This North Coast Weekend

HSU opens Young Frankenstein: The Musical  tonight (Thursday) for two weekends. As he did with the stage version of The Producers, Mel Brooks wrote the script, music and lyrics, slightly parodying past Broadway songs. This 2007 musical comedy version doesn’t require familiarity with the classic 1974 Young Frankenstein movie, but key comic moments recur, with some variation and embellishment. Director Rae Robison and designer Derek Lane are applying an industrial “steam punk” (or Frankensteam) approach to the set and the Monster. But the Monster’s specific look (and the identity of the well-known local actor who plays him) are secrets for audiences to discover.

 Erik Standifird plays Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the original monster-maker. He played the lead in last year’s NCRT production of Anything Goes, the Cole Porter show that inspired Mel Brooks’ musical approach to this one. A large ensemble features Anna Duchi, Ashley Adams, Christopher Moreno, Sasha Shay and Keith Brown. Elisabeth Harrington is music director, Paul Cummings conducts the band, and Lizzie Chapman is dance choreographer. Marissa Menezes designed costumes, Telfer Reynolds the lighting, Charles Thompson the sound.  This is the HSU Theatre, Film & Dance department and HSU Music department co-production that typically happens every other year.

 This comedy about a man, his monster and the women who loved them contains verbal and visible PG humor of a sexual nature—no surprise, it’s Mel Brooks. Because it’s in the relatively small Gist Hall Theatre, two Saturday matinees are added to the usual schedule of Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 and Sunday at 2. Young Frankenstein opens Oct. 17 and plays weekends through Oct. 27.  There's more information at HSU Stage & Screen, where you can be the first to read the strange story of how Frankenstein and Dracula were born on the same dark and stormy night!

Meanwhile, Our Town continues at Ferndale Rep.

This North Coast Weekend: Our Town

Ferndale Repertory Theatre opens Our Town with a preview on Thursday and opening night Friday.  

A year after Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, Thornton Wilder won it for Our Town. You Can’t Take It With You ends its run at North Coast Rep this weekend, while Our Town opens at Ferndale Repertory Theatre.

 Both plays emerged from the 1930s, when bad economic times encouraged evaluating life in terms other than dollars.  But if the plays had some ideas in common, the playwrights were very different.  Kaufman and Hart knew Thornton Wilder socially, but his background and life were worlds apart from these Broadway playwrights.

With a classical education (including Latin) and degrees from Yale and Princeton, Wilder was a teacher and successful novelist who felt drawn to the stage. He called theatre “the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being...We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theatre strengthens our faculty to face it.”

 Legendary director Tyrone Guthie described him as a “ceaseless traveler,” “a savant, a notable wit” who has “been everywhere and knows everyone,” sprinkling his conversation with anecdotes that might begin “Ernest Lubitsch leaned over my plate and whispered to His Holiness...”  But he also said Wilder's work expresses “between the lines of story or play, one human soul speaking to another.”

Wilder playing the Stage Manager in Our Town in a
Wellsley, Mass. production

 Wilder’s wanderlust began in childhood, as he rarely lived in one place for more than a year or two. He was born in Wisconsin, lived in China and Europe, but also attended high school down the coast in Berkeley, and during some of the early 20th century years Our Town takes place, he attended the Thatcher School in Ojai, California, which described the surrounding towns as having "the moral and intellectual atmosphere of a New England community." He acted and wrote for the stage in both places. By the time he started college at Oberlin, he had the reputation of being “worldly yet somehow ‘small town.’”

Thornton Wilder had been born a twin, but his brother did not survive the birth.  This other half haunted him and his writing for the rest of his life.

After writing one act plays and translations, Wilder embarked on writing two full length plays.  One would eventually become a comedy that failed until Tyrone Guthrie revived it, though it would become world famous mostly as the basis for the musical Hello Dolly!  The other was a drama, at first titled Our Village and later Our Town.

Inspired partly by the Spoon River Anthology book of poems by Edgar Lee Masters, and partly by Gertrude Stein and her writings about America, Wilder also applied various classical models.  He wanted it to be a play of "recollection" in Plato's sense.  "Our Town is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village; or as a speculation about the conditions of life after death (that element I merely took from Dante's Purgatory)" he wrote. " It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life."

 As his first staged original full-length play, Our Town had a rough beginning. After a well-received tryout at Princeton, it bombed in Boston. By then the director and the playwright were no longer speaking. It went to Broadway for one performance and was saved by enthusiastic reviews, but its 10-month run lost money despite the Pulitzer Prize.

 It quickly got new life in revivals around the country—a number of them featuring Thornton Wilder playing the key role of the narrator, known as the Stage Manager. He did so again in 1946 at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, where Paul Newman would play that part in 2002.

 Today it’s said that Our Town is performed every day of the year somewhere in the world. Partly because of its simple staging, it’s become a high school staple. But a 2009 off-Broadway production directed by David Cromer became the longest running Our Town in history. Cromer stripped the play of the nostalgia and sentimentality that had upset Wilder in the original production.

