Jean (and John) and the Northcoast Prepsters

set for Light on the Piazza

Jean Heard Bazemore began directing theatre on the North Coast in 1969.  She directed and taught at HSU until the late 1990s.  In my almost-decade of reviewing, I saw two shows she directed for the Humboldt Light Opera: Souvenir, a small-scale production of a play about Florence Foster Jenkins, and a large summer show, Light on the Piazza.  But mostly I saw the shows she directed with high school students of what came to be called the Northcoast Preparatory Academy.  She began that school, and has been its director ever since.

I'm reproducing two of those pieces below. The first is about Strindberg's The Dream Play she directed in 2007.  It was also the play she directed in the same theatre (the Van Duzer) in 1969-- if I recall correctly what she told me, back then she had been drafted to do it on short notice when another production fell through.  This column squares the circle further by telling the story of local musical favorites Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor, who met when acting in that play.

But mostly this column is a decent introduction to the work she did at Northcoast Prep.  The school's productions were (and are) part of the educational process, and usually involve a long period of study and discussion.  (The actual productions I believe tended to get put together pretty quickly.) The students select the plays they want to do, which in some years meant the plays they wanted to combine, or perhaps do two.  Generally the first and second years did one show, the third and fourth years another.  The shows they did--and the editing Jean did on the scripts--favored participation by as many students as there were that year.

Cyrano

So the student experience came first.  But audiences (even apart from parents and relatives) got the benefit.  For one thing, they saw plays that they could not see elsewhere on the North Coast--plays that not so long ago used to be part of the repertoire for any student of the theatre, casual or serious.

The Northcoast Prep students always brought something special to these plays.  Their commitment, first and foremost, and enthusiasm, but also talent and skills.  Still, these shows depended on Jean Bazemore's taste, talent and skills as a director.  And on the elegant stage designs by Gerald Beck.  They ensured that the audience got clarity, as well as a viewpoint, an illumination.

Sancho Panza and Don Quijote 

So we got Brecht, Shaw, Strindberg, Arthur Miller as well as Shakespeare and Sophocles.  We got a youthful presentation of older heroes to youth:  Don Quijote de la Mancha , Cyrano.  And of an elder tragic hero, in Lear.

Their youth was also an asset in itself: adding verisimilitude to the young women in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, for instance.  But most impressively in Spring Awakening, which concerns adolescent feelings and experience.  That they could also do the adult roles convincingly in these same plays made them all the more compelling.

cast of Spring Awakening

For me the most memorable were The Crucible, Shaw's Joan, the version of several Henry plays from Shakespeare with a strong point of view about war in Mortal Men, Mortal Men.  And Spring Awakening.  The age of the actors relative to the characters and the play added a dimension, but it did not dominate the experience. I'm not even sure how they did it, but in most of these productions they had my complete confidence, and I was absorbed in the play itself.  Since they were different groups of actors, I have to conclude that a lot of it was due to Jean.

I am also appending to this column another (from 2006) that doesn't appear elsewhere on this site. Its only other virtue is that it concerns two directors I admired then, and admire still for the work they've chosen and produced: Jean Bazemore and John Heckel.   The first play I saw on the North Coast was directed by John Heckel--it was the 1996 winner of the national playwriting contest that HSU Theatre Arts department used to run.  Shortly after that, John directed a play by my partner Margaret Thomas Kelso at HSU, to which I contributed two songs.

But beside his good taste in directing several of Margaret's plays, he was responsible for some of the best theatre I've seen here.  His direction of both parts of Angels in America, in the relatively intimate space of Gist Hall Theatre, was mesmerizing.  He did a play by Cree playwright Tomson Highway that was astounding.

The Homecoming at HSU

I wasn't crazy about every move he made in his shows, and sometimes they took me out of the trance.  But his instincts for the mythic could add another dimension, and there were few others willing to take the chance on trying.  In more recent years, he directed some modern classics that nobody else would touch in this neck of the woods, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at HSU and John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger at Ferndale Rep (which only happened because another show fell through.)

These two directors have very different approaches and get different results, but their choices of plays and playwrights are similarly rewarding, and for the North Coast, unfortunately unique.

The Dream Play  January 2007

The Dream Play by August Strindberg is performed at the Van Duzer Theatre by the Young Actors Guild. These shows from the Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy are unique. They bring together young people devoted to an arts-based education with visionary theatrical veterans (director Jean Heard Bazemore and set designer Gerald Beck) in adaptations of stylistically unconventional and substantive plays that these days just aren’t seen much on the North Coast.

 The play’s not the only thing of interest on the stage. As with performances of other high school, junior high and young people’s group (such as those at Dell’Arte, Ferndale Rep and NCRT) that aren’t reviewed here, the experience of witnessing young people discovering themselves on stage can be inspiring, resonant and educational for the audience as well as the students. The play in turn can itself be infused with more meaning by youthful enthusiasm and sincerity.

 The Dream Play has all of that, plus an efficiently flowing, focused production, and Beck and Bazemore’s magnificent stage pictures: there’s a scene with a trapezoidal door suspended in space, with similarly shaped screens floating above an elegantly composed set of actors that’s breath-taking.

 These are juniors and seniors, some of them in their fourth or fifth play, and some on stage for the first time. The cast also includes exchange students from China, Germany and Ghana. A school production allows large casts, and there are as many as 20 actors on the stage in this one, with a Greek-style chorus that big enough to suggest the power of the people’s voice, whether used for good or ill.

 I saw Saturday’s performance, with Isaiah Cooper deftly expressing the Officer’s changing moods and circumstances (he alternates with Sterling Johnson-Brown), and Tehya Wood, stately, radiant and beautifully costumed as the Daughter of the god Indra (she alternates with Hanna Nielsen and Nicky Vakilova.)

 Bohdan Banducci, blessed with a fine stage voice and presence, plays the impoverished Lawyer whose marriage to the Daughter reveals earthly woes. Fiona Ryder’s aria wowed the crowd, student James Forrest composed the dramatically effective video projections, and all the actors capably brought out the humanity and the humor of the characters and the play.

 This isn’t pure Strindberg—there are musical interpolations and a much different ending, extolling the virtues of relationship and group action rather than the author’s emphasis on the eternal tensions of the human condition. But that’s also fitting for a youthful vision, and I found that seeing this play in action illuminated a further reading of Strindberg’s text.

 Saturday’s audience, which was clearly involved in each stage moment, included a certain couple with an extra interest. Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor are familiar figures in the North Coast music scene. Jean Bazemore directed an HSU production of A Dream Play in the Van Duzer in 1969. Joyce Hough played the Daughter, and Neighbor was the Lawyer. They met while doing the play, and their nightly 20 minutes alone crouched in a crawlspace waiting for their entrance might have had something to do with an ensuing romance and marriage a year or so later. They were there together Saturday, sitting in front near Gerry Beck, who also designed the 1969 production.

The Accidental Brecht-a-thon  February 2006

Bernadette Cheyne as Mother Courage

By sheer coincidence, this week the HSU campus will become the Brecht capital of the world. At least I know of nowhere else that is hosting two productions of Bertolt Brecht plays in the same fortnight, with two nights that both plays are staged simultaneously.

