This North Coast Weekend

The musical Les Miserables opens Thursday (May 22) at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Directed by Calder Johnson, with musical direction by Elisabeth Harrington and Nanette Voss-Herlihy, it features Dan Stockwell, Craig Benson, Jo Kuzelka, Greta Stockwell and Voss-Herlihy. 442-6278, www.ncrt.net.

 Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay is performed by 12 Northcoast Preparatory Academy students directed by Jean Bazemore at the Arcata Playhouse on Monday May 26 at 8 p.m. It is a benefit for developing a theatre exchange program with a school in Japan where these students recently performed this play, on a trip to study Japanese theater in Kyoto and Tokyo. A $10 donation is suggested but not required.

The 2014 Dell'Arte International School Thesis Festival continues for its final week, Thursday through Saturday (May 22-24) at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre at Dell’Arte in Blue Lake.  My review is in this week's NC Journal.  Appropriate for ages seven and up. 668-5663, www.dellarte.com.

Spring Awakening By Northcoast Prep

NCPA Cast of Spring Awakening

Northcoast Prepatory and Performing Arts Academy performed two plays last weekend: an original musical approach to Shaw's Pygmalion (directed by Gretha Omey Stenger) at 5:30 p.m. Thursday (Jan. 23) through Sunday plus a Sunday matinee at 1, and Spring Awakening, a drama with music and dance for mature audiences, directed by Jean Bazemore.

 Juniors and seniors at Northcoast Prep wanted to do Spring’s Awakening, a play by Frank Wedekind that has been controversial for a century but has also been made into films, television and a musical.

 With the most graphic scenes softened or eliminated, the version they performed last weekend in Gist Hall Theatre emphasized universal adolescent experience within a repressive late 19th century German context: awakening bodies and minds, compelling feelings, parental pressures and the onrushing of adulthood amidst keenly felt golden woodland days and brilliant spring nights.

 Yet especially for today’s audience, the play may organize itself around the topic of teen suicide. Director Jean Bazemore and designer Jerry Beck developed a poetic stagecraft that imbued this evening with an efficient beauty. The play ended with unexpectedly powerful emotion.

Actors of roughly the same age as the adolescent characters provided this play with a unique immediacy, while their characterizations of adult characters was revelatory in other ways.  That these actors were also skilled and committed made this a memorable production.

 The acting company was uniformly believable: Jesse Mackinney, Lily Drabkin, Nico Krell, Ellen Thompson, Chris McIltraith, Annajane Murphy, Danny Davis, Ethan Frank and Myel Gilkerson. But an extra word must be said about Nico Krell, whose performance and stage presence were more assured and compelling than that of any young actor I can remember.

Coming Up:

 The comic duo Third Base (Nick Trotter and Jerry Lee Wallace) present their latest sequel, Son of Myths of the Plastic Age II at the Arcata Playhouse on Friday and Saturday, January 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. Their combination of word play and physical comedy also includes original music in collaboration with the New York group Bonejesters. www.arcataplayhouse.org.

 Redwood Curtain presents its seventh annual radio variety show fundraiser, The Seven Deadly Zounds! on Saturday January 25 at Blue Lake Casino’s Sapphire Palace. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and the show combining comedy sketches and music starts at 8. It features Pamela Lyall, James Floss, Randy Wayne, Lynne Wells, Bob Wells, Terry Desch and Christina Jioras. It’s also broadcast live on KHUM. Tickets and information for this popular event: www.redwoodcurtain.com.

 As part of Mad River Steelhead Days in Blue Lake, Dell’Arte presents Fish Tales, a family-friendly variety show, on Saturday Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. It features local string band Kingfoot and local storytellers Jeff DeMark, Thomas Dunklin and Kit Mann, and a song by Janessa Johnsrude and Ruxy Cantir. Tickets are pay-what-you-can or free with Steelhead Days registration, but reservations are highly recommended: (707) 668-5663 ext. 5.

This North Coast Weekend:Hater and Others

Dueling Molieres on the HSU campus this weekend.  Although readers of this week's North Coast Journal may be surprised to hear it (though not readers of the Eye or Tri-City Weekly) , the HSU Theatre, Film & Dance production of Hater, a new translation of Moliere's The Misanthrope, opens Thursday.  It's directed by Michael Fields, and plays in Gist Hall Theatre  at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, as well as next weekend.

Wednesday (Feb. 27, otherwise known as tonight) another version of another Moliere play opens at the HSU Van Duzer Theatre at 8 p.m.  The Northcoast Prep first and second years are doing a 1970s themed production of The Imaginary Invalid, directed by Colin Stevens.  It starts at 8 p.m., Wed.-Saturday, a one weekend run.

I don't have any more information on the Northcoast Prep show, and getting that much wasn't easy.  But there's a lot more about the HSU show at HSU Stage and Screen.  Briefly, though:

 Samuel Buggeln is a New York-based director of such cutting edge downtown shows as Bedbugs!!! and Go-Go Kitty, GO!. He is also fluent in French. He combined these talents in his new translation of Moliere’s comedy, The Misanthrope, called Hater (“misanthrope” loosely translates as “hater,” though not in exactly the same sense as “hater” is used today.) Dell’Arte’s Michael Fields met Buggeln in New York and proposed Hater for production by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance.  This is its West Coast premiere, and may be the first production since its downtown Manhattan premiere.

