Shrek The Musical

Shrek was a multi-million dollar animated movie that spawned a multi-million dollar Broadway show. Humboldt Light Opera Company doesn’t have access to that level of support. Nevertheless its production of Shrek The Musical now on the Van Duzer Theatre stage at HSU in Arcata is big, bold, fast and assured. It’s also ogre-sized fun.

 It’s not just that a cast of seemingly thousands fills the stage for the opening number. Before the first act is over we’ve met a Pinocchio whose nose really grows longer when he lies, a Gingerbread Man imprisoned on a baking pan and most spectacularly, a huge dazzling lady dragon who sings like disco queen Donna Summer.  There are tap-dancing rats in top hats and tails, three blind mice from Motown and an evil lord who sings his song of woe and ambition while taking a bubble bath.

 With one wonder after another, the high-energy first act is especially exhilarating. The romantic tensions and complications of the second act slow the pace and color the mood, but there’s still plenty to hold the attention of children as well as adults.

 The story of the musical is pretty much the same as the movie: a fairy tale about an ogre and his donkey sidekick, an evil lord and a princess in a tower that takes several twists and turns before its happily ever after. Most fairy tales work on several levels, and the best shows for children (from Bugs Bunny and Fractured Fairy Tales through Sesame Street and Mathnet) provide nuggets of satire and knowing humor for adults.

 Shrek on screen was practically a genial deconstruction of the fairy tale princess monomyth as well as a contemporary moral reconstruction and redefinition. The musical adds to this with the sly satire of playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s book and lyrics, and the collision of bright and evocative musical styles composed by Jeanine Tesori.

 In addition to the story, even the main voices will seem familiar to young fans of the movie. As Shrek, Tristin Roberts adopts Mike Myers slightly Scottish accent, and James Gadd does a credible Eddie Murphy as the Donkey. Roberts as Shrek acts the part convincingly, carries the action and sings with authority. But even without animated close-ups, stage Shrek is quickly lovable and never threatening—sympathy for the ogre is easy.

 For me the revelation of the evening is Gadd as Donkey. Liberated from the constraints of his usual romantic hero roles, he’s fully committed to silliness. He writhes and dances wildly, is infectiously funny and still sings better than ever.

 Hannah Jones is a delightfully complete Princess Fiona, with the traditional virtues of a fairytale heroine while embodying an anxious contemporary girl whose dreams for the perfect love match include “our pre-nup will be binding.”

 As the evil Lord Farquaad, Craig Waldvogel plays his physically difficult role with aplomb and sings it with conviction, so he’s comically intimidating. HLOC productions are known for the quality of singing, but in this show the singing is as uniformly thrilling as in any show I can recall. That’s true of all the singers, notably Cindy Cress as the voice of the dragon, and the two younger versions of Princess Fiona: Haley Cress and Kayla Kossow.

 The dancers amplify the bright show-biz energy. As choreographed by Ciara Cheli-Colando (who also dances), they include Daphne Endert, Katie Kitchen, Shelly Harris, Katri Pitts, Fiona Ryder, Lily Ryman and Jake Smith.

 This production also has the great advantage of a skilled 15 piece orchestra (conducted by Justin Sousa) that’s out front in a real orchestra pit, providing the volume and dynamics of a big musical wave that the voices and movement on stage can ride with confident enthusiasm.

 The magnificent 27 foot tall dragon created by Roger Cyr is a North Coast stage wonder. Set and lighting design by Jayson Mohatt, costume design by Kathryn Masson and Carol Ryder, makeup and hair design by Carli McFarland, ogre makeup by Carlene and Rachel Cogliati are all excellent contributions. Even more than usual, director Carol Ryder has orchestrated magic.

 I’m guessing this production would be an exciting experience for children, and a marvelous introduction for first timers to the particular excitement of live theatre. This is the most ambitious HLOC production I’ve seen, and easily among the best. Even at dress rehearsal it was the most fun I’ve had at a musical since HLOC’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

 Shrek the Musical continues at the Van Duzer Theatre for just two more weekends, through August 18.

 Coming Up: Nothing new is opening but it’s a remarkable few weeks for the number of shows running simultaneously on the North Coast. Apart from Shrek the Musical, the musical Victor/Victoria completes its run this weekend (on August 11) at Ferndale Rep, and the comedy The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife plays weekends at North Coast Rep until August 17. Meanwhile, Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Sarah Ruhl’s Late: A Cowboy Song alternate at Redwood Park in Arcata through September 1, produced by Plays in the Park.

Hesse Fit: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife

Suppose you’re an edgy but also starving New York performer, concocting scripts allowing you to impersonate various movie divas but in genre B-movie stories with vibrant titles like Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Psycho Beach Party (which then actually becomes a B-movie.)

But after writing the book for a failed musical, you are told by the artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club—the place where scruffy downtown (the Village, etc.) meets Broadway—that she’ll produce your next play, sight unseen.

 So with your downtown dues paid, you write about uptown characters—an Upper West Side Jewish family—for an actress with Broadway cred, and show it to an audience that gets every comic New York nuance that skilled pros Linda Lavin and Tony Roberts can produce. 

It’s a hit, it’s Broadway bound—but here’s the twist. The play is so well constructed, the characters so weirdly interesting and the lines so funny that for more than a decade audiences without a New York clue love it at the Bucks County (PA) Playhouse, the Bowie Community Theatre (MD) and community playhouses from Oklahoma City to Rutland, Vermont and Boca Raton, Florida.

 The technical theatrical name for this kind of play is gold mine. The play is The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife by Charles Busch, currently onstage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka.

 In a spacious apartment (nicely designed by Calder Johnson, with properties by Laura Rhinehart), the middle-aged Marjorie (Cynthia Kosiak) is discussing a Nadine Gordimer novel with Mohammed, the doorman (Pryncz Lotoj.)

 Marjorie, we soon learn, is in existential crisis, afraid her love of literature (Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse) is meaningless intellectual pretension. Her husband Ira (Arnold Waddell) is a recently retired allergist, cluelessly wallowing in his own saintliness. But he brings her good news: the Disney Store won’t press charges.  Marjorie’s crisis was also expressed in a ceramic figure-breaking rampage.

 The family circle is completed by her mother Frieda (Denise Ryles) who lives down the hall, and spends a lot of time comically complaining at their kitchen table—a Jewish Estelle Getty from The Golden Girls. But their world is invaded by Lee (Gloria Montgomery), Marjorie’s long-lost childhood friend who is now a glamorous and dangerous woman, a worldly name-dropper (she gave Warhol the idea of painting soup cans etc.) who may have more than one agenda. That is, if she’s real.