 The HSU Department of Theatre, Film and Dance production of Mother Courage and Her Children begins tonight at Gist Hall Theatre, directed by John Heckel. Next Tuesday (Feb. 28), The Caucasian Chalk Circle opens at the Van Duzer, mounted by the Young Actors Guild of the North Coast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy, directed by Jean Bazemore.

 Although it’s accidental, this local Brecht-a-thon is not eccentric. The unique ways his plays address searing issues that are suddenly central to this moment is a chief reason that Brecht is being revisited on stages from Los Angeles to New York, where a new adaptation of Mother Courage by playwright Tony Kushner will appear this summer, starring Meryl Streep.

 Bertolt Brecht was a central figure in Berlin’s vibrant theatre scene in 1928 when became famous for “The Threepenny Opera,” with music by Kurt Weill. By the time Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Brecht had escaped to Scandinavia, where he wrote Mother Courage and Her Children. Brecht uses plain language and dark humor to tell this story of a woman trying to eke out an existence selling goods from her cart to armies on the road, while protecting her three grown children from the very war that feeds them.

 Commenting on this play, Brecht said: “War is a continuation of business by other means, making the human virtues fatal even to those who exercise them.” For director John Heckel, the core question Mother Courage faces is: “How do you remain soulful, how do you retain a sense of nurturance?” in this situation.

 Brecht himself directed this play’s official premiere in 1949, with his wife, actor/director Helene Weigel, as the first “Brecht girl” to play Mother Courage. HSU actor, director and teacher Bernadette Cheyne plays her here, surrounded by a mostly student cast.

 For the songs in the play, popular North Coast singer-songwriter (and recent HSU grad) Lila Nelson wrote the music to Brecht’s lyrics, and leads the live band during performance.

 While Mother Courage is a kind of tragedy, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a comedy with a happy ending. Brecht escaped to America in 1941, thanks to the support of a large expatriate German colony in Hollywood (including actor Peter Lorre, who’d worked with Brecht in Berlin) and the sponsorship of Luise Rainer, star of The Good Earth, even though they’d never met. But when they did take a walk on the beach together, Rainer suggested he try a story using the “chalk circle”—a kind of King Solomon method for deciding a child’s true mother. Brecht agreed, and eventually wrote this play while living in Santa Monica. (He returned to Germany after the war.)

 Director (and teacher) Jean Bazemore staged it about five years ago, when the Academy was new and only fifteen students were involved. This production, which uses only freshmen and sophomores (juniors and seniors did the fall show, Antigone & St. Joan ), has a cast of more than thirty actors and musicians, with music composed by students Izzy Samuel and Greg Moore.

 Her students respond to this play, Bazemore says, because of its humor and its core message--“that there are good people who take risks and make difficult choices in difficult times. They love it. The opportunity to meet characters who make courageous choices is really appealing to them.”

 Now I need to disclose that writing this column is one of my freelance gigs, and another I started at about the same time is doing publicity for this semester’s HSU-produced shows. That’s why I don’t review those shows here, but it’s still pretty awkward, because it’s impossible to write about North Coast theatre and ignore HSU. So I can only ask you to decide on how many grains of salt you want to apply to my remarks.

 In the nine years I’ve been here I’ve seen most of the plays these two directors have done. I also know them, and I wrote two songs for a play by my partner, Margaret Kelso, that John Heckel directed. (So add more salt and let simmer.) As directors, they have in common a strong visual sense, a feeling for theatrical space and the rhythms of performance, and a sure touch with actors.

 Their shows and choices of plays aren’t to everyone’s taste. But I know of no better directors on the North Coast than John Heckel and Jean Bazemore.

 Schools like HSU and the North Coast Academy are best able to do these plays because they can supply the large casts, live music and other production requirements that further their educational mission.  But since Brecht is a unique playwright not often performed, these are particular opportunities for audiences as well.

 For many years Brecht’s plays have been obscured by theatrical theories (many of them his own) and Cold War politics (due to his Communist sympathies.) But it’s said that the motto he kept above his writing desk was: “Simpler, with more laughter.” This may be the moment his plays can be seen for themselves, without the baggage.

Playing at the Reps: A Retrospective

In addition to musicals, the county's two repertory/community theatres produce plays. Comedy and drama are rough classifications, and each includes variations.  It's become more common for plays to be a little of both, so it's a matter of emphasis.

Comedies can be laugh-out-loud funny, or more gentle romantic comedies, or Shakespeare's comedies which have some laughs and some romance, ending in at least one marriage.

 On the continuum of comedy, the far end is farce.  NCRT's Lend Me A Tenor exemplifies the classic farce form (wind it up in the first act, let it spin out of control in the second.)  Noises Off goes it one better by being a farce about a farce.  Its production at Ferndale Rep and "Tenor" at North Coast Rep were both ably directed by Renee Grinnell.  NCRT went back to the author of "Tenor" for another farce, Fox in the Fairway, that despite a classic farce set and a bravura performance by Anders Carlson, proved that the formulas don't always work when they are so, well, formulaic.

Fairly near to the farce end is the 1930s classic You Can't Take It With You, an ensemble comedy performed at NCRT that honors American eccentricity.  Maybe a Jules Feiffer play is truer to our time, when eccentricity seems mated with violence, but there is a certain hopeful model in this script, and maybe some hope in the yearnings it still expresses. In 2009 Ferndale Rep produced another show of the same era with farce written all over it: Arsenic and Old Lace.  (Renee Grinnell directed, of course.)

 Somewhere in here is another oddball, The Madwoman of Challiot at NCRT.  While it's not exactly Dr. Strangelove, it does combine farce with a political point.

Although it's also classified as a musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is classic (in several senses of the word) comedy and close to pure farce, based on tried and true Roman models (as well as early TV sketch comedy). The 2006 Ferndale Rep production was North Coast classic.  The same might be said of  NCRT's 2009 The Producers (by Mel Brooks, another Sid Caesar alum, along with Larry Gelbart of "A Funny Thing" and Neil Simon--see below.  )

About in the middle of the spectrum there are the comedies that most resemble their progeny, the motion picture or television situation comedies. They are basically about one kind of family or another.  The modern American master of this form on stage is Neil Simon, and NCRT has done a number of his plays.  The most recent was about the offbeat family of writers for a television show in Laughter on the 23rd Floor.

But in my time there was also the third in Simon's most autobiographical trilogy, Broadway Bound (2006) and Jake's Women (2007.)  (Both of these, less than coincidentally, involve comedy writers.)  In "Broadway" I singled out Gloria Montgomery for praise, for probably the first but certainly not the last time.  (Both reviews in full are now here.)  In my review of Jake's, I had this to say about Kim Hodel (later Haile):

"Kim Hodel had the plum part of Julie, Jake's perfect first wife, who he fell in love with when she was 21 and he was 24, and who died at 35. She played it with the moral beauty and physical radiance that forces us to wonder where the line is between Jake idealizing his dead wife and remembering her accurately - was she really this wonderful? Hodel is convincing as both fantasy and tragically lost reality, in a memorable performance."