 The script reads like heightened contemporary conversation (with lots of f bombs) and director Fields promises a slam-glam “bling Baroque” production. The compulsive truth-telling misanthrope is now called Alex (played by Charlie Heinberg.) The beautiful gossip and flirt he’s in love with against his better judgment is Celine (Johani Guerrero, photo above.) Others in the cast are Brodie Storey, Mark Teeter, Galen Poulton, Luke Tooker, Michelle Purnell, Andreina Loaiza, Adrienne Ralsten and Derek Burns.

P.S. Saw opening night.  Charlie Heinberg's never been better, Johani Guerrero is a star, and at least two of the supporting performances--by Mark Teeter and Andreina Loaiza--are astonishing.  This show is going to be legendary.

The Pitmen Painters continues this weekend at Redwood Curtain.

This North Coast Weekend

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.

Year Not In Reviews 2011: Communities in Hard Times

The Mousetrap at NCRT

 Bad economic times are more than a theme in at least four recent North Coast stage productions. They are a fact of life that local theatres face. From anecdotal evidence, it appears that the economy is injuring some theatrical organizations more than others.

 But in hard times particularly, all these theatres depend on the strength of community. Each of them has its own distinct community that often includes participants as well as audience members. That participation may be as actors and other artists, fundraisers, suppliers or simply volunteer ushers and ticket-takers.

 These communities can be drawn from natural constituencies: the associated school, the hometown. But basically these communities are self-selected, and they can be very loyal. For example, the Redwood Curtain community kept the faith through years of exile until a new venue was found. But there is also support from the larger community that is not regularly involved in productions, even as audience.

 During the past year I’ve made a point of seeing performances that weren’t on opening night (which is typically when that theatre’s own community gathers), with a variety of audiences in attendance. So I’ve seen Sunday matinees at Ferndale Rep with seniors bussed in from senior centers in Eureka and Redway, and an evening performance at the Arcata Playhouse with members of Soroptimist International of Arcata (an organization of “professional women dedicated to helping women and children in our community.”)

 This latter event was an example of a non-profit organization essentially renting a performance and selling tickets at a price of its choosing, often as a fundraising event. North Coast Repertory Theatre executive director Michael Thomas calls them “benefits,” and NCRT typically does two for each play, usually on opening weekend.

 “We like to do benefits because it helps other local non-profits raise money and it is a good way to get word of mouth advertising going after opening weekend,” he said. “Full houses on opening weekend are good for everybody. In any season, local non-profits raise a total of twenty to twenty-four thousand dollars by sponsoring benefits.”

 I saw NCRT’s most recent production (Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap) at an especially interesting benefit for Reading Service of the Redwoods, which performs services centered around reading daily newspapers for broadcast to the blind. (As it happens, I was a volunteer reader some years ago.)

 That audience included not only supporters and participants but clients. So for blind audience members attending, the set was described in detail (the location of the doors and the furniture) before the show started, and the actors came out to introduce their characters, including what they were wearing and where they would first enter.

 Afterwards, Michael Thomas asked a group of blind audience members if even that cursory information had helped. You don’t know how much, is essentially what they told him.

 This is an obvious example of extending a theatre’s community, but these benefits seem to do so more generally. At several it was clear that some attendees had never been there before. Such events strengthen community ties, and together with other efforts to build loyalty (like creating very good shows), they can help theatrical organizations weather hard times.  These non-opening nights also remind me that in almost any audience, for even the most performed plays, there are those who are seeing it for the first time.

 As for a trend in presentations of the past several months, the most obvious was the march of musicals: six of them from June to November. If that’s a record, it may be broken in the next six months. After a February production of Shakespeare’s comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Ferndale Rep presents three musicals in a row: Evita in April, followed by Cabaret and Woody Guthrie’s American Song.

 After its own Shakespeare comedy (Much Ado About Nothing) in March, North Coast Rep performs Avenue Q. In April, Humboldt Light Opera presents Damn Yankees. And rumor has it that a sequel to Mary Jane: The Musical  is in the works at Dell’Arte for the Mad River Festival in June.

 Musicals are popular with local audiences, so they may be a recession hedge, but they are also popular with North Coast performers. The flip side of that is a concern expressed by some directors that local actors (even students) are reluctant to perform in shows they don’t know. This can contribute to a theatrical tedium, and lack of adventurousness that is detrimental to actors and audiences.

 Still, the new year will bring plays by contemporary playwrights Suzan Lori-Parks (at HSU) and Julia Cho, Eric Cable and Paul Weitz (at Redwood Curtain) as well as a locally rare Noel Coward classic at HSU.

Coming Up:

 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.

Some Assembly Required at HSU

It's the final weekend for A Playhouse Recessionary Christmas at the Arcata Playhouse.  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  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.

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:

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

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.

Stage Matters Special: Humboldt Staged Marathon

The Humboldt Tourism Bureau hosts a 24-hour marathon of theatre in its first annual Staged Humboldt extravaganza, beginning at midnight (right now!)Thursday at the Arcata Theatre.

