insane.

 Coming Up: Still speaking of voices, completing its run this weekend at the HSU Studio Theatre is The Homecoming by Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, known for his unique dialogue, and among the ensemble is another notable North Coast actor who excels at vocal acting, Jabari Morgan. Remaining performances are Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 and Sunday at 2. Info at HSUStage.blogspot.com.

 On Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8, the Dell’Arte Company Cabaret features your favorite Dell’Artesans plus special guests and a sneak preview of their epic work-in-progress: Blue Lake: The Opera. Then on Monday, Dell’Arte hosts visiting Le Cabaret Noir’s “Sin on Heels,” advertised as “a tawdry blend of burlesque and gender-bending performances.” For more on both cabarets, check dellarte.com.

 On Saturday March 13, Ferndale Rep holds its annual fundraiser, “RepFest: Comedy Tonight” at the Ferndale Community Center. Auction items and other information posted on ferndale-rep.org.