Kim Haile (formerly Hodel) performed a variation on this role in what remains the romantic comedy I remember the best from playgoing at the reps: The Love List.  This was the perfect match of actor and role--the 'perfect woman' needed to be quick and fluid (adjusting to each male fantasy) and always magical, and she was.  The other actors (Edward Olson, Victor Howard) and the direction (by Carol Escobar) were also excellent. (I kind of like the review of it I wrote as well. I don't always.)

There were also comedies (alot of them in summer) that were funny at the time but are hard to even remember.  Many are set in the South and were born there, in a regional theatre or dinner theatre circuit, and they are the equivalent of a live TV sitcom, except not as memorable.  They are forgettable confections like The Red Velvet Cake War at North Coast Rep---funny at the time (at best), but leaving that hollow aftertaste.

All kinds of comedies need to evoke laughter at some point--usually early and often.  Comic energy feeds on laughter, and something that seems so simple and readily available can be very tricky to get. But a few things increase the odds (apart from, well, being funny.)

So as those tawdry Internet ads are fond of saying, here's one weird old trick: ventilation.  A well-ventilated theatre is comedy's best friend.  Keep the audience cool.  David Letterman was famous for insisting that his theatre be kept so cold that the audience could almost see their breath.

  He's not wrong.  If the house is hot and stuffy, the audience gets lethargic and loses concentration.  You might not even notice this in a drama.  But comedy needs active laughter-- that sound is part of the show.  Ventilation also happens to be the biggest problem for many North Coast theatres (along with inadequate rest room facilities.)  Apart from being unhealthy, stuffiness dampens audience energy and attention...and laughter.

Some of the same stage priorities apply to comedy as to musicals: bright lighting (you want the audience happy, right?) and when speaking, characters should be as close to the audience as possible (jokes play well that way.)  One fairly recent show that got this and the lighting right was North Coast Rep's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. 

The opposite mask to comedy is the one for tragedy, at least according to the Greeks.  But tragedy is a classical form and whether modern plays rise to tragedy is a question best left to academics, at least for the moment.  The term "drama" is used both as a general term for all plays, and a category that basically means everything that isn't comedy.  So it includes melodrama, political and historical or biographical plays as well as tragedy.  

The virtue of the dramas performed by the reps is similar to the musicals and to some extent the comedies:clarity and humanity.  Lacking staging frills and show biz pretensions, they expose the heart.  The negative side of that is a want of intensity and the kind of passion that really superior acting can reveal.  But many plays profit by performances that create characters that North Coast audiences can relate to, in a clear style.

So North Coast Rep produced an interesting and involving version of a modern classic, David Mamet's American Buffalo.  A less star-centered production as this one revealed new aspects of the play, especially its particular humor.  Ferndale Rep's Look Back In Anger is another modern classic that revealed new dimensions, partly by being staged some 60 years after the original production.  The acting was higher octane, too.

Confrontations over law and ethics create drama in a space that the stage at its best can intensify.  So we had Ferndale Rep's 12 Angry Men and NCRT's Doubt.  But especially Ferndale Rep's To Kill A Mockingbird with Brad Curtis.  It's not a great play, maybe not as good as the movie, but its differences are worth experiencing, and just seeing it live was memorable.

I'm going to save Shakespeare for another post, but it's important to acknowledge North Coast Rep's consistent commitment to staging one production each season.

Before this retrospective moves past the reps, there's a pair of interviews I did in the first year of my Stage Matters columns, with the directors of both theatres.  Marilyn McCormick was beginning her 10th year as the artistic director of Ferndale Rep.  That decade plus one year turned out to be the uncharacteristic calm in the Rep's stormy history.  The Rep reputedly sped through and shredded artistic directors before that, and certainly has since.  Most observers I've talked to about it, including insiders, say it's because of the Rep's "impossible" board of directors. (That wasn't necessarily the word used, but the polite form of its meaning.)

Here's a previous post on the last big hiring/firing.  Since then, it seems another de facto artistic director has quietly fled.  Local hopes are now pinned on Leira Satlof, to whom we can only say, good luck.

I also interviewed Michael Thomas, the managing artistic director of North Coast Rep, and he is still there.  I've come to admire his management and his philosophy of play selection which has never wavered from what he describes in this interview.  In addition to the "popular" shows and the stubbornly regular rotation of one or two musicals and one Shakespeare a season,  North Coast Rep has continued to produce "edgier" plays.  They've included not only relatively esoteric modern dramas like Albee's The Goat but, this past season,  a 19th century American melodrama and a pair of plays from classical Greece.  Considering recent trends here, those are bold selections.

It's worth noting however that, as he's pointed out to me more recently, some sure-fire popular shows turned out to be busts, and some edgier choices were hits.

So to end at the beginning so to speak, here are those two interviews.  

Ferndale Rep with Marilyn McCormick (2006)

Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, let me explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to immense disaster…
 Fennyman: So what do we do?
 Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
 Fennyman: How?
 Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
--- Shakespeare in Love by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard

 Ferndale Repertory Theatre will begin its 35th year of continuous production in the fall, and Marilyn McCormick will begin her tenth year as Artistic Director. She’s had a hard time settling on the upcoming season but so far it looks like this: The Mystery of Irma Vep (by Charles Ludlum and the Ridiculous Theatre) in late September, then a Young Actors original in November: Ghost of the Hart, which is about Bertha, the resident ghost in the Rep’s home, originally called the Hart Theatre.

 Then the Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella for the holidays, plus another original for the school matinee, Cinderelder. Peter Shaffer’s Lettice & Lovage in January, a teen show called Hamlet Through the Looking Glass in March, the Rocky Horror Show musical in April, To Kill A Mockingbird in May, another try at mounting the senior citizen production, Taking My Turn, in July (it was scheduled for this year but was cancelled due when a cast member suddenly became ill), before The Sound of Music ends the season next August.

 When I visited the theatre on a recent afternoon, the stage was dominated by a painted Roman arch. Part of the Young Actor’s Workshop show this past weekend? Or maybe left over from the July 4th pageant? Could it be a bold new concept for Pajama Game, Ferndale’s next scheduled show? Imperial Retro, something like that?

 Not exactly. The director slated for that show got a job in New York, and the new director had a different play in mind. So A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opens in a few weeks, on August 3. That’s how it goes in the theatre.
“It’s a miracle it comes off,” McCormick says. “I’ve learned not to worry about it.”

 Ferndale Rep is the oldest and largest community theatre in the county, but what does that mean anyway—community theatre? “To me it’s made up of people of our community,” McCormick replied, “for our community. That’s basically how I like to run the theatre—to give opportunities to people in the community to explore this art form, as participants and audience. It’s grassroots theatre.”

 “Some people think of community theatre as amateurish,” she added, “but I don’t think of us that way. We have amateurs, but also people with lots of experience, including professional experience. There are people of all ages who want to be involved in theatre, and this is the perfect opportunity for them to find out if that’s what they really want. We introduce them to this world.”

 A funny thing happened to Marilyn McCormick on her way to the theatre. From the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University drama school (Carnegie Tech in those days), and acting at the legendary Arena Stage in Washington, DC, she came to California with husband and fellow “dramat” (as the CMU alums call themselves), Robert Foxworth. He began a career in movies and TV ( Boston Legal, various Star Treks) but she didn’t like film acting and concentrated on home and family.
 They came through Humboldt on vacation, returned to run a small café in Honeydew as a lark. Marilyn stayed, and raised her children in Petrolia and Ferndale after the divorce.