Expanding the concept of David Ferney’s solo show, The Misunderstood Badger, Arcata Playhouse presents Roob, a new Ferney work about a hick professor in the Australian outback obsessed with kangaroos, performed entirely on a trampoline. Jackie Dandeneau adds an a cappella rendition of the Van Halen classic, “Jump.”

Dell’Arte contributes California Faust, a commedia version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, starring Joan Schirle as Ahnold the Magician and Michael Fields as his tempter, Robus Arklius. The Tyler Olson-penned tunes include “If I Only Had a Soul.”

Former members of Shake the Bard and Shakespeare in the Park combine for two shows: a new version of Othello set in the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers locker room, called Shaqthello, and a time travel mash-up of authors too dead to sue in Antony and Cleopatra and Jane Austen, and Vampires, Dude.

The Bard is also represented in NCRT’s Macbeth, set among burl sculptors in Orick in the 1980s, with music by Devo, Cyndi Lauper and the Cars.

Dan Stone combines elements of plays by Beckett and Eugene O’Neill with Neil Simon and the Firesign Theatre in the Santuary Stage production of Waiting for the Iceman or Someone Like Him, starring Tinamarie Ivey as Tina Fey playing the Virgin Mary, and Bob Wells as Father Time. “It’s even more obscure than usual,” Stone promises.

Redwood Curtain presents the postmodern Small Cast Sex Melodrama by contemporary playwright Tabitha Overly-Werkshopt. Graduates of HSU’s dramatic writing program return to perform Sixteen Playwrights in Search of a Production.
The Very Precious Players of Northcoast Prep combine music from Threepenny Opera and Oklahoma in a socially conscious dinner theatre presentation, Oklahoodie. Director Jean Bazemore warns sensitive Arcatans not to be alarmed if they see Klingons in the parking lot—it’s all part of the show.

Ferndale Rep presents a stage version of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Director Jasper Anderton confirms that Kimberly Haile’s shower scene will be “realistic, taking place offstage in a real motel room shower, probably in Garberville.”

Humboldt Light Opera continues its tradition of adaptations from classic novels with lots of parts for women with the operatic version of The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, with Brad Curtis in the role of Troy Aiken. However, the College of the Redwoods rendition of Richard III, set on a contemporary community college campus in northern Ca---no, that's southern Oregon--has been suddenly cancelled.

And what would a Humboldt theatre marathon be without live radio drama? KHSU brings back its all-star cast in the first of a series of underwriter-specific radio dramas, The Wildberries Mysteries: The Case of the Mislabeled Organic Banana. One innovative feature announced by co-organizer Jeff DeMark: “Special glasses will be available for those in the audience who want to watch this radio show in 3-D.”

This column--minus a few web-only additions--appears in the current Arcata Eye.

HSU Going Dark

If stage matters on the North Coast, then this matters: the graduate programs of the Humboldt State University Theatre, Film & Dance department are on the list for elimination. The undergraduate programs may be right behind them.

It's getting to be decision time at HSU, in the latest budget crisis. The Academic Senate has formally listed those graduate programs for elimination, and the department has to defend them--has to say why they shouldn't be scrapped.

The evaluation has nothing to do with their value. It has to do with numerical criteria devised to look like a relevant objective measure. It looks to me like the usual bureaucratic smokescreen, but what do I know.

What I do know is that virtually every production of every theatre organization here depends in part on students--graduate and undergraduate--of HSU, as well as faculty and long-ago graduates of the Theatre department. HSU students starred in, designed and worked on the latest North Coast Rep show. An HSU student directed the latest Ferndale Rep show. Even though Dell'Arte has its own fine school, its productions often use HSU faculty and grads. Humboldt Light Opera, North Coast Prep, and the other groups that come and go...none of it would be the same, and some of it wouldn't exist, without HSU theatre.

And then there's what HSU theatre produces--that no one else locally does. That too, is threatened. But it's even worse than that. Part of the reason that the HSU Theatre department looks so expensive is that it is responsible for running the Van Duzer and other performance spaces. Those costs get figured as department costs. So will those venues also close? And will the other theatre organizations who use those spaces need to go elsewhere?

It gets even worse than that. Also on the list for program elimination is the Music department. Another group of students, graduates and faculty that are essential to musical theatre as well as the musical vitality of Humboldt County. I can't imagine musical theatre at North Coast Rep over the past several years, for example, without the talents who came through HSU. Similiar arguments could be made about dance and film.

Part of the horror of the budget process is the zero sum game--if this isn't cut, then another worthy program--and its faculty and students--must go. I don't happen to think it has to be that way, but I'll stay with just this point: the local community has a stake in the decisions being made at HSU. In particular, the local theatre community has a stake in the fate of the HSU Theatre, Film and Dance department.

A particular irony now is that HSU is set to host next year's regional festival of the Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival. That's 800 to 1200 students, along with hundreds of faculty, etc., from colleges and universities in Northern California (San Francisco/Sacramento and north), Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. They'll be in Arcata for a week, going to shows, spending money. I stood in the lobby of the Arcata Playhouse a few weeks ago, and listened to stories from several prominent local theatre figures who participated in past regionals here, including one who got his start in North Coast theatre because of it.