 Busch’s starting point was to write a Pinter or Albee play about Jewish characters. The result is midway between the plays of Wallace Shawn and Woody Allen movies, with some Neil Simon snappiness and structure. Family memories provided reality (some lines are so outrageous that they could only have come from life) but Busch also plays with concepts like the golem, a figure derived from Jewish stories and used here as a projection of hidden desires. The resemblance of the play’s title to Boccaccio’s tales is probably not coincidental. It has the quality of a naturalistic fable.

 Director Scott Malcolm’s aim seems to be clarity, with a bright stage and actors moving downstage center for key speeches. That often works for comedy, and it does for this one. The actors create convincing characters with individual styles, and they work well together. The early scenes are masterful in showing us the characters and situation, and though there’s a grab-bag sitcom quality to much of what follows, the provocative and mysterious Lee animates the stage.

 Possible caveats: there’s some scatological and other potentially offensive humor, and topical references are more than a decade old (the play premiered in 2000.) Still, it’s an intriguing, funny play and a lively evening. Jenneveve Hood’s eye-catching costumes serve the play well. The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife plays weekends at North Coast Rep through August 17.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening Thursday (July 25, otherwise known as tonight) at North Coast Rep, a play written by an actual female impersonator (and contemporary American playwright): The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a comedy by Charles Busch. Directed by Scott Malcolm and featuring Gloria Montgomery, Arnold Waddell, Cynthia Kosiak, Denise Ryles and Pryncz Lotoj. More information at www.ncrt.net.

Continuing is the musical about the fake female impersonator, Victor/Victoria at Ferndale Rep.  My review is in this week's NC Journal.  In it I write: "Since the part of Victor/Victoria was written for the looks, accent and voice of Julie Andrews, a kind of imitation is inescapable. Jo Kuzelka has the vocal range but also the skills to strongly suggest Andrews, and yet make these tunes her own. Her singing was thrilling at times, and as actor and dancer as well, her performance was impressive and promising."

Which leads me to a few memories of Julie Andrews.  She was the first Broadway star I saw and heard--I was 16 when I saw my first Broadway musical, the original cast Camelot with Andrews, Richard Burton and Robert Goulet. Her voice was thrilling, her stage presence perfect for the part.  This musical probably spoiled me forever, since she and Burton had a way with songs very different from the typical Broadway style.

With her roles in The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins she got the reputation not only as a goody goody (in the original Peter Cook and Dudley Moore film of Bedazzled,  the devil's magic words to undo the wish spell were "Julie Andrews!") but as sexless. But at least in the 60s, she really wasn't.  After all, as Guenevere she had to be the woman that both Arthur and Lancelot fall for.  Even as the androgynous Victor/Victoria, she had to have enough sex appeal to make the Chicago gangster played by James Garner pine for her, sending him into a sexual identity crisis.

But in my humble opinion she was never sexier than opposite Garner in a 60s film: The Americanization of Emily (1964.) It was a dramatic part without singing (though the movie was also comic and basically satirical.) There was some heat in their scenes, even if augmented by her uniform.

It's the final weekend for The Heir Apparent at Redwood Curtain.

Victor/Victoria

The stage has long been a place for disguise, and the truths that disguise may reveal. Within the permeable categories of art and entertainment, performers pretend to be who they are not. Gender has often been an element of that disguise, sometimes forced by sanctions of a given time. Since women weren’t permitted on the Elizabethan stage, a young man in a Shakespearian performance might play a young woman disguised as a man, playfully pretending to be a woman.

 Add another layer: that in many places and in recent times, law as well as societal norms forced homosexuals into a life of disguise. A truer self might be expressed only in the allowed pretense of the stage.

 Add another layer still: in bad economic times, or simply because of an individual’s dire straits, trickery becomes even more of a survival tool. The general rule for making a living becomes more important and perhaps more extreme: show them what they want to see.

 All of this was behind the original power of the 1982 movie, Victor/Victoria—the story of a woman who pretends to be a man performing as a female impersonator. Based on a 1930s German movie, this film suggests the fashion for drag of that earlier era. But it also has the traditional comic delights of trickery gone wrong, and multiple deceits requiring improvised additional deceptions.

 In 1982 America was in an acute phase of admitting “sexual preference” into public discussion, soon to be fully outed by AIDS, which got its official name that same year. But more general questioning of masculine and feminine roles was also ongoing. The intimacy of the camera revealed the real human emotion in the midst of confusion related to gender and sexuality, even as comedy relieved some of the uncomfortable pressure.

 As a movie about live entertainment, Victor/Victoria seemed a natural to be reborn as a musical stage play. Musicals adapted from movies have become a genre, which we’ve seen before on the North Coast and will see again soon.

 For its Broadway debut in 1995, this musical even had the movie’s composer (Henry Mancini), writer and director (Blake Edwards) and principal star (Julie Andrews.) But some of the complexities of the film as well as complications of the plot were lost.

 In the version now on stage at Ferndale Repertory Theatre, Victoria (played by Jo Kuzelka) is a starving English choral singer befriended by Toddy (Craig Benson), an aging gay performer who was just fired from his cabaret job in 1930s Paris. He introduces her to an influential booking agent (Steve Nobles) as a Polish count and female impersonator. She becomes a star, soon enthralling a visiting Chicago nightclub owner and mobster, King Marchan (Rigel Schmitt) who is sexually attracted to her/him. And so the wheels begin to spin.

 Since the part of Victor/Victoria was written for the looks, accent and voice of Julie Andrews, a kind of imitation is inescapable. Jo Kuzelka has the vocal range but also the skills to strongly suggest Andrews, and yet make these tunes her own. Her singing was thrilling at times, and as actor and dancer as well, her performance was impressive and promising.

 For me, the highlights of the production approached the kind of magic musicals are capable of: the tap-dancing duet of Kuzelka and Benson, the song-and-dance number featuring Lela Annotto (outstanding as King’s comically brassy girlfriend) with dancers Dani Gutierrez, Shannon Adams and Islay Dillon-Ogden; and the comic finale with Benson and ensemble.

 Given the limitation of North Coast stages, we don’t see as much dancing as many musicals allow and need, so what’s presented is especially welcome. Linda Maxwell and Debbie Weist as well as cast members Gutierrez, Annotto and Benson contributed choreography.

 The dance also particularly helps this time because the songs are undistinguished. The singing was pleasing and the acting in the major parts was well defined (including Luke Sikora as the mobster’s bodyguard who is involved in a kind of parallel plot.) Still, much of the action seemed awkwardly staged on a crowded yet minimalist set.

 The live orchestra is a plus, though it was backstage and too muted to add much excitement. The story may be revelatory and heartening to a new generation, but thanks to time and the bluntness of this play, Victor/Victoria has lost much of its edge. And yet, the ambiguities of disguise can still intrigue and entertain.

Victor/Victoria is directed by Brad Hills, with musical direction by Dianne Zuleger, production design by Les Izmore and Liz Uhazy, costumes by Erica Frohman, hair and makeup by Josh Tillet. There’s a lively supporting cast. It continues at Ferndale Rep through August 11.