 Then the long and winding road led back to the stage when her son, Bo Foxworth, was a stage manager at Ferndale Rep, but had a basketball trip conflict with a show and asked his mom to fill in. She’s been there ever since, as an actor, director, board member and Artistic Director. (Bo is playing Hamlet in southern California this summer.)

 At the moment McCormick is especially excited about working with teenagers. “I like being able to give them the opportunity to experience this, outside of school. There are different rules and responsibilities here, with a paying audience.”  Teens are involved in all aspects of their productions, and McCormick is hoping to find financial support for extended technical training, which would help the theatre, too. “I’d love to have young technicians and designers here.”

The Ferndale Rep audience “is mostly from Eureka-Fortuna, mostly family-oriented,” she said, “and the theatre-lovers who support all the theatres in this county.”

 When we looked out at the 267-seat theatre—virtually unchanged from the 1970s—she recalled that “in the late 70s you had to have a season ticket to get into a show at the Rep. But this was the only theatre around then. NCRT and Redwood Curtain came out of here.”

Now McCormick would like to expand and redesign the stage and reduce the number of seats. She’s already made physical improvements to the green room area backstage, and Technical Director Daniel Lawrence has rebuilt much of the theatre’s façade, with lumber donated by Almquist Lumber. (The film-set façade that Warner Brothers presented as a gift to the theatre after the Outbreak shoot turned out to be built with indoor wood and paint, and has been falling apart ever since.)

 Besides ticket sales, Ferndale Rep is supported by local sponsors and grants, notably the Bertha Russ Lytel Foundation. “We have a staff of three—I’m the only full-time,” McCormick said. “It takes about 500 people to put on a season.”

 While she confesses it’s sometimes hard to figure out how to get people to come, the fascination of live theatre is still powerful. “There’s nothing else like it. It all happens right there, in front of you. Someone can make a movie and if nobody comes to see it, they still have that work of art. But we can’t do a play without an audience. They’re just too important.”

North Coast Rep with Michael Thomas (2006)

North Coast Repertory Theatre concludes its current season with Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound, beginning August 10. Soon after, its 23rd season starts with Ladies of the Camellias in September, Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado in November, Jake’s Women (by Neil Simon) in January, Henry IV, Part 1 in March, Kiss Me Kate in May and Larry Shue’s The Nerd next July.

 In his office over the theatre, with windows overlooking Fifth Street in Eureka, Managing Artistic Director Michael Thomas was busy with solicitations for next year’s season tickets (you can call him at 442-NCRT and get yours) when I visited one recent afternoon.

The choice of plays for a season is “critical.” he said. NCRT has stayed alive for 23 years by essentially breaking even on season ticket sales and tickets at the door, plus selling ads in the playbill, with help from concessions, donations and grants.

 “But that doesn’t mean we don’t try things that are surprising. There are people who like edgier plays—they may not be a majority, but they’re also part of our community. We have a responsibility to offer plays the community will like, but not just what is safe and guaranteed.”

 “I never use the phrase—or like to hear the phrase—‘well, it’s just community theatre.’ We don’t operate that way,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t enter into my consciousness. We do the best we can with the people we have and the money we have, just like every theatre does.”

 “I work with people who are here because they want to be here, because they want to be part of creating a particular production, not because this is their job. I don’t say that lightly. It’s significant to the atmosphere of what goes on in this building.”

 Thanks to a California Arts Council grant (“before their funding was cut”), NCRT began a policy of paying actors and everyone else involved in a production. They’ve managed to continue it. “It’s not a lot of money—we call it a stipend. But everybody gets something.”

 There are difficulties, not only because NCRT can’t pay a living wage to theatre artists and staff, but because there is no such professional theatre anywhere near here. People tend to go where they can make a living doing what their expensive educations qualify them to do. That limits the talent pool.

 “The most challenging thing is to find competent people to work with,” Thomas says. “I’m always looking. Actors, designers, technical people—it’s difficult. There are talented people here, but not a lot, and they’re busy with other things in life, like making a living. The challenge is to find people who are available.”

 But in the end, theatre is theatre. “In professional theatres you have stronger shows and weaker shows, stronger actors and weaker actors. You have that in community theatre, too.”

 “Part of our mission as a community theatre is to maintain a ticket price that is reasonable for this community,” Thomas said, “ and that means controlling costs.” It also leads to a complex set of mutually beneficial relationships between theatre and community. “We welcome people who are new to theatre, and we’ll train them and use them, when appropriate. Of course, in auditions any director will choose the best actor, and the director defines ‘best.’"

In September Michael Thomas will begin his eighth season as managing artistic director, a self-selected title that reflects the jack-of-all trades nature of his job—everything from paying the bills to critiques of shows in rehearsal-- as the theatre’s only full-time employee.

 Thomas studied theatre at Northwestern University, near the North Shore Chicago suburb where he grew up. “My parents took me to theatre in Chicago. It was amazing. I’ve always been grateful they did that.” After studying mime and performing in Paris, he returned to make his fortune in the U.S. Postal Service. “It seemed like a lot of money to me at the time.”  From Sonoma County, he came to Humboldt with his daughter to earn his theatre MFA at HSU.

For most of its life, NCRT has been housed in this former Salvation Army store, built in the 1923, and they’ve owned it since 1996. Improvements are ongoing. “The building’s been painted this year, we’ve had some foundation work, a new ventilation system—air conditioning for the first time—all thanks to the Arkleys. We got a computerized light board with a grant from Simpson’s. We get a lot of support from local businesses. Sometimes they’ll loan us furniture and props for a show, sometimes donate materials or give us a discount.”

 The 139-seat theatre “seems to work well for us. We sell out some nights for any given play, which tells me it’s a good size.” Still, it’s cramped quarters backstage, and a relatively low ceiling above the stage limits second and third levels, and also means “we’ll never do Peter Pan.”

The stage itself is rough and uneven, which is especially hard on dancers. “We’d like to redo the stage, it’s on our wish list. But really, this space can work just fine,” Thomas said. “It’s what we do with the space that counts. This crack on the floor is not important compared with how the acting’s going. If the product is good, that’s secondary. I’ve seen enough to know that.”

Simon Says

A pair of reviews of two Neil Simon plays, performed at North Coast Rep in 2006 and 2007.  It turns out it is too difficult to assign them to their actual dates in this site's chronology, but at least now they will be here, and are searchable through the labels.

Broadway Bound (2006)

Broadway Bound is about two brothers trying to break into TV as sketch comedy writers. It’s set in 1949, just a year or so before Neil Simon began writing for Sid Caesar along with his brother, Garfunkel, (or if you prefer his real name, Danny).

 By the 1980s, playwright Neil Simon was integrating the comedy that brought him Broadway success with the character drama he admired in Chekhov and Tennessee Williams. Eugene, his young alter ego in this play, is just discovering that his repressed anger in response to family tensions is a source of his comedy.  As this play’s author, Simon goes beyond unconscious reaction to careful and eloquent examination of the individuals in the family, as they prepare to go their separate ways.