But next spring, it could be a wake instead of a validation and celebration. Depending on what HSU does this year.

I've got a few obvious self-interests here. I do part-time work for both HSU Theatre, Film & Dance and the Music department. My partner is probably going to be the next chair of TFD. But it seems to me that everybody in the theatre community here has a self-interest to some degree--that's my point.

Maybe that self-interest ought to be declared to those making the decisions--like the Academic Senate and the Provost. Before it's too late.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening Thursday for two weekends, the HSU Theatre production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, directed by John Heckel. It's in the Studio Theatre, the smallest of the HSU venues, so advance tickets are advised. There's lots more information (most of which I wrote) at HSU Stage, or you can check stories in Tri-City Weekly, Humboldt Beacon, Humboldt State Now or the Arcata Eye print issue of this week. (Photo above.)

Also opening Thursday for two weekends, Sing to Me Through Open Windows, an absurdist play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone. It's a Sanctuary Stage production, on stage at the Arcata Playhouse. Check either web site (linked over there to the right) for details. (Photo below.)

There's a Clowns Without Borders benefit on Friday and Saturday at the Redwood Raks World Dance Studio in Arcata. 845-5842. Meanwhile, Ferndale Rep's Wait Until Dark has its final weekend. Beti Trauth gives it a rave.

I seemed to have missed the theatre story of the year, involving an angry phone call and a Nazi uniform. Who would have thought that The Sound of Music could be controversial? It's a sidelight to what seems to have been a very successful run by the third and fourth years of North Coast Prep in their dinner theatre experiment at Arcata's Abruzzi restaurant. Kevin Hoover has the story in the Eye online.

This North Coast Weekend

A big weekend at Dell'Arte: the final performances (Thurs-Sun) of Intrigue at Ah-Pah (reviewed below) at 8pm in the outdoor (chilly) amphitheatre, plus the annual cabaret, Red Light in Blue Lake--a burlesquixotic mix of novelty acts, music and "adult" material--on Friday after "Intrigue" at about 10:30 pm (in the indoor Carlo), plus a salmon bake to benefit the Carlson and Frye Families' Blue Creek/Ah-Pah Village on Saturday at 6pm before the show, plus The Body Remembers, featuring Humboldt women recalling the Great Depression, on Sunday afternoon at 2 in the Carlo.

David Ferney presents a new version of his The Misunderstood Badger at the Arcata Playhouse on Thursday July 9 only, before taking it to a festival in Amherst, Massachusetts. .. Finally, a tip of the hat to the Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy, recently named in a Newsweek magazine survey as the third best high school in California, and #31 in the U.S.

The Producers and Quixote at North Coast Rep & Prep

As a teenager, Mel Brooks' summer job at a resort hotel was insulting guests, parodying popular singers and improvising outrageous acts as a kind of court jester called a tummler. Entertainment was a major attraction for the mostly Jewish patrons of mountain resorts in New York and Massachusetts. The stage shows were directly in the vaudeville tradition, cross-fertilized with burlesque, variety theatre and early Broadway musicals.

Vaudeville trained the first stars of radio and television, and provided an early staple: the comedy and variety program. Before his famous films, Mel Brooks wrote for one of the best of these: Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows.

Vaudevillians were versatile: Comedians like Bob Hope sang and danced; singers and dancers like Donald O'Connor did comedy. But after adapting for a final burst of glory in ’70s TV (The Carol Burnett Show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and even The Electric Company) the vaudeville tradition faded. It is alive again in Mel Brooks' musical, The Producers, now on stage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka.

It's all there: the structure of jokes, and of running jokes (sometimes just a word, like "Elizabeth"), and of ethnic humor that Brooks broadened to religious and sexual preference identities. The play's first act in particular is an extended vaudeville sketch, satirizing institutions (the Broadway theatre and its producers, and "unhappy" accountants) with contrasting connivers and their sexy blonde assistant. Brooks finds new ways to be outrageous and vulgar, with bizarre comic invention but without meanness. This, and the 1940s-flavored music (also by Brooks) is why The Producers is so different from most new musicals.

The NCRT ensemble performs that first act with hilarious effect. David Powell as the boisterous producer Max Bialystock and Ethan Vaughan as the meek yet larcenous accountant Leo Bloom confidently deliver character and comedy, along with excellent singing. Bloom realizes that by raising much more money than the show costs (which Bialystock does by wooing lots of little old ladies), the producers can make a fortune if they don't have to pay these investors any profits because the show flops.

Rigel Schmitt as the baby-faced Nazi playwright of the "worst play ever written," which guarantees failure, is so right that the opening night audience laughed as soon as he appeared. His backup-singing pigeons were a bonus. The act ends with a show-stopping, walker-stomping production number that's just amazing. Kudos to choreographer Anthony J. Hughes.