This North Coast Weekend (and Outside News)

The final theatrical presentation of Dell’Arte’s Mad River Festival is The Submarine Show, performed by Dell’Arte alums Jaron Aviv Hollander and Slater Brooks Penny. Its comic mixture of mime, acrobatics, storytelling and audience interaction was developed at San Francisco’s Kinetic Art Center, where Hollander is Artistic Director. It was named Best of the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2011. This one hour, family-friendly show is presented Thursday through Saturday (July 11-13) at 8 p.m. plus a Sunday matinee on the 14th at 2 p.m., in Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre. www.dellarte.com. There’s preview video at www.submarineshow.com.

The Submarine Show is presented by the Mad River Festival and the Nancy LaFrenz Memorial Scholarship, which supports original work created by alumni of the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre to be performed during the annual Mad River Festival. Nancy’s classmates, the Dell’Arte graduating class of 2002, set up the scholarship fund to keep her memory alive forever. Nancy LaFrenz (1974-2005), died from cancer early in her life, and the memorial fund helps other emerging artists cultivate their professional careers.

The Heir Apparent continues at Redwood Curtain.  I reviewed it in this week's Journal.

Among the theatrical news from Out There this past week:  President Obama presented the 2012 National Medals of Arts and National Humanities Medals.  Among the honorees were several theatre artists: writer and performer Anna Deavere Smith (pictured),  playwright Tony Kushner,  and writer and performer Elaine May.

The Heir Apparent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This North Coast Weekend

This weekend's opening is The Heir Apparent, David Ives' adaptation of an 18th century French farce at Redwood Curtain, with a preview Friday (July 5) and opening night Saturday.  Performances continue Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 through July 27, with a Sunday matinee on July 21 at 2.  Directed by Kristin Mack, it features Bad Bob Wells, Anthony Mankins, Kenneth Robert Wigley, Kate Haley, Chyna Leigh, Leslie Ostrom and Brian Walker.  www.redwoodcurtain.com.

Last weekend for Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at Dell'Arte (Friday-Sunday at 8 p.m.), and the return of the notorious Red Light in Blue Lake: Adult Cabaret..“It sells out immediately,” Michael Fields noted, “so we’re doing two shows this year.” Shows begin at 10:30 p.m. on July 5 and 6. Special guests are the Va-Va Voom Burlesque Vixens and the Beat Vixens (photo.)   “It gets the weirdest audience,” he added unnecessarily. www.dellarte.com.

This is also the weekend for the Pirate Ball, the fundraiser for North Coast Rep.  It's Saturday (July 6) at the Wharfinger Building in Eureka, starting at 8.  Dance music by Donna Landry with the Swing Set, performances by the Ya Habibi Dance Company, plus various piratical practices and entertainments.  Donation is ten bucks, with a buck off refreshments if you come in costume. More information: 268-0175.

More Comedy of Errors and This North Coast Weekend

The Comedy of Errors continues Friday-Sunday nights out back at Dell'Arte, sans super moon but with everything else.  My review is here at the North Coast Journal.  I have more to say about it at the end of this post.

One scheduled show for this weekend has been cancelled: At North Coast Rep, the Second Stage production of About Time will not be performed, due to actor's illness.  It was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.  Executive Director Michael Thomas says it might be re-scheduled in the future.

Also at Dell'Arte this weekend: the children’s noontime show, IN-Tents, on June 29 and 30, and the Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony and dinner on June 29, honoring Jane Hill.  IN-Tents: A Conservation Comedy is created and performed by Dell’Arte’s Pratik Motwani, Meghan Frank and Janessa Johnsrude. It's out in "the backyard."  The Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony and dinner begins at 4 p.m. on Saturday, honoring Dell’Arte International co-founder Jane Hill. Since securing the building that still houses Dell’Arte and directing the International School, she went on to rescue the Omaha Opera and expand the activities of the Sacramento Philharmonic as executive director.

About The Comedy of Errors at Dell'Arte:  We attended opening night and brought along several (paying) friends.  We all sat in chairs in the back, and their problems understanding the story and who was who helped inform my review (though they all enjoyed it, and one made a point of telling me it was "hilarious.")

  But in reviewing my review, I wasn't very happy with the writing.  Describing performances as "outstanding" and "excellent" is pretty bland.  Thinking about it, I realized my own response was affected by experiencing the performance far in the back.  That's really where you have to be if you don't want to sit on the ground, especially with a group of not very young people.  The audibility and intelligibility problems I noted were noticeable in the back, and there were enough people back there to mention them--I don't know if they were better or worse closer up (you never do, really.)  But I do sense my emotional response was muted by being so distant.  The subtleties, the interplay of audience and performers, the connections--are much harder to experience.  So in a way I suppose those general adjectives are a result.

About The Comedy of Errors in general: It's an early comedy, and the only Shakespeare that plays in one place in something like real time. The closest other is his last play, The Tempest, seen earlier this season at North Coast Rep. The action is on the same island but different parts of it,  Still, there can be separate sets in this comedy, so the difference is arguable.

 The only film of it that seems to be available is the Royal Shakespeare Company 1983 production for their Complete Shakespeare collection (it's viewable on YouTube.)  The casting is really interesting: playing the Antipholus twins is Michael Kitchen, who is best known now for his World War II police procedural Foyle's War, and as the Dromio twins, Roger Daltrey.  Yes, that Roger Daltrey--lead singer for The Who.  And he does a fine job, too.  I recognized Michael Kitchen right away--some of his speech and behavioral mannerisms in Foyle are there, though not as pronounced, and the quality of his voice.  (I recognized him in an even earlier role, playing the tragic brother of the Bronte sisters in a biographical film.)  As Antipholus of Syracuse, he adopted a speech pattern that sounds a lot like the one Kenneth Branagh used in the later movie of Much Ado About Nothing.

When I was watching this film I fantasized about a contemporary television production, and wondered what actor did I know of who could individualize each of the Antipholus twins, while maximizing the comedy?  My first thought: David Tennant.  It turns out that he has played one of the A's in a more recent RSC production--it looks as if it might have played in repertory with his Hamlet.  So he's halfway to playing both parts on screen.

 Though basically a stage version, this 1983 version did take advantage of film (or video) to allow the twins of both sets to appear in the same scenes, and of course, to permit one actor to play both twins. (Joan Schirle play the Antiphola twins at Dell'Arte, though some scenes are cut.) Seeing this version, I also understood the importance of the opening scene, that the Dell'Arte production eliminates in favor of a song.  The comic, even farcical events of most of the play are bookended by scenes of high sentiment: the resurrections and reconciliations of the last scene, but also the pathos of the first scene, when the old father tells the story of the shipwreck and the lost children, as well as his lost wife.  He has already been condemned to death by law at this point, but the sympathy of the crowd and even of the duke, set up a tension of hope for something that will change things, as indeed the events of the ending do.  Though the ending is surprisingly emotional at Dell'Arte, it is probably not as powerful without that first scene.