 This is the third (and, according to Simon, the most autobiographical) of the “Eugene” trilogy that began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and continued at Army boot camp towards the end of World War II in Biloxi Blues.

 Eugene and his brother are working on a sketch for CBS, hoping it will be the ticket to their own apartment in Manhattan. Their socialist grandfather, is resisting the pleas of their Aunt Blanche to join his wife in a move to Florida. Their parents are coming to the end of their marriage.

 On the writing team, Eugene is the funny one and his brother Stan is in charge of structure. Stan says that even a comedy sketch requires conflict, which begins when somebody wants something. In this play, each character becomes very clear on what they want, and their thoughts about that and about each other become the play’s structure.

 Though that shape is lopsided for a well-made play, the individual scenes and provocative moments are likely to stay in your head for a long time, rearranging themselves in new webs of meaning.

 Henry Kraemer is engaging as Eugene in the current NCRT production, making the all-important connection with the audience as the play’s eyes and ears. Eugene is still pretty callow for a 24- year old Army veteran, but Kraemer’s ease wins the audience’s confidence while his energy propels Gene Cole’s fast-paced direction.

 With his measured deadpan delivery, Ellsworth Pence is the perfect counterpoint as the grandfather, especially at the start. The second act belongs to Gloria Montgomery as Kate, Eugene’s mother, and not only for the central scene of the play—the justifiably famous recounting of the night she danced with future movie star George Raft. Montgomery creates a memorable and individual Kate with great economy, honesty and emotional power.

 Jerry Nusbaum, Dmitry Tokarsky and Adina Lawson bring lucidity and feeling to their roles and especially their most vital moments. I felt the production lacked enough variation in the rhythm to separate moods and highlight particular moments, but the most important function is presenting the moments with clarity, and it accomplishes this with conviction. It’s a thought- provoking and moving experience, and funny, too.

Jake's Women (2007)

There's a particular interest in a writer seeing a play about a writer who is too much the observer and not enough the participant in his own life, especially when one is among those reviewers who began as a participant in theatre - as a playwright, actor, director and even a song composer, and whose role now is as journalist and judge.

Well, when you get a role, play it.

 In Neil Simon's play Jake's Women, a writer in his 50s imagines scenes with the women in his life as the fate of his marriage in crisis is decided. The current production at the North Coast Rep features fine performances.

 On opening night, a slow start with shaky (presumably New York) accents got a burst of energy and definition from Suza Lambert Bowser as the psychiatrist with the heart of a chorus girl. Young Derby McLaughlin, who played Jake's daughter Molly at 12 years old, provided not only another hit of vitality but of reality: She was winsome and wonderful, inhabiting her part completely. Christen Condry Whisenhunt also created a credible and funny character (Sheila, Jake's current girlfriend during his separation) with economy and comic grace. Theresa Ireland as Molly at 21, Shelley Stewart as Jake's sister, Karen, and Jolene Hayes as Maggie, Jake's wife at the start of the play, all had their shining moments.

 Kim Hodel had the plum part of Julie, Jake's perfect first wife, who he fell in love with when she was 21 and he was 24, and who died at 35. She played it with the moral beauty and physical radiance that forces us to wonder where the line is between Jake idealizing his dead wife and remembering her accurately - was she really this wonderful? Hodel is convincing as both fantasy and tragically lost reality, in a memorable performance.

Michael Thomas as Jake had the longest and most difficult role, as he was required to hold the stage and hold the play together for the entire evening. Some of the most taxing scenes come late in the second act, when Jake's frenzy accelerates and then must be transformed into the resolution of acceptance and vulnerability. He did yeoman's work, keeping the audience involved, and laughing.

 After 30 years and almost that many plays, Neil Simon knew how to generate laughter and tug at the heartstrings by the time this play was first produced in 1992. There are lots of laughs, some provocative remarks, and scenes that play like crazy. A dead wife gets to meet her daughter at 12 and 21 - how can you fail with a scene like that? (In this production, it doesn't fail.)

 Simon's laudable efforts to go beyond his usual stage presentation with imaginary encounters often succeed individually -- he plays with how much control Jake actually has over what he imagines, and over the characters in his fantasies.

 But even given all these audience-pleasing and thought-provoking elements, this play doesn't quite hold together. I hadn't seen it before, either on stage or what I suspect is the more successful television version (which Simon rewrote completely), so I strongly suspect its weaknesses are in the writing rather than James Read's efficient direction, the fine performances he nurtured or any other element of this production.

Beyond even the sometimes mawkish lines, the unlikely and too-perfect anecdotes explaining Jake's too-pat problems, and the strained clichés that go by in the last moments like stray bullets, the play as a whole totters on our not really knowing who Jake is. Jake's life beyond his fantasies has no reality, and neither does he.

This is also important because the central tension comes from Jake being unable to stop fantasizing his life (which gives him control) long enough to trust it and live it. Certainly there are some rueful truths about writers in this play. I've been known to complain that the problem with life is that you can't revise. But Jake's fantasies aren't demonstrably related to his work, which neither he nor anyone else talks about or seems to care about, but to some generic and one-dimensional image of The Writer.

 There are credible moments, as in his second-act frenzy of rapid-fire fantasies of vacations spots and new homes, like a writer brainstorming plots. But the writer thing becomes a weak conceit, and a very wobbly basis for a play.

 Thomas and especially Hayes (in the second most difficult role) are very good in the final scenes, when the script has other significant problems. Though I found the play unconvincing, the North Coast Rep production is certainly worth seeing for wit, emotionally indelible scenes and the array of satisfying performances.

This North Coast Weekend

On Thursday (Nov. 13) North Coast Rep opens the musical comedy How To Succeed At Business Without Really Trying by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert with  music and lyrics by Frank Loesser.  Directed by Lauren Wieland, it features Chris Hamby, Anthony De Page, Haley Katz, Gene Cole and Elizabeth Erenberger. Scenic design is by Laura Rhinehart, lighting by Suzanne Ross-Kohl, and costumes by Laura Rhinehart. Thursday is the Actors Benefit with opening night champagne/cider spread. Performances continue Fridays and Saturdays through December 13, with one more Thursday show on Dec.11. 442-NCRT (6278), NCRT.net.

Also Thursday, Eureka High Players open Epic Proportions, a comedy by Larry Coen and David Crane.  476-1735.

Thursday begins the final weekend for Other Desert Cities at Redwood Curtain.

Musical Stage Matters: North Coast 2005-14

North Coast Repertory Theatre produces one or two musicals a year; Ferndale Repertory Theatre used to do at least a couple, but in recent years has increased that number to something like a majority of their theatrical productions.

Nanette Voss-Herlihy, Kyle Ryan

 In addition, Redwood Curtain has done a few (I recall the outstanding performances of Kyle Ryan and Nanette Voss-Herlihy in their 2011 The Last Five Years) and Dell’Arte has done a couple for their summer shows (which I’ll save for later.)

 HSU does a big musical every other year, and lately has sprinkled in some smaller ones on the off years. And as I’ve said already, Humboldt Light Opera Company does a big musical every summer, and often a smaller one in fall or winter. But mostly it’s been our two self-described community theatres.