The second act is more conventional musical than comedy, perhaps because its centerpiece is the premiere of the flop -- which of course is a hit -- Springtime for Hitler. If you've seen either of the movies or the touring show CenterArts brought to the Van Duzer, you know how much this scene depends for its comic frenzy on the big Broadway trimmings. This production does its best, and though it's funny it doesn't quite rise to that first act finale. Still, John Ludington is memorably zany as director-turned-star Roger De Bris playing Hitler as a cross between a gay Al Jolson, David Bowie and a schnauzer.

Excellent costumes (by Marcia Hudson), ingenious staging, glittering dancing girls and a versatile ensemble (especially Adina Lawson and Danielle Cicon), fine performances by Keilli Marble as the Swedish bombshell Ulla and Gabriel Holman as De Bris' swishy assistant, and a backstage band all combine to make this a delightful evening. Tom Phillips directed, with musical direction by Dianne Zuleger. Enjoy the controversial wit of Mel Brooks (this 2001 play is only now premiering in Germany) and the solid echoes of vaudeville.

The Producers continues at North Coast Rep Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 until June 20.

Don Quijote de la Mancha

In its own way, Cervantes' The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha is also parody, of knight-errants and the chivalric romances. But like Brooks and Broadway, it also supports what it parodies. The first and second year students of Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy began their stage version presented in Gist Hall last weekend by reciting the virtues of chivalry.

This generative classic of fiction by an aging unsuccessful playwright was adapted for this production by its director, Gretha Omey, who acted and was an artistic director in Spain. In addition to theatre, she teaches Spanish at Northcoast Prep, and students performed partly in that language (plus a little French and Italian). It was an intriguing adaptation and a sparkling production, with stage-filling ensemble dances, mood-setting music, brilliant costumes, a giant puppet and a steed for Quixote that looked like it had momentarily escaped from the Kinetic Sculpture Race.

Silas McIlraith as Don Quijote (the production's preferred spelling) heroically kept the play moving through moods of drama, comedy, pathos and action, with the delightful assistance of Gina Montagna as Sancho Panza. Sandra Gbeintor, Larkin O'Shea and Kirra Moon were particularly impressive, but the whole huge cast performed well. Add the remarkable musicians and other participants too numerous to mention, and this talented cohort bears watching.

This North Coast Weekend

The first and second year students of Northcoast Prep present Cervantes’ comic classic, Don Quijote de la Mancha, adapted and directed by Gretha Omey, on Wednesday and Thursday, May 20 and 21, and Saturday and Sunday, May 23 and 24, in the Gist Hall Theatre at HSU at 7:30.

North Coast Repertory Theatre opens Mel Brooks musical comedy, The Producers on Thursday, May 21 at 8.

On Friday and Saturday (May 22-3) the Arcata Playhouse hosts a circus adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by the San Francisco Circus, at the kid-friendly time of 7 pm.

The Arcata Arts Institute will be performing Jean Paul Satre's one act play, No Exit, and monologues from the works of Christopher Durang on Thursday and Friday at 7:30 pm in the Arcata High School Multi-Purpose Room.

The second group of thesis plays by Dell'Arte School students is performed May 21-24, at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. As noted below, the HLO/CR production of the musical Little Women concludes Friday and Saturday at 7:30.

Lear by Young Actors Guild

Though the play invites it, the laying on of theory is not always useful to those who must act it. A couple of famous 1960s productions (Herbert Blau’s in San Francisco, Peter Brook’s in England) took an existential tack, emphasizing the march towards nullity. But when Brook explained this approach to Paul Scofield, his lead actor who became the most praised Lear of his generation, Scofield replied that this might be true but it didn’t help him. “I can’t play negative actions.” He had to be “fully active, moment after moment, even in loss, even in defeat.”

Undaunted by any of this, the Young Actors Guild of the Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy presented King Lear in the Gist Theatre recently, directed by Jean Bazemore. The audience was greeted with only a crown on the edge of Gerald Beck’s otherwise empty set, inviting us to consider kingship, which could suggest mastery of the self as well as others, and the ideal of completeness in the fullness of years. Whether Lear attains this through the coming trials is a central question.

The set remains mostly bare throughout the play, which is probably how Shakespeare’s troupe first staged it. In the choice of where they stand, the actors could use the many platform levels to express the shifting power relationships.

Bazemore also chose minimalist effects, particularly in the troublesome storm scene and the blinding of one character. The storm had some cheesy lighting effects but I admired the sound choice: an unseen drummer on a trap set played a kind of thunder solo, punctuating Lear's ravings, sometimes emphasizing them, sometimes cutting against them. It didn't always work, but when it did it was impressively musical.

The acting style seemed modest as well: brisk and presentational, giving us the words and actions to interpret ourselves. Though probably also borne of necessity, this was a wise choice. A teenager trying to mimic the infirmities of age, for example, could easily become comic.

Instead there was emphasis on making the words clear—both their poetry and what they mean within the play. Except for some uncertain and cell phone-sounding diction, this was largely successful. Several of the actors I saw were particularly good vocally, with moments of eloquence: for example, Caleb McIlraith as Lear, Alexander Johnson as Kent and Keenan Hilton as Edmund.