This play is usually said to be derived principally from Menaechmi, a comedy by the Roman Plautus, with the twin servants perhaps borrowed from another Plautus play, Amphitryo.  But scholar A.N. Nuttall notes that the Plautus play is itself derived from an earlier Greek play by Menander.  Though this play has been lost (as has a lot of Menander's work, which is probably why he isn't so famous), the Greeks often used the "children-lost-and-found" theme.  So those bookending scenes may well come from that lost play.

Menander wrote about a century after the great period of Greek tragedy and comedy, but he seems to have been a link from them to more modern approaches.  He wrote comedies that involved the lost and found, love and coincidence.  He was much respected and admired--more survives about him than of his work.  It wasn't until the 1950s that an entire play of his was discovered, along with fragments of others.

In All The World's A Stage, a book and BBC TV series by Ronald Harwood about the history of theatre that seems to have disappeared as thoroughly as Menander, refers to his "bitter-sweet genius," and quotes the following lines, which grabbed me immediately and which I recorded for myself.  I can't say it reflects my entire feelings, but as I approach another birthday, it's worth repeating.

I count it happiness,

Ere we go quickly thither whence we came,

To gaze ungrieving on these majesties,

The world-wide sun, the stars, water and clouds,

and fire.  Live, Parmeno, a hundred years

Or a few months, these you will always see

and never, never, any greater things.

Think of this life-time as a festival

Or visit to a strange city, full of noise,

Buying and selling, thieving, dicing stalls

And joy parks.  If you leave it early, friend,

Why, think you have gone to find a better inn:
 You have paid your fare and leave no enemies.

The Comedy of Errors

If you go to the brisk, high-spirited, physically witty and generally funny Dell’Arte production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and you aren’t familiar with the play, here’s the premise you need to know: An old man shows up in the marketplace of Ephesus, which is remarkably like the Arcata Plaza. Because he is from a hostile state he is by law condemned to death.

 But he tells a sad story about twins—his twin daughters and the twin boys he bought as servants for them, all infants. In a shipwreck years ago, his wife, one daughter and one of the boys were swept away. The survivors who recently set out to search for their twins are now themselves missing, so he came here to look for them. The Ephesians are moved, but can’t disobey the law. The Duchess allows him until sundown to try to raise the considerable fine and save his life.

 The rest of the play revolves around the fact that both sets of twins are now in Ephesus: the daughters, both the traveling Antipholia who has just arrived, and the Antipholia who has lived here for years (both played by Joan Schirle) and their twin servants named Dromio (Andrew Eldredge and Jerome Yorke.) Multiple mistaken identities result in the mayhem that ensues.

 You don’t have to memorize this--it’s summarized in the program so you can review. But it may aid your enjoyment if you know, especially if the otherwise terrific opening song that sets up the premise is not completely clear. (It’s an original piece that substitutes for the play’s opening scene.)

Aside from this (and maybe some audibility and intelligibility issues on opening night), it’s all good. With roots in earlier Greek and Roman plays, The Comedy of Errors was one of Shakespeare’s first comedies, and perhaps the only one that flourishes when played so broadly and at times ironically. Some scenes are missing but much of Shakespeare’s language remains.

 Michael Fields’ imaginative direction (it has to be one of his best efforts) and the skillful enthusiasm of a fully committed cast of performers provide both the sense and a style to the lines and the action.

 Daniel Spencer’s set is dominated by doors, which enable as well as signal a farcical treatment. There’s servant-beating in the script, which is successfully treated as clown business. When Antiphola and Dromio as well as other characters are trading witticisms, they play it as vaudeville comics.

 Yet for all the hilarity, the play deals with issues of identity, and it has real feeling in a surprisingly joyful and not entirely predictable ending of resurrection and reunion. This is probably the most disciplined as well as structured Dell’Arte summer production I’ve seen, revealing familiar skills in a different way, and new possibilities.

Joan Schirle is outstanding as the red-headed Antiphola twins. Andrew Eldredge and Jerome Yorke are convincing twin sprites. Chase McNeill as the husband of Antiphola of Ephesus worked with such visible energy to get across one of his speeches on opening night that the audience applauded.

 With physical and vocal clarity, Lynnie Horrigan is his sister who becomes the sudden love interest of the visiting Antiphola. MacNeil and Horrigan gamely and gracefully create characters different from the originals, as a result of Shakespeare’s Antipholus becoming Dell’Arte’s Antiphola, and so they augment the scripted humor with more 2013 comic accents.

 Zuzka Sabata is the blues-singing old man, and Janessa Johnsrude is the Duchess on a bicycle (inspired by a certain ex-mayor of Arcata who showed up at a Farmers Market in spandex bike togs.)  There are other reminders of the Plaza ambience as well.

 The rest of the excellent cast (often in multiple roles) are Pratik Motwani, Anna Gettles, Ruxy Cantir, Emily Newton, Meghan Frank, Moses Norton and Drew Pannebecker, with a comic cameo by Michael Fields.

Tim Gray composed the music, with songs also by Zuzka Sabata, Joan Schirle and Lyndsey Battle, plus lyrical assists from William Shakespeare. The always- excellent band is Tim Randles, Marla Joy and Mike LaBolle. Michael Foster designed lighting, Lydia Foreman the eye-catching costumes. The Comedy of Errors plays for two more weekends in the outdoor Rooney Amphitheatre, ending July 7. It runs about two hours.

More on the play and other versions here.

Mad River Festival Preview and This North Coast Weekend

Even the high priestess Mary Jane of the past two summers might think this is pretty far out: Dell’Arte opens this year’s Mad River Festival on June 20 with its production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

 “It’s a little daunting,” director Michael Fields admitted. “But it’s good for us to push into new territory.” It’s the first Shakespeare in Blue Lake since 1975, when Fields and Joan Schirle co-starred in As You Like It.

 Not that Dell’Arte is abandoning its “theatre of place.” This Shakespearian comedy is set in a mythical but recognizable version of a Farmers Market on the Arcata Plaza.

 Shakespeare’s story involves two sets of identical male twins separated not long after birth: two are nobles, both named Antipholus (don’t ask) and two are their servants, both named Dromio. Only in the Dell’Arte version the noble twins are Antiphola—two women who are both played by Mary Jane herself, Joan Schirle. The servants remain men but some other characters are also gender-flipped, so their relationships run almost the Humboldt gamut.

 The traditional band is on hand, and part of the story is told in song, but Fields suggests that some proportion of Shakespeare’s words will survive. He also promises an elaborate set and lots of visual appeal, as well as the usual mayhem.