 One way to categorize musicals is a simple division between the traditional “song” musicals that include dialogue and action, and the opera-style musicals (sometimes called “sing-throughs”) in which most if not all of the dialogue is sung.

Craig Benson in Sweeney Todd 

The opera-style shows, a fairly recent trend, tend to be dramatic, if not melodramatic (reminding us perhaps that melo-dramatic literally means drama with melody.) This isn’t my favorite form, but a good show is a good show, and among the best examples locally are the outstanding Ferndale Rep's 2011 production of Sweeney Todd, and NCRT’s recent and very successful production of Les Miz. (The Les Miz review is probably the most recent—hence the last—time I noted that the lack of resources for elaborate staging often works to the benefit of local productions, getting them to the essence of the play and the storytelling.)

Another example of a contemporary sing-through is Next to Normal, which had an effective if muted production at North Coast Rep.  But like a lot of these musicals, it can be considered profound mostly in comparison with other musicals rather than other writing forms, including nonfiction. As much as I appreciated it, I have no desire to see it again.

 The song musicals can be dramatic but are most often comedies. They have the longer history in American theatre, and host most of the famous songs.  I tend more towards wit and sparkle than the sentimental, more Cole Porter than Rogers & Hammerstein.  But once again, a good show is a good show.  A really good production with exciting renditions of great songs is the ideal.

Fatal Distractions

 What makes a good production of a musical? It’s easier to say what a bad production is. Great singing elevates a production, but the occasional mediocre singer (especially if they can otherwise “sell” the song) rarely sinks a whole show. I can’t recall hearing that happen here.

 For a number of reasons (many of them logistical) shows here don’t excel in dancing, but the dancing that was included was seldom embarrassing. (There have been some real clunkers in live bands, though.)

Staging, lighting and sound are the usual culprits that ruin a show. When sound and lighting don't work as they should, they distract and drain energy. Sound is obviously crucial but the element that gets overlooked (pun intended) is lighting. People are never so wise as when they agree with your own observations, so I quote the writer William Goldman again: “Most musicals need to be brightly lit and played as close to the footlights as possible so that the audience can see and hear them.” Especially the songs.

But whatever the combination of factors are, the musicals that fail are those that don't serve the play, the music or in particular the performers. And therefore they don't serve the audience. Here's an egregious example of one.  Unclear storytelling is especially deadly in the newer styles of musicals, the sing-throughs and those with more dramatic than comedic intentions.

Another example of these storytelling problems would be the recent HSU production of Coraline, in which the fantasy was not grounded in the most basic ways that create an intelligible story. (Lighting, sound and staging were also deficient in what arguably is a play with music rather than a musical. Impressive costumes are not ultimately enough.)   In the case of The Last Five Years at Redwood Curtain, the structure of the script is confusing, and needs special attention in production decisions.

I quote playwright Tom Stoppard (again):"Theatre is a pragmatic art form. It's a storytelling art form, and lives or dies by its storytelling."

 Bad storytelling erodes audience confidence and takes them out of the play. Bad lighting and sound diminish the power and the joy. They disrupt the magic and undermine the performances.  They are all fatal distractions.

Happier Memories
But let’s go back to the sunny side of the street. Among the shows I recall is the 2007 NCRT production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate with two of the memorable talents we had on North Coast stages for awhile, Minderella Willens and Darcy Daughtry. Phil Zastrow and Rigel Schmitt performing “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” was also a memorable delight.

 My first recollection of Mindy Willens (an HSU student at the time) was in NCRT’s 2005 production of Once Upon A Mattress, another happy memory. I wrote in part: "The music is pleasant, the actors all exude charm, and they're committed to their roles but don't try to do too much. As the aggravatingly vain Queen Aggravain, Xande Zubin-Meyer channels Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West), and Steve Carter is a taller Harpo Marx as King Sextimus. Vince Farrar strikes the right poses but also humanizes the ironic Lancelot role of Sir Studley. Jordan Matteoli is well cast as the eager but innocent Prince Dauntless, Miles Raymer's stage presence and strong tenor anchors the action as the minstrel and Laura Hathaway has an affecting presence and attractive voice as Lady Larken.

 But this show belongs to Mindy Willens as Princess Winifred, who owns the stage from the moment she enters. Known as "'Fred," this Princess has a sweetly energetic assertiveness: She storms the castle by impulsively swimming the moat, and then is modestly embarrassed about it. With bright rolling eyes and a big voice, Willens grabs the audience and brings them cheerfully into the show."

Michael Thomas, Caitlin McMurtry

Guys and Dolls at NCRT in 2009 is memorable for David Powell (another bright star that passed through here) leading “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” and particularly for the performance of Andrea Zvalesko. In addition to leads Caitlin McMurtry and Michael Thomas, My Fair Lady had the irrepressible Bob Wells singing-- and dancing-- as Eliza's father.

There were other productions that impressed me at the time, such as Ferndale's A Funny Thing On the Way to the Forum and Monty Python's Spamalot, NCRT's Marat/Sade, Fiddler on the Roof and The Producers.  But these are the ones that linger.

 There was one show however that remains for me an anomaly: a musical I don’t particularly like (I hate the movie of it) with mostly forgettable music—but it is a NCRT production I’ve never forgotten. The show was Chicago. So I’m resurrecting my review of it, plus the review of NCRT’s 2012 Anything Goes with additional items. Some of those made it onto this blog, others are here for the first time.


Chicago at NCRT (2006)

 In a few months the musical Chicago will celebrate its tenth consecutive year on Broadway. With songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb (who wrote “New York, New York” and the songs for Cabaret ), it became the Oscar’s Best Picture of 2002. It is based on a straight play about two actual 1924 Chicago murder cases written by a reporter caricatured as “Mary Sunshine” in the musical version.

 But its theme—the criminal justice system as show business—came from famed choreographer and filmmaker Bob Fosse, who wrote and staged the first musical production in 1975. I’m guessing that we’re seeing his experience with his 1975 Chicago in his brilliant 1979 film, All That Jazz. You can certainly see Fosse’s combination of trenchant observation and bombastic cynicism as well as his style of choreography very clearly in the movie of Chicago, but I was turned off by its excesses, including the mechanically speeded-up dancing, like a Bollywood film. The play is structured as a series of Vaudeville acts, but the movie transforms them into extravagant dream sequences, a technique done a lot more effectively in Pennies From Heaven (1981).

 For me, Chicago works much better on a smaller scale, such as the current North Coast Repertory Theatre production, directed by Xande Zublin-Meyer. There’s a much stronger sense of the vaudeville period that’s present in the music, and if this version and how it’s performed in Eureka lacks some of the cynical edge, it also doesn’t hit you over the head with it repeatedly. The satire is still there, and since the idea (crime as show biz) is no longer novel, the audience seemed to get it from the songs and dialogue.

 The story concerns the fall and rise of Roxie Hart, a wannabe vaudeville performer who kills her partner in an extramarital affair, and Velma Kelly, a star in a sister act who kills her other half. Kimberly Hodel is a fetching, brassy Roxie, with a 1920s flapper look. Especially in one gyrating number in a shimmering gown, she’s Betty Boop brought to life.