Hilton also managed to alternate obsequiousness with a sneer to give us the character of Edmund in a glance. (Maybe he’s worked in fast food?) Jules Eubanks played the good brother Edgar with quiet assurance, while Nick Roney portrayed his alter-ego Tom O’Bedlam with a slithery physicality. Samantha Biasca was instantly sympathetic as Cordelia, and in their better moments Navarra Carr trembled with rage as the bad Goneril while Hayley Connors-Keith was an insinuatingly evil Regan. Jesse Drucker as Glouchester, Izzy Samuels as Albany, Keli Rael Floyd as the Fool, Evan Mahoney-Moyer as Cornwall and Patrick Roberts as Oswald acquitted themselves well.

The other actors I saw included Dawut Sassanapitax, Nicholas Mundy, Elena Hernandez, Shantal Polit, Gisela Bueno, Galina Schroder, Serena Sprater, Vasin Pasda, and Yagmur Khan. Many major roles were double-cast, so I didn’t see Sylvan Arevalo as Lear, or Miriam Cook, Kaylee Wennerholm, Genay Pilarowski, Rachel Scherer, Rosie O’Leary, Reed Benoit, Camden Bruner, Aimee Talmadge and Zoe Huber. Chris Sutter and Kaela Sutter designed excellent costumes.

Of the many themes and elements of this capacious play, I thought in watching this production not only of the personal journey of age but a societal journey of the moment, from the sheltered wealth of Lear’s court to his mad stumble through the storm of loss and naked need, eventually warmed by the brief candle of compassion.

The quality of Northcoast Prep productions often make you forget that these are high school students. This wasn’t always the case with King Lear, but the beauty of an un-actable play (as Shakespearean actor and Slings and Arrows star Paul Gross points out) is the freedom to try things when failure is inevitable. And some of the beauty of Shakespeare involves the worlds his plays open up to participants and audience alike, redefining the perfect production that can never be attained.

I suppose my own perfect production would begin with distant thunder, and the conversation among Kent, Glouchester and Edmund just outside the castle--out of the wind but not entirely inside. The throne room however would be bright and warm, with all the comforts--food and fire, well-clothed courtiers.

Lear's daughters, Regan and Goneril would be particularly well-dressed, in a provocative, almost lascivious way. Their dialogue with Lear--their flattering professions of love-- would involve physical touching. I imagine Lear as having little to do with his daughters beyond these court displays, except perhaps for Cordelia. I think I buy the idea that part of what's going on in this scene is Lear trying to marry Cordelia off.

In any case I would emphasize the comfort of the court and the shelter of the entitled King. I can see his desire to retire and "put off care" as reaching for more comfort as well as enjoying the honor of his reign. He might see retirement as endless feasts and hunting expeditions with his knights, interspersed with testimonial dinners--if that's not too modern an idea of retirement. Cordelia and Kent mar his picture of a perfect retirement and are banished.

Things change, when he realizes his powerlessness, and he becomes an exile and outcast. He loses his life's security and literally he loses his shelter. At this point I can see Lear not as suffering from a disease or even becoming infirm--he seems feisty enough throughout. But he is dealing with humiliation and limitation, which is part of what aging is about. He goes in and out of madness, and the wisdom he is acquiring is at first the dislocated wisdom of the fool (the Fool) and the lowest of the outcasts (Tom.) His journey is mirrored in its way by Glouchester, as he begins to see realities he missed before he was blind: that revisiting of the worst of the past, particularly regrets and their causes, is another familiar aspect of aging, at least for men.

What happens when security is gone--including the world order you felt entitled to--right down to your shelter: that's a theme for today. That Lear reaches certain insights and perhaps wisdom, and yet there is no immediate happy ending--this too is the natural course of aging, since it ends in only one way. The unsettled state of the state at the end of the play also may remind us that transformation doesn't always lead instantly to happily ever after. Maybe it takes a younger generation, learning enough from the hard-earned insights of the older not to make all the same mistakes.

This North Coast Weekend

The annual A Very Playhouse Christmas variety show plays this weekend (Dec. 12-14 at 8 pm, with a 2 pm matinee as well on Sunday) and next at the Arcata Playhouse. The North Coast Prep production of Shakespeare's King Lear plays at Gist Hall Theatre, Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm, with a Saturday matinee at 2. Dell'Arte presents "Missing Persons: Plays for One Character," 11 playlets by the International School's second year students, Dec. 11-13 in the Carlo, while the Glasnost Family continues touring.

Nothing new this week until Wednesday, when the brave students of North Coast Prep open Shakespeare's King Lear Wednesday. It plays through Saturday, Dec. 10-13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Gist Hall Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata, with a Saturday matinee at 2. Tickets at Arcata Plaza Design or call 822-1670.

Continuing this weekend however is Dell'Arte's Glasnost Family Holiday, the subject of the cover story (by both Hank Sims and Bob Doran) in this week's North Coast Journal. I also review it briefly in the same issue. (If you're wondering, I had no part in the decision to do this story, and didn't see it in advance. I probably only found out about it before publication because I'd committed to reviewing the performance.)

Anyway, it will be in Orick Friday and Fortuna on Saturday before it hits the Arkley Center on Sunday. Find the full schedule and ticket info (all free until the last weekend back at the Carlo) here.

Dell'Arte has also announced a new marketing director. Maybe he can fix their web site, probably the least useful on the North Coast.