 But why Shakespeare? The idea came from KEET, responding to a push by PBS for local Shakespeare productions. That project didn’t materialize here, but the idea intrigued Dell’Arte. “We looked at the plays to see what we liked,” Fields said, “and The Comedy of Errors is certainly the most adaptable. There’s some weight to it too, with those questions of identity. So it’s not just a knockabout, which is how people usually choose to do it.”

 The Comedy of Errors plays for three weekends in the outdoor amphitheatre at Dell’Arte, beginning June 20. Then this year’s Mad River Festival continues with more theatrics than usual, beginning with Between the Lines, a 45-minute acrobatic show that plays after Shakespeare on Friday and Saturday, June 21 and 22, but inside on the Carlo Theatre stage (and the walls, etc.) It’s created and performed by Dell’ Arte School’s Andrea M. Martinez, Audrey Leclair, Juliana Frick, Moses Morton, Alyssa Huglett, Nicholette Routhier and Joe Krienke. If you’re really hip, you can call it “sexy acro.”

 The second weekend (June 29 and 30) features a noontime show out in “the back yard” especially for children called IN-Tents (A Conservation Comedy), created and performed by Dell’Arte’s Pratik Motwani, Meghan Frank and Janessa Johnsrude.

 Also on June 29 is the Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony and dinner, honoring Dell’Arte International co-founder Jane Hill. Since securing the building that still houses Dell’Arte and directing the International School, she went on to rescue the Omaha Opera and expand the activities of the Sacramento Philharmonic as executive director.

 Michael Fields suggests he may interview Jane at the event in the manner of Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton. (Including perhaps the ostentatious French accent when mentioning the questionnaire developed by Bernard Pivot.) It all begins at 4 p.m.

 The third weekend features not one but two nights of the notorious Red Light in Blue Lake: Adult Cabaret, this year with special guests, the Va-Va Voom Burlesque Vixens. “It sells out immediately,” Fields noted, “so we’re doing two this year.” “It gets the weirdest audience,” he added unnecessarily.  Shows begin at 10:30 p.m. on July 5 and 6.

 The fourth weekend—just before the Humboldt Folklife Festival takes over—Dell’Arte brings The Submarine Show to Blue Lake for four performances. Created and performed by Dell’Arte School alums Slater Penney (an Emmy winner) and Jaron Hollander (formerly of Cirque Du Soleil), this family-oriented comedy employing both pantomime and vocal sound effects was a popular and critical hit in San Francisco and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (There’s a short YouTube video to give you the flavor.)

 Supported by the Nancy Lafrenz Memorial Scholarship, The Submarine Show plays Thursday through Saturday, July 11-13 at 8 p.m. and Sunday July 14 at 4 p.m.

 Though bigger than in recent years, the Mad River Festival may be substantially larger next summer. That’s because Dell’Arte just received a $350,000 grant from ArtPlace America to develop the Mad River Industrial Art Park. In addition to funding arts programs and projects that link the arts and economic development, part of the grant will be devoted to expanding the Mad River Festival into the Industrial Art Park.

Also Coming Up: On Saturday, the latest Murder By Dessert interactive play, Black Tie Murder Mystery is performed at the Arcata Hotel.  Reservations are required. www.MurderByDessert.com, (707) 223-4172.

Announced last week: Ferndale Repertory Theatre is adding a “Stage Two” program to its previously announced “MainStage” lineup. These shows will still be on the Ferndale stage and integrated into the season, but with lower admission prices. The idea is to present newer and more cutting-edge work in less elaborate productions. Added so far are Backwards in High Heels by Chicago playwright Jim Henry (which is not the musical about Ginger Rogers with that title) that will run in April, and the musical The Spitfire Grill by James Valcq and Fred Alley, which will play next July.

The Resurrection Tonys

It's hard not to see an extraordinary theme in this year's Tony Awards, and it's one of the favorite themes of show biz bios: after the rise and the fall there's the resurrection.

It's not really that dramatic in these three instances, but there is something interesting in figures whose names were much more prominent decades ago, suddenly reemerging with arguably the highest honors of their careers.

I'm talking about the 1980's pop star Cyndi Lauper, whose legacy was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and several other hits, at least one of the iconic videos of MTV's first years, and some less celebrated but pretty solid songs on several LPs, as we called them then.  Then she pretty much disappeared for decades, media-wise.  But somebody didn't forget her, because she got the call to write the lyrics and music for Kinky Boots, the current Broadway hit the NY Times describes as being "about a drag queen who helps save a struggling shoe factory."  Not only did this show win the Best Musical Tony, but Cyndi Lauper won for her songwriting--moreover she's the first woman to win for both music and lyrics who didn't have a male composing partner.

Christopher Durang became about as big a star as a young playwright could be with his Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1979 and 1980.  Other comedies of the 80s, such as Beyond Therapy and The Marriage of Bette and Boo (which was staged a couple of years ago at HSU) entered the contemporary canon and are still produced across the country.  But though he's continued to write plays that got produced at various places (he had a work commissioned in Pittsburgh a few years ago, I seem to recall), his public profile seemed to be more as a teacher and mentor to younger playwrights.

But on Sunday, it was Christopher Durang standing up on the stage accepting the Tony for Best Play for his comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike--his first Tony Award ever.

The most amazing win however belonged to Cicely Tyson, who burst onto the scene with her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder in 1972, and Emmy Award-winning performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974.  Her career had actually begun earlier, in the 1950s. She was in Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1961, the longest running non-musical on Broadway in the 60s, with a cast that included James Earl Jones and Maya Angelou.  I used to watch her every week in my favorite (and short-lived) TV series, East Side/West Side, which starred George C. Scott and also featured another now-veteran Broadway actress, Elizabeth Wilson.  That was 1963-64.

Cicely Tyson never entirely disappeared from television, theatre and the movies, but the fact is that she is 88 years old--and at this age, she won the Tony for Best Actress in a play, portraying Lady Bountiful in a revival of  The Trip to Bountiful.  She'd already won the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Award for the same role. (And yes, that's her in the photo at the top from last Sunday.)

So what does this all mean?  The 2013 success of  Lauper and Durang aren't unprecedented--Broadway often calls the controversial young artists of a previous generation while ignoring the current controversial young artists. That Cicely Tyson is not even better known, given her long career of notable work, may be partly due to her consistent portrayal of somewhat controversial black characters.

Actually none of them truly "disappeared."  Cyndi Lauper kept making music, won awards, became an LGBT activist, wrote a best-selling book, and bam, she's suddenly "resurrected."  But the return to the biggest stage is fairly rare.

Still, there are stereotypes here to be broken.  These awards also reveal a little to us about the enduring mystery of what happens to people who have been very successful, especially those identified with a particular character or show, and then seem to disappear.  The short answer is that if they are persistent, they simply keep working, wherever and whenever they get good opportunities, and make themselves available.