 Jolene Hayes brings a strong voice and a hint of vulnerability to Velma. With her vocals and acting clarity, Dianne Zuleger as prison Matron Mama Morton keeps the story moving, as does Daniel Scott Marcus as the seedy Master of Ceremonies.

 After a few establishing set pieces, the show really comes alive with the entrance of Brad Curtis as Billy Flynn, the lovable hypocrite defense attorney. Curtis has a Broadway voice and presence, and the energy of this show seems to jump into high gear whenever he’s on stage.

 But the show-stealer has to be Jamie Obeso’s song as Mary Sunshine. It’s as if Alfalfa from the “Our Gang” comedies grew up to become a female impersonator.

 All the actors bring something special to their roles, and not just the principal ones. The choreography by Rebecca Rubenstein gives us less Fosse and more vaudeville, which works for me. Dianna Thiel’s costumes are especially imaginative. There’s a live band behind the performers, there are lots of songs, and the stage is often filled with a large, hard-working and committed cast.

Additional Note 2014: This review got a letter chastising me for not mentioning Anders Carlson.  I should have--I still remember his comic stepping through the spotlights. (But the review was one of two in the limited space of that particular week's column)  He's been interesting to watch over the years--he's developed from a comic with a set of Chaplin-like moves to a disciplined actor who can still let it fly when it's right for the part (as he did in the 2014 I Hate Hamlet.)

Anything Goes at NCRT 2012

 In the Cole Porter musical comedy Anything Goes, now on stage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, Billy Crocker (played by Erik Standifird) is in love with young socialite Hope Harcourt (Keili Simmons Marble.) But he’s just the young assistant to a Wall Street patrician (Howard Lang), and she is engaged to a rich Brit, Sir Evelyn Oakleigh (Clayton Cook), because her mother (Toodie SueAnn Boll) craves financial security.

 They’re all sailing on an ocean liner to Europe except Billy, until he helps gangster Moonface Martin (David Simms) escape and  Moonface slips him the ticket meant for Snake Eyes Johnson, an even more important gangster.  So they’re all on the same boat, and it’s 1934—five years after the Wall Street crash. Maritime mayhem ensues.

 Also along for the ride is nightclub singer Reno Sweeney (Molly Severdia) and her vamping companions, Virtue (Ashley Adams) and Chastity (Kelly Gordon.) From the second Molly Severdia takes the stage, the production comes alive. She has that 30s sophistication and eagerness for what comes next. She’s confident as the character and as an actor, with a lively interest in every onstage moment. It’s the star part—originally written for the 26 year old Ethel Merman—so it helps that she also has the voice to make the show’s most famous songs soar. And when they include “You’re the Top,” “I Get A Kick Out of You” and the title tune, you’ve got your money’s worth right there.

 But there’s more. Keili Simmons Marble is incandescent as Hope Hartwell, and shares that quality of being visibly alive to each stage moment. She also triumphs as the show’s choreographer. There are a few well-executed large ensemble dances --the tap-dancing “Anything Goes” would stop the show except it’s at the end of the first act, where the show stops anyway.

 But her attention to smaller movements in smaller groups (including some Busby Berkeley reminders) also helps advance the show in the best way—with pleasant surprises. She is an excellent dancer herself, and the few opportunities she has to move suggest what more might have been.

 Anything Goes has been revised and revived several times in its 78 years (so far,) with Cole Porter songs cannibalized from other shows. The NCRT show seems based on the 1987 and 2011 versions.

 The music, the wit of the lyrics and the script are obvious reasons it’s lasted, but there’s also the script’s structure and the opportunities it provides the cast. Often in such comedies, the mirth is in elaborating the stereotypical characters established at the beginning. But this show’s silly, mildly satirical and mostly logical plot is also fed by a succession of small character surprises and reversals.

So Brandy Rose as the sweetly loose gang moll Erma takes it up a notch in her big song in the second act, giving ultimate expression to her character. But Clayton Cook’s big song (also a high point) reveals a surprising side to the established Sir Evelyn that changes the story’s direction. (Brandy Rose also reveals comedic power. Anders Carlson nails his comic moments in the relatively small part of the ship’s Captain. Those two paired in a screwball comedy might be something to see.)

 Erik Standifird has the enthusiasm and strong tenor voice of the 1930s romantic lead. Veterans David Simms, Howard Lang and Toodie SueAnn Boll anchor the comedy, and Ashley Adams and Kelly Gordon dance at least as well as they vamp.

Others in this strong cast are Gino Bloomberg, Tyler Elwell, Evan Needham, Jessi Shieman, Luke Sikora, Rigel Schmitt, Eric Stiles, Candace Wase and Katie Wolter. Lauren Wieland directed with wit and efficiency, and probably more. Calder Johnson designed the engagingly bright and useful set and lighting. Jenneveve Hood’s costume designs are great to look at and they express the times, but most impressively, she designed to flatter each individual.

 Music director Molly Severdia and her assistant Tina Toomata met the challenge of the sometimes technically difficult songs. The backstage band members are Laura Welch, Molly Harvis, Jeremy Cotton, Dianne Zuleger, Gina Piazza, Val Leone and Tamaras Abrams. Within its limitations, this is a fine production of one of the best musical comedies ever. More than that, it is alive and joyous. There are many memorable moments in this show—both from Cole Porter and from this cast.

Additional Notes: It's the Top

There are few if any Broadway musicals older than Anything Goes that get produced anymore. In fact, only 3 previous shows are generally classified as modern musicals (Show Boat in 1927, The Band Wagon in 1930 and Of Thee I Sing! in 1931.)

 Songs have since been stolen from other Cole Porter shows for this version of Anything Goes, and the script is not exactly the same as the show that premiered in 1934. That script began with legendary Brits P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton but the Broadway version was quickly assembled by its director Howard Lindsay with a press agent named Russel Crouse. They were so successful at it that they themselves became a legendary Broadway writing team.

 The script was revised for the 1987 revival by John Weidman and Timothy Crouse, Russel's son and the author of one of the great books on U.S. presidential campaigns and the press, The Boys on the Bus (1972). I knew him for a few years around then.

 Anyway, the changes in the latest, the Tony-winning 2011 version that’s on tour into 2013 seem to be in musical arrangements, etc. So I don't actually know who is responsible for my favorite bit of dialogue. Asked by a ship's officer if he'd seen infamous racketeer Snakeyes Johnson somewhere on the ship, one of the characters says he saw him at the mizzenmast. “ But this ship doesn’t have a mizzenmast.” “Oh. It must have been somebody else.”

 The constant in all this is Cole Porter. His songs have not changed. His music is timeless, but his lyrics are very topical—particularly in one of this show’s most famous songs, “You’re the Top.”  The lyrics haven't been revised, so they are still a kind of mini-tour of 1934. While some of the places and the famous people named in the song are still well known, others mostly aren’t.  Quite a few clever references go right by a lot of the audience nearly 80 years later. With each generation, more references are lost—and especially the reason that this person, product, etc. is “the top.”

Some survive—even millenials know Fred Astaire—but others are so very 1934 that they’re historical markers. For example, broccoli. When Severdia and Standifird come to that line (“you’re broccoli!”) they make a face, mirroring a contemporary audience’s sense that it's an icky vegetable that doesn’t make it to "the top."  But in 1934, it did: known in Italy, it wasn’t farmed commercially in the U.S. until the 1920s and broke the Italian language barrier in the 30s. So broccoli was quite fashionable in 1934.