Also continuing: The Christmas Story at Ferndale Rep and She Loves Me at North Coast Rep. The Christmas Story is based on the cult movie of the same name, celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. People who love it presumably will love the stage version. I suppose it's possible that people who loathe it (like me) will still like the stage version, although that seems very unlikely.

As for She Loves Me, I noted in my review that this play was also the first production at North Coast Rep, also 25 years ago, but that there's a dearth of documentation concerning that production. (NCRT exec director Michael Thomas recalls seeing a program at some point, but doesn't have anything now.) I invited those who remembered the 1983 production to contact me, and one of the principals did:

"I was one of the leads in the NCRT premiere, directed by Roby Agnew," writes Lisa Monet of Bayside. "My husband Rick St. Charles and I had recently moved here from San Luis Obispo, where we'd been active in community theater ... During the period of rehearsals, (which took place in the remodeled Eagle House) I learned I was expecting our first child, Matt St. Charles. After that production, my musical focus turned to albums for children. We now have two children, and two national award-winning CDs, Circle Time, songs and rhymes for the very young, and Tingaleyo, a bilingual treasure trove of songs in Spanish and English, and plans for the upcoming release of four more titles."
More information can be found at http://www.lisamonetmusic.com/.

The North Coast News

Arcata Playhouse hosts its periodic local All-Star show, "Club Shampoo" on Friday at 9pm: lots of comedy, music, various forms of theatricals, including Jeff DeMark. 822-1575.

Then there are the events on Saturday celebrating, or at least marking, the 150th anniversary of Arcata's founding. The 9th annual Storytelling by the Sea happens Saturday at Patrick's Point.

This note comes from Ferndale Rep:
The Ferndale Repertory Theatre will hold auditions for Jean Shepherd’s family favorite A Christmas Story on Saturday, Sept. 13 at 3 pm and Sunday, Sept. 14 at 2 pm at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre, 447 Main Street in Ferndale.

Director Vikki Young seeks: 2 men, ages 35-45; 2 women, ages 30-50; 5 boys, ages 6-13; 2 girls, aged 9-13. Prepared auditions pieces are not required. Auditioners will read from the script. Adapted for the stage by Philip Grecian from the popular motion picture, we meet the Parker family and 9-year old Ralphie who receives the ever-present warning, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” when he asks for an official 200-shot Red Ryder Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle for Christmas.

Production dates are November 29 through December 21 and all rehearsals will be held in Ferndale. For further information, call 786-5483 x 203.

North Coast Rep begins its season next Thursday with The Merry Wives of Windsor. and HSU has a staged reading of a new play, Fire-Bringer, Thursday through Saturday. We're going to have quite a Shakespearian year, with HSU doing The Winter's Tale in October and North Coast Prep planning King Lear.

My Journal column on Donald Lacy's show got bumped for space, and is promised for next week's issue. I may post an expanded version here before then.

North Coast Prep: Twelfth Night

The juniors and seniors of North Coast Prep elected to do two different plays instead of double-casting one, as they usually do. They played over two recent weekends in the Gist Theatre at HSU.

The second play to be seen was something of a departure from modern dramas of the past several productions--this time, a comedy by Shakespeare: Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night probably premiered in wintry London exactly 406 years before North Coast Prep presented their shorter version, when on the North Coast, too, “… the rain it raineth everyday.” It's a somewhat controversial comedy. Some see it as witty and rambunctious, others as bitter and troublesome, especially in the treatment of Malvolio. Auden called it an unpleasant comedy, a precursor to Shakespeare's dark dramas which soon followed.

There's a quite good movie version from 1996, with Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Kingsley and Nigel Hawthorne. As that film suggests, the play is known for the number of good roles that allow the actors to shine, and so several talented North Coast Prep students did. Though the words were not always intelligible (at least to me), the direction was so clear and the actors so prepared that the audience was able to follow the action. Special credit therefore goes to director Jeanne Bazemore, who may have set a North Coast record with three shows in three weeks, and to assistant director Gretha Omey.

The program notes emphasize the play as an entertainment for the Twelfth Night celebrations in early 17th century London (it's the play that the Judi Dench version of Queen Elizabeth commissions Shakespeare to do, just after she'd seen Romeo and Juliet, in Shakespeare in Love. Though this is fictional, one of the many subtle touches of this movie--probably due to Tom Stoppard's co-authorship--is that as we see Shakespeare imagining Twelfth Night, the character Viola's shipwreck referred to in the play is cleverly transposed to the actual shipwreck of Jamestown colonists, with the Viola of the movie--Shakespeare's fictional beloved played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who was off to America--as its survivor.)

This view of the play as an entertainment for that celebration is an interesting and valid approach, since the tradition of the festivals in which peasants became the Lords of Misrule for a day, and tradition of the jester or "allowed Fool" which lasted for centuries, are important historically as well as artistically.
And confusions of the brother and sister in the play, as well as one of the more famous Shakespearian uses of the Fool, does reflect those traditions.

But while this version told the story with fluidity across the expansive set, it was more a simplified entertainment than an illuminating exploration of the play. But of course a school play has other purposes, with the resulting limitations, such as casting. Still, a number of these students clearly could be quite successful as performers as they move on from high school.