Actors know (and writers learn) that there are rhythms without rhyme or reason in the level of opportunities available over time.  Actors keep on acting, even if it is playing a role in the reading of a new script in somebody's living room.  Writers do what they must to keep creative, and to get through periods of rest and gestation. And of course they all must make a living, cope with relationships and family responsibilities, etc.  Perhaps the crucial move is to stay in touch with the power centers of Hollywood and New York, while pursuing those other opportunities elsewhere.

Still, there are so many pitfalls along the way, and so much depends on chance and being ready for it, that resurrections such as these three really must be celebrated, even as we view them with awe.

This North Coast Weekend & Audition Notice

The only theatrical game in town remains Next to Normal at North Coast Rep this weekend.

My preview of Dell'Arte's Mad River Festival theatricals appears in this week's NC Journal.

Meanwhile, NCRT has released this Audition Notice:

The North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for the comedy You Can’t Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Mack Owen. There are roles for 9 men aged 20 to 70, and 6 women aged 20 to 55 years old. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script. Monologues are welcome. Please bring a headshot and resume if available. Auditions will take place on Saturday, June 22 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, June 23 at 5 p.m. at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. Production dates are September 19 through October 12, 2013. A copy of the script is available in the Eureka Public Library. Please call NCRT at 268-0175 if you have any questions.

This North Coast Weekend

Next to Normal continues this Friday and Saturday at NCRT.  My review is in the NC Journal and online here, where you can also read a lively debate on whether I should have revealed in the review that the teenage son (Gabe) is a delusion of his mother (Diana.)  While differences of opinion on this are reasonable, I didn't do it without forethought.  As a plot device, showing Gabe as presumably a real character, only to reveal he isn't, would seem way too familiar a contrivance, except that the revelation takes place pretty early in the play, and knowing that Gabe is an illusion--or a delusion--is important to understanding the grip of Diana's illness.

I actually thought that not realizing pretty early that Gabe (played by Gino Bloomberg, photo above) is her delusion would be to miss the point of a lot that followed. (Diana is played by Andrea Zvaleko, also pictured.) So even though it counts as a spoiler I suppose--well, play reviews do that all the time, including reviews of this play. Generally I refrain from such a revelation if the surprise seems important.  My apologies to anyone who feels their experience is lessened by knowing this.

I think the only thing I would add to the review is an explicit declaration that there is humor in some of the songs and action, particularly involving the (real) teen characters, Natalie (Brandy Rose) and Henry (Luke Sikora), but also some moments between Diana and her doctor(s) played by Alex Moore.

Elsewhere, the youth troupe Spare Change performs at the Arcata Playhouse on Saturday at 8 p.m.  Their self-created skits deal with issues of special concern to teens.  www.srpp.org.

On Sunday, the Super Mario Musical by Eureka High student Madeira Seaman is performed at Eureka High School twice, at 1 and 5 p.m.  www.northstarquest.org. 

Next to Normal

I got in enormous trouble with some readers for "giving away" a plot point--that one of the characters was real only in another's imagination.  Apparently this was less clear to others than to me very early in the play.  (Someone compared it to giving away the "I see dead people" secret in The Sixth Sense movie.)

First of all, I genuinely thought this device was obvious very early, and in this the Wikipedia synopsis of the play agrees with me.  But it did bring up the new morality of "spoilers."  It's an interesting problem for dealing with a play that is (a) five or so years old but (b) hasn't been mounted before on the North Coast.  However, it became impossible to talk about the performance of the actor in question without referring to it.  But if I had it to do over again, I guess I'd find a way around it.  I suppose this reaction did tell me that at least some people were reading the review before they saw the show.

In the musical Next to Normal, now onstage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, Diana is a wife and mother who is being treated for mental illness. The story follows her treatment and how it affects her husband Dan and her teenage daughter Natalie, and Natalie’s relationship with her boyfriend Henry. Then there’s Gabe, the son she sees as a teenager but who in fact died as an infant.

 So you should know going in that this is not exactly Anything Goes.

 Next to Normal (music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey) was probably the most celebrated new musical in New York since Rent. It began in 2002 with workshops and eventually opened on Broadway in 2009, where it ran for almost two years. It won multiple Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize, a rare honor for a musical.

 Though the play is billed as a rock musical, in this production especially it’s more of a pop music opera. The script is mostly sung, with the arias and various vocal combinations of an opera. With a small instrumental ensemble backstage, no body microphones for the singers and low-keyed lighting, this NCRT production takes a subdued approach. Without the raucous qualities of rock, there’s a contemporary pop feel, with catchy melodies and incisive lyrics (plus some bathetic ones.)

 So the emphasis falls on the singers, who were remarkably accomplished already on opening night. Their voices soared and blended with apparently effortless dexterity. Music director Dianne Zuleger prepared them well, especially since director Tom Phillips set a brisk pace for the action. Andrea Zvaleko plays Diana with a strong voice and understated passion. Her mercurial moments meet the solid guardedness of Kevin Sharkey’s Dan, until his feelings quietly erupt.

 Brandy Rose is the teenage daughter Natalie, who moves swiftly through adolescent responses, at times mirroring what her mother is going through. Gino Bloomberg plays a dangerously charismatic Gabe, an illusion who insists he is real, and in terms of being a crucial character to his mother and in this story, he is.

 In smaller but still important and well sung roles, Luke Sikora is the sweet stoner who becomes a rock of stability for Natalie, and Alex Moore plays the two doctors who apply modern medicine and psychotherapy with mixed results.

 As a story, this play is mindful of predecessors both in depicting a family under stress (suggesting that society is itself insane), and in addressing mental illness. Nailing Diana’s illness to a specific precipitating event is dramatically efficient though it may also be oversimplifying. It’s a delicate dance between touching the typical bases and portraying an individual family, but that seems inherent in the subject.

 The play ends with decisions but refuses easy resolution. Even in terms of what came before, not everyone will find the ending satisfying, though it does include affirmation (the last song promises “there will be light”) with the determination to live “close enough to normal to get by.”

 The subject of mental illnesses and treatment in the family are probably resonant for many members of an average audience. Those who take the emotional journey of this play will probably have a lot to talk about.

 The excellent backing instrumentalists are Jonathan Webster (piano), Charlie Sleep (guitar), Bobby Amirkhan (electric bass) and Melissa Gussin (percussion.) Kyle Handziak designed the effective set, Calder Johnson the lighting, Jenneveve Hood the costumes. Next to Normal plays at North Coast Rep Fridays and Saturdays through June 22.