Severdia and Standifird relieved audience anxieties by acting out such contemporary reactions to some references (their performance was a highlight of the North Coast Rep production.)  But they appeared to simply ignore other references, like Jimmy Durante, a showman who was famous from the 1920s through the 50s, and was often parodied into the 1960s.

In fact some lyrics are now so obscure that there are several online attempts to track down their meaning. There was a long and involved theory about  what “you’re a drumstick lipstick” could mean--maybe something that involved ice cream and kissing?  Then somebody uncovered an old ad that showed that Drumstick was the brand name of a quite fashionable lipstick in 1934.  So no secret code ring needed.

 Still, it isn’t necessary to know that moisture-proof cellophane was a modern miracle in the 30s to laugh at the exuberant brilliance of “You’re the National Gallery/You’re Garbo’s salary/You’re cellophane!” The strange alchemy of the topical and the timeless in a play that lasts is one of the wonders of theatre, as it is in other arts. So it’s a vital part of our theatrical ecology.

Musings on Musicals

Have musicals become a blight on North Coast theatre, threatening to kill off everything else? The recent wave of second-hand shows, derived from movies, TV shows and cartoons, adds to the impression. Some are done well, some badly, and most are in between. But there may just be too many of them for the health of a theatrical ecology.

 Musicals involve a lot of people, and can be costly to produce. And they aren’t always the box office hits it is assumed they would be. But it does seem that these days especially, more performers want to be in them.

One season of that wonderful Canadian TV comedy series called “Slings & Arrows” juxtaposed a Shakespeare production with a musical being developed at the same time. It was if they were being produced by two different species. They could barely communicate.

 It isn’t that bad here—many participate in musical and non-musical productions. But it has become more and more obvious that it is much easier to get a cast for a musical than for a play, especially if the play is from a different era. That’s not healthy.

 I’d only been on the job for a year or so when I wrote a column about musicals. What was true in this regard seems even truer now. In the course of this column I also wrote about my own prejudices and my approach to review. So it seems worthwhile to reproduce that column here.

 But as I noted then, North Coast theatres can do musicals well. So in coming days I’ll be posting reviews of some of the most memorable, though they weren’t always my favorites at the time.

Musings on Musicals (December 2007)

The musical is not my favorite form of theatre. Yet when I look back on the past calendar year or more on the North Coast, many of the shows I’ve most admired have been musicals. This personal paradox came into view especially in the last month or so, when I saw four of them—and had different responses to each.

 Two of these were imported shows—touring Broadway-based productions hosted by CenterArts. This is a unique species, and is a way of life for the actors and musicians involved—I’ve known a few and heard their stories. Someone here asked one of the participants in one of the touring shows where his home was. “On the bus,” he said. They tour ten months a year.

 The touring Evita and The Producers were both polished, professional shows with great sets, very good performers and production values. I hated Evita. I loved The Producers. And thereby hangs a tale.

 If you had to name crowd-pleasing forms, musicals would probably be at the top of the list, followed by physical theatre. But as it turns out, I am not a crowd. Nor am I a judge, making decisions on the basis of theatrical law and performance precedent. I am forced to confront these facts every time I write about a show, and most every time I see one.

 Tom Stoppard, who was a provincial theatre reviewer before he became an internationally acclaimed playwright, talked in several interviews about his own struggle with the reviewer’s perspective. He started out trying to review objectively, according to standards. But he learned, especially from reading the contemporaneous reviews of Kenneth Tynan, that as a reviewer, “the only thing that mattered was the effect the play had on me personally that night. That was what I was reporting on…”

 I don’t think it’s the only thing that matters, but it is vital, and even more than that, it is unavoidable. We all bring different standards, experiences and tastes to each theatrical encounter. Even though I often include objective information about the audience as well as the play, I can’t escape the sometimes inconvenient truth of being me.

 The idiosyncratic element is seldom clearer than when I see a musical. Take Evita. The production I saw at the Van Duzer was loud, flashy and, to me, empty. The music was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, also responsible for the enormously popular Starlight Phantom Jesus Cats Superstar Opera Express. I went in knowing that I basically detest Andrew Lloyd Webber and his ilk, who dominated musicals from the 70s until recently with gaudy, bombastic, pretentious, meretricious, vacuous productions, and lousy music.

 That’s the other thing—music is very important to me, and when I don’t like it, it’s hard to even sit through a show. However, it is possible for a show to show me something else, to change my mind—to show me a good time. Evita didn’t do that. It confirmed my worst preconceptions.

A Broadway-derived production of The Producers

 But two weeks later, The Producers charmed me and made me giddy. It was funny, provocative and stylish, and the music, while not memorable, was fun. Part of this show’s appeal is it’s something of a throwback, with roots in classic Broadway and vaudeville—which its principal author, Mel Brooks, knows very well.

Still, if the music is merely pleasant, and the rest of the show is entertaining, I can enjoy it. Such was the case with the Humboldt Light Opera’s Titanic, which was my favorite homegrown musical production of the year. But when you add memorable songs—as in North Coast Rep’s Fiddler on the Roof –there’s a fuller enjoyment.

 But I come back to my initial question—why did I like so many musicals done here recently? From one point of view, it would seem that community theatres with less than lavish resources should do smaller shows better, rather than elaborate musicals. But I think there are reasons—some more idiosyncratic than others.

Fiddler on the Roof at NCRT

 First, we’ve got a lot of musical talent and performing talent for the musical stage here, renewed by students coming to HSU. I was especially impressed that North Coast Rep could field 38 performers for “Fiddler,” while at the same time HSU had 30 for Urinetown.

 That’s good, and not so good. There’s probably a general cultural bias at work for musical over dramatic talent (from TV and concert music, etc.) but there’s also a local component. There’s not a lot of great acting or actor training here, which professional theatre actors would define as finding the truth of a part, or Laurence Olivier would describe as creating “goosebumps” in the audience by means of the actor’s art. There’s more training hereabouts for performance rather than acting, and audiences are more attuned to it.

 But there’s something else that works for me. I despise the nauseatingly smooth and homogenized style of singing I hear on Broadway musical albums. I prefer the authentic voices I hear on stages here.

A Funny Thing...at Ferndale Rep

 That goes for the production as well—the lack of glitz and overkill at a typical North Coast Rep musical (even their Chicago was more modest than the movie or Broadway versions) or at Ferndale Rep (their A Funny Thing Happened at the Forum being one of my favorites) focus attention on the essentials of the show: the performances, the music and the story. I like that.

 I offer these views partly as a past and future guide to my own inevitable prejudices. Also as some solace for the audience members I also think about—the ones who are trying to figure out why they aren’t getting why everybody around them likes the show, or the reverse. Sometimes it’s personal taste or experience, or lack of experience. And sometimes you aren’t the only one seeing a naked emperor.

 End note 2014: The two traveling shows have since been done by North Coast theatres: The Producers at NCRT, Evita at Ferndale Rep. These road shows were presented here by Center Arts. After this piece was published, coincidentally or not, I was never invited back to a Center Arts show.