Once more, Gerald Beck's set was wonderfully evocative, but instead of heaping the usual praise, I will quarrel slightly with his choices as lighting designer. As no less a theatre mind than Laurence Olivier knew, in a play with a lot of words, brighter is better. People hear better when they see better.

North Coast Prep: The Crucible

The previous weekend, North Coast Prep’s Young Actors Guild presented Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible. This play about the Witch Trials in colonial New England is famous as an allegory of 1950s McCarthyism, but as the audience for this production learned in 2008, it has equally relevant resonance.

There were some possibly anachronistic elements, such as John Proctor's willingness to give up his soul but not his good name. This was very important in the Blacklist and McCarthy era, when people were asked to "name names." But it may have less power in this age of Internet anonimity and the media relativism of reputation. But otherwise, Miller's play holds up very well, both in craftsmanship and in perennial relevance. For example, it was hard not to see the entire Bush era in the arc from fear hyped up for political and economic reasons, and abetted by religious extremism, to a society falling apart.

Miller deftly layers the practical reasons why Salem townspeople want to demonize each other, and later why they need to pull back from a community in chaos. But Miller’s emphasis is on that particular hormone-fueled mixture of fear and ecstasy known as hysteria.

Hysteria in this sense knows no gender, but it certainly is expressed with chilling power by a set of screaming adolescent girls, who mesmerize the court with their “ability” to see Satan. Though the play suggests the role of Puritanical repression, it doesn’t depend on it—there are all kinds of repressions in our “permissive” society. We can even see a template for this kind of hysteria in the national response to terrorism, and a similar exploitation of it by authorities.

After laying the groundwork in the first act, this production gathered force for a superior second act. Overall the presentation (directed by Jean Bazemore) was clear and thoughtful, with many fine performances. Chisa Hughes was daunting as Abigail Williams, the leader of the witch-finding girls; Elena Tessler was a convincing Tituba, and Dominick Roney fully conveyed the transformation of investigator Reverend Hale from self-righteous to conscience-stricken. While Elijah Singer capably portrayed the moral anguish of John Proctor, Fiona Ryder played Elizabeth Proctor with such depth and nuance that this relatively static character became the still center of the drama.

But what made this show particularly vital for the opening night audience was the evident emotion of this diverse young cast, and their deep involvement in the play—a power to communicate that leapt across the stage.

This North Coast Weekend

Instead of double-casting roles in one play as they usually do, North Coast Prep students elected to do two different plays. So after one cast did The Crucible last weekend this weekend another cast performs Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Thursday (Jan. 31) through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Gist Hall Theatre.

Elsewhere: Friday through Sunday at various times, African American storyteller Diane Ferlatte appears at the Arcata Playhouse (822-1575). Dell’Arte students present Quattro Formaggio, an evening of commedia Thursday through Saturday (668-5663). Meanwhile, 12 Angry Men continues at Ferndale Rep and Marat/Sade at North Coast Rep.

North Coast Stages and Auditions

A busy weekend ahead… The show not yet mentioned here is the North Coast Prep production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which begins tonight (Thursday) at 8 PM in Gist Hall Theatre, continuing Friday and Saturday. Then next weekend, the Prep players present Twelfth Night at the same location.

Now to reinterate: this Saturday, Redwood Curtain presents Zounds!, a staged radio event a la A Prairie Home Companion (at 8), along with drinks and dinner (at 5:30) at the Wharfinger Building. Clink Rebik and James Floss are co-directors. You can also hear it, oddly enough, on the radio—KHUM to be exact.

Dell’Arte is presenting a one weekend reprise of Golden State, their Californicated version of Moliere's The Miser starring Joan Schirle, before it goes to LA for a month. It's in the Carlo Theatre Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8.

Ferndale Rep begins its run of 12 Angry Men with a preview on Thursday and opening night on Friday at 8. North Coast Rep continues Marat/Sade, which I review very favorably in the Journal (and will review here a little more extensively on Friday.) Barry Blake has a less enthusiastic review at the T-S. (This week's Northern Lights doesn't have anything online at the moment, but using the 5 Cookie system I've devised for him, I'd say Barry gave this one 3 Cookies.) Betti Trauth reviews it positively in the Humboldt Beacon.

Auditions

Auditions will be held at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre on Tuesday Feb. 5th between 6:30 pm and 8pm. Director Gary Franklin will be doing two, half-hour stories performed live on stage and simulcast on KHUM Radio. The first story is an episode of “The Shadow” called “Silent Avenger”, originally broadcast in 1938 and starring Orson Wells. Second will be another famous story, which also starred Wells, called “The Hitchhiker” which first aired in 1946.

Gary is looking for 3-5 women, 20-50 years, and approx. 4-6 men of 20-60 years. We will be reading from script. There will be about 8 rehearsals, with performance on Feb. 21st.at 7:30P.M. For more information, please call Gary at (707) 786-5483 X 207 or email Gary at mailto:%7B7EA9374B-7961-4D9F-techdirector@ferndale-rep.org

And don't forget the auditions for Ferndale's production of Hair, this weekend.