Brad Hills, the new executive director of Ferndale Repertory Theatre, has announced that its new season will have a common theme: “Family, Friends, Ferndale!” First there’s a trio of classics with a small town setting: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in October, Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man in November, and another Kaufman and Hart comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner in January. Then the musical Monty Python’s Spamalot opens in March, and the comedy The Dixie Swim Club in June. With these selections, Hills is reportedly responding to dissatisfaction among longtime Ferndale Rep financial supporters. These “MainStage” shows may be augmented by smaller-scaled productions, though how that might work has not yet been announced.

This North Coast Weekend

This is the second and final weekend of The Mothership: Thesis Festival 2013, three plays devised and performed by graduating MFAs at Dell'Arte International School, Thursday through Saturday at 8 in the Carlo. I reviewed the shows as they were on opening night, but they're likely to be different this weekend.  To what I wrote in this week's NC Journal I'd add just a few words of further context.  Some readers may wonder why I seem to be taking two of the shows so seriously (Potato and Because I Love You Most of All.)  It is because these shows are not comedies nor primarily comic.  There are elements that are probably supposed to be darkly funny--and the opening night audience seemed to laugh at almost everything--but in various ways the shows themselves make claims as something more serious.The acrobatic violence in particular seems meant to be more than funny or clownish.

It's true that they both flirt with the ironic or comic aspect of horror and the grotesque, which some audiences (particularly younger ones) may find more interesting (or newer) than I did.  But in any case they didn't work for me as narratives, at least not when I saw them.  Finally, I tried to place this in the academic context in my column, and it may seem churlish to review them in the ordinary way.  But these performances invite the general public, and these students are training to perform before whatever audience pays its money.  They are very good performers.  But the "plays" they put together in a few weeks just weren't worthy of their performance skills.  So the bottom line for me is this: student work is student work.  But a show is a show.

Also completing its run this weekend is Skin Deep at Redwood Curtain, Friday through Sunday at 8.

Dell'Arte School Thesis Festival 2013

This coming weekend (May 16-18), graduating MFA students at Dell’Arte International School present the culmination of their thesis projects: the second and final weekend of three plays which they devised and perform.

 It’s the end of a process that involved weekly presentations to their academic advisors, writing a statement of purpose and a script to carry it out, and last weekend’s first performances in front of audiences. Then earlier this week they faced the faculty for critiques, followed by a few days to revise and refine their pieces.

 So elements of these shows, billed as The Mothership: Thesis Festival 2013, are probably going to be different this weekend from what I saw on opening night. These pieces are also different in kind from last spring’s thesis shows, one of which was based on a story and poem by Edgar Allen Poe, and the other on a real if obscure historical person (Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to intentionally tumble down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive.) In contrast, none of the shows this year have an identified source.

 The first piece is Potato, devised and played by Janessa Johnsrude, Anson Smith and Kolleen Kintz. It began with a projected star field, and legendary astronomer Carl Sagan’s voice talking about the multitude of discrete worlds in the universe. We were then presented with three human characters confined (for some reason) to a seedy motel room. Two of them are carnival performers, who eventually reveal their knife-throwing act.

 Their relationships seemed more improvised than explored, but that’s as solid as the story gets. It was ambitious and inventive, edgy at times, with skillful physical movement and stagecraft. Actors of one gender playing stereotypical characters of the other oscillated between being marginally meaningful and an amusing if pointless display of virtuosity. While incidents were clear enough even if uninteresting beyond their execution, I found the piece as a whole incoherent. If there was more than a trivial relationship to what Sagan was saying (in several ghostly phone calls as well as the introduction), it eluded me. So did the significance—or humor—of a giant potato.

 In Summit Fever, three clowns (played by Ruxy Cantir, Anthony Arnista and Amelia Van Brunt) were making their 78th and 79th attempts to climb Mount Everest. Since clowns naturally have an adversarial relationship with the world (an insight I owe to Dell’Arte’s Lauren Wilson), the struggles with wind, snow and clashing personalities were well conceived and played. With the exceptions of a misplaced sight gag (made famous by Groucho and Harpo on either side of a mirror) and a deft physical joke repeated too many times without variation, this was the simplest and most successful piece.

 Because I Love You Most of All is another creepy sex and violence mashup, with a sheriff, a young woman, an enigmatic old lady and her sinister henchman, all in a David Lynch country-and-western dreamscape. Again, the performances by Jacob Trillo, Meridith Anne Baldwin, Ryan Musil and Lisa McNeely were skillful, but again it seemed like disembodied bits and characters, as if churned up by late night channel surfing. It’s certainly not the fault of the students who worked on these pieces for weeks, but because of the ugly revelations coming out of Cleveland and Shasta, I found the acts of man-on-woman violence of this and the first piece especially disturbing.

 Michael Foster designed the lighting, Daniel Spencer is technical director and Lydia Foreman the costume coordinator for all three shows. The Mothership: Thesis Festival 2013 is onstage at Dell’Arte Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. www.dellarte.com.

 Meanwhile, as the school year ends at College of the Redwoods, there is mixed news. As noted here (in “40 Years of Astonishment,” Stage Matters on March 14), the Humboldt Light Opera Company’s anniversary concert featured a plea and a petition to save CR’s music courses, most of which were slated to end this spring.

 Recently CR announced that these classes are back on their schedule, open to CR students for credit, but also to community members. However, there are no drama courses on the fall schedule for the main Eureka campus. A new performing arts center will open, although it’s being criticized as inadequate for theatrical productions.

Coming Up: To complete their first year’s work, Dell’Arte International students present The Finals, a set of ten minute plays that audience members can “grade,” May 23-25 at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. www.dellarte.com.

 Next up at North Coast Repertory Theatre is Next to Normal, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, with mental illness as its subject and a rock score driving its style. Directed by Tom Phillips with musical direction by Dianne Zuleger, it features Andrea Zvaleko, Gino Bloomberg, Kevin Sharkey, Brandy Rose, Luke Sikora and Alex Moore. It opens May 23. www.ncrt.net.

 Not opening in July is the previously announced musical Boeing, Boeing at Ferndale Repertory Theatre. However, the musical Victor/Victoria will open there as scheduled on July 19. www.ferndalerep.org.

Skin Deep (and May Shows)

How could I write a play for my fellow third graders to perform when it would be nearly a decade before I actually saw a play, live onstage? The short answer is television, specifically situation comedies. It is even now the format that any American audience is most likely to know, including audiences for the comedy Skin Deep, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka.

 Those audiences are greeted with Daniel C. Nyiri’s impressive set that nevertheless looks familiar. It’s a down-market, outer-borough New York apartment, reproduced with the detail we expect in a movie or TV show set. Some of those details—like the box of Ritz crackers, the Kix cereal on top of the fridge—suggest that despite the vaguely contemporary time in which the play takes place, this is really the sitcom 1950s, but with cell phones and collagen injections.

 It’s the apartment of Maureen Mulligan (played by Christina Jioras), a plus-size and no longer young woman, who is getting ready for a blind and possibly last chance date with Joe Spinelli (Dmitry Tokarsky), perennially unattached and also middle aged. Maureen’s sister Sheila (Susan Abbey) is helping her prepare, with encouragement and makeup. Sheila was the pretty one, though lately obsessed with cosmetic surgery. She’s married to an upscale lawyer she’s worried is straying, the handsome Squire Whiting (Brad Curtis.)

 While Brooklyn and Queens no doubt maintain some old ethnic enclaves (though I’d be surprised if there are many Irish parents who still expect one of their daughters to become a nun,) this has a very 50s sitcom feel: Irish and Italian Catholics, plus a token WASP, as seen through the comedic and highly verbal prism of predominantly Jewish writers.

All the characters in Jon Lonoff’s script for Skin Deep are witty, the story is sweet and slight, with a single psychological turn that Maureen eventually states directly, in case we missed it while laughing at the jokes. This play really is skin deep. But skin is important, too (it’s where we first feel the world, and where we get burned.) And there are worse ways to spend an evening than watching a live sitcom, especially with this ensemble of actors.

 Not only are they individually talented, able to create convincing characters and relationships that have nuances that deepen the play, but they do so by working so well and so truthfully together. Credit for that must also extend to director Cassandra Hesseltine. Christina Jioras is winning, Brad Curtis brings out elements of his character that might otherwise remain latent in the script, Dmitry Tokarsky is solid and Susan Abbey is funny without losing her character’s dignity and humanity. The New York accents are pretty good, too.

 There’s romance, misunderstanding and a touch of farce in the second act involving (as farce often does) closed doors hiding someone who shouldn’t be there, or open doors creating a wrong impression. It’s uncynical, moderately fast paced and not long.

There's some apparent playfulness with names.  "Squire Whiting" comes close to being parody for the one WASP in the play.  But I detect a pun in the heroine's name too--Maureen Mulligan--a mulligan basically being a do-over.  A second chance for romance, get it?

There’s a lot about food, so expect to crave snacks afterwards.  Food mentions could be another reason that this play is apparently done most often at dinner theatres.  In fact, despite an Off-Off New York debut, this may be basically a direct-to-dinner theatre play, and I suspect that's an entire genre now.  Still, the Redwood Curtain production is funny and enjoyable.  Even without dinner.

Costumes are by Jenneveve Hood, sound by Jon Turney, props by Laura Rhinehart.  Skin Deep continues weekends at Redwood Curtain through May 18.

Coming Up:

Speaking of dinner theatre, Murder By Dessert presents Cinquo de Mayo mysteries at two local Mexican restaurants this weekend:  at Capala Mexican Restaurant in Eureka on Friday and Luzmilla's in McKinleyville on Saturday, each starting at 9.

On Thursday and Friday (May 2, 3) at 8 p.m., the Arcata Playhouse hosts the physical theatre duo Wonderheads Mask Theater, performing an original piece, Loon. Co-artistic directors Kate Braidwood and Andrew Phoenix are graduates of the Dell’Arte International School, and their signature is larger-than-life masks and puppets, billed as “live-action Pixar.” Liz Nicholls in the Edmonton Journal described this show as “a simple, classic underdog story, the rediscovery of the sense of possibility. And it’s told with beautiful physicality.” Arcata Playhouse.org.

Also this weekend, Proof ends its run at HSU. It's the Pulitzer Prize winning drama by David Auburn. Produced by HSU Theatre and directed by Michael Thomas, it features Dakota Dieter, James Read, Kyle Handziak and Queena DeLany.  Lynnie Horrigan designed the set, Glen Nagy the sound, James McHugh the lighting, Marissa Menezes the costumes and makeup.   More information: http://HSUStage.blogspot.com. Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with the last show on Sunday at 2, in Gist Hall Theatre. HSU Stage.

The 1960s musical Hello, Dolly! is performed at Ferndale Repertory Theatre at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Directed by Justin Takata, with musical direction by Tina Toomata (you say Takata, I say Toomata), choreography by Linda Maxwell and scenic design by Liz Uhazy, it features Rae Robison, Dave Fuller, Erik Standifird, Molly Severdia, Dante Gelormino, Sasha Shay, Lizzie Chapman and Brodie Storey heading a large cast. It closes May 12.

Antigone continues at Eureka High, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30.

This North Coast Weekend

Proof, the Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play by David Auburn, opens for two weekends at HSU  on Thursday (May 25.)  It's a play about family, genius, madness, identity, academia, sex and love, but mostly (I've concluded) it explores the polarities of proof and trust, and the practical impossibility of one of them.  Redwood Curtain did a production of this some years back.

Directed by Michael Thomas and produced by HSU Theatre, Film & Dance, Proof features Dakota Dieter, James Read, Kyle Handziak and Queena DeLany. Lynnie Horrigan is the set designer, James McHugh designed lighting, Glen Nagy designed sound, Marissa Menezes designed costumes and makeup.  Proof plays in the Gist Hall Theatre Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. this weekend and next.  Much more at HSU Stage.  Tickets: 826-3928.

Also opening this weekend is Skin Deep at Redwood Curtain, a comedy by Jon Lonoff, about a "large, lovable, lonely-heart" and an awkward man on a blind date, and the course of their relationship.  Directed by Cassandra Hesseltine, it features Christina Jioras, Dmitry Tokarsky, Susan Abbey and Brad Curtis.  Daniel C. Nyiri designed set and lighting, costumes are by Jennevieve Hood and sound by John Turney.

Previews are Thursday and Friday, with official opening on Saturday, all at 8 p.m. Performances continue Thursdays-Saturdays through May 18. www.redwoodcurtain.com.   To reserve tickets, email boxoffice@redwoodcurtain.com or call 443-7688.

This weekend at Dell'Arte the International School's students present their annual audience favorite, the clown show.  This year it's called Who Ya Callin Bozo? Clown 2013, directed by Ronlin Foreman.  It plays Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo Theatre. Reservations are a really good idea:(707)668-5663.

The Arcata Playhouse and KHSU present The Word: A Community Story-Telling Project, with North Coast people telling stories about the North Coast, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Arcata Playhouse, with the Saturday show broadcast live on KHSU.

A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, monologues edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle, is presented Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Native American Forum at HSU.

Eureka High School presents Antigone at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

The Sue Bigelow Memorial and Celebration of Life is on Sunday, scheduled for 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the North Coast Rep Theatre in Eureka.  Dianne Zuleger writes: "There may be a short presentation/reading from a script.  All are welcome to take the stage and share a Sue story. Please bring an hors d'eouvres of some kind and/or a beverage.  Also, if you have any photos, we'd like to put together a PowerPoint video.  Please send digital copies (or scan hardcopies) and email them to me. If you can't scan, bring them to me and I'll do it for you.  Thanks!"  Her email is didiz@sbcglobal.net.