Cromer as Stage Manager in his production

 In Cromer’s configuration, the audience was seated on the same level as the actors, almost within the playing area. I saw a professional production at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre in 1991 (directed by Robert Allan Ackerman, now a lauded TV movie director) that also did this. It especially made the key scene of the play (you’ll know it when you see it) very powerful, one of those unforgettable theatrical moments.  (Coincidentally, Pittsburgh Public Theatre is mounting a new production of Our Town this very month.)

 But the play has endured because audiences connect to the words as spoken, whatever the staging. Specific lives are portrayed, governed by the universal truths of life and death. In his Harvard lectures on American Characteristics, Wilder said that poet Emily Dickinson solved the American problem of loneliness “by loving the particular while living in the universal.”

 Audiences can now enter into this unique American classic at Ferndale Repertory Theatre. Directed by Patrick Porter, it features Tina Marie Harris as Stage Manager, with Brandi Lacy, Gino Bloombery, Willi and Bill Welton, Charles Beck, Stephen Avis, Carol Martinez, Scott Monadnoick, Dana Zurasky, Shelley Harris, Laureen Savage, Michael and James Swiker. Sets are by Les Izmore, lights by Liz Uhazy, sound by Peter Zuleger, costumes by Denise Ryles and Rosemary Smith.
   Our Town previews on Thursday October 9 and opens on Oct. 10. It continues Fridays and Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2 through November 3. Tickets: Ferndalerep.org, 707-786-5483.

You Can't Take It With You

Evan Needham, Molly Harvis

The 1937 Pulitzer Prize winning play You Can’t Take It With You, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is a madcap comedy about an eccentric extended American family.  If there was doubt this is an American classic, a production like this proves it.

 David Simms as grandfather Vanderhof serves as the calm eye of this modest hurricane, but everybody provides comic moments while grounding this group in earnest eccentricity: Ken Klima as the fireworks-making father, Lora Canzoneri as the amateur playwright mother, Sarah Traywick as the dancing daughter and Jon Edwards as her xylophone-playing husband.

 Recently I quoted an interview I did with Jason Robards Jr. backstage on Broadway. The play he was doing was the 1983 revival of You Can’t Take It With You. I later spent a pleasant hour with other members of the cast, including the great character actors Elizabeth Wilson and Bill McCutcheon. Every version of this play depends on a talented ensemble working together, even with a star like Robards. That’s no less true of the North Coast Rep production.

Characters played by Arnold Waddell, Taylen Winters and Saul Tellez round out the household. The love story that drives the conflict involves the rich boy (Evan Needham) whose parents (Sam Clauder and Shullie Steinfeld) don’t approve of the poor girl (Molly Harvis as Martin’s granddaughter) and especially her unconventional family. Anders Carlson as the Russian dance teacher jolts the energy into another gear whenever he appears, and small but essential moments are played by Jacqui Cain, Robert Garner and Tony Martinez.

 On opening night the clarity of both Mack Owen’s direction and the performances proved that the play itself is a solid wonder, an unlikely delight transcending its time.

 North Coast Rep honors the play’s three-act form (with two intermissions), standard for the 1930s though a novelty these days. But it works really well in three acts and does not seem long. The conflict of valuing the pursuit of money over living other dreams also furnished the theme of such plays as Philip Barry’s Holiday (most famous as the 1938 Cary Grant/Katherine Hepburn movie) and Herb Gardner’s A Thousand Clowns (with Jason Robards, who also starred in the 1965 film.) But it’s interesting that I can’t think of recent examples.

 Calder Johnson is scenic and lighting director, Jenneveve Hood did the subtly striking costumes, Michael Thomas did the sound. You Can’t Take It With You plays weekends at NCRT through October 12.

 You Can't Make This Up: How You Can't Take It With You Happened

George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.  This is an accurate rendition of how
they worked--except that while Kaufman typed, Hart paced.

The craziness on stage in You Can't Take It With You is at least matched by the bizarre process of how the play was written.

George S. Kaufman was one of the most successful Broadway playwrights in history, and the younger Moss Hart (by 15 years) was not far behind. They had collaborated on two successful plays, and became friends.

 In 1936 they carved out time in their busy Broadway and Hollywood careers (Hart had just been nominated for an Oscar as a screenwriter) to work on a project that they soon realized wasn’t going to work. Hart, known for his emotional highs and lows, was in despair. Kaufman, who famed critic Brooks Atkinson called “the gloomy dean of Broadway wits,” remembered a Hart idea from two years before, about a mad but loveable family.

 They talked it out, figuring out the eccentric characters. With their excitement mounting, Kaufman contacted his producer to book a theatre and hire a specific list of actors to play these characters—all before they had a story or anything written.  Then Kaufman and Hart wrote frantically, with the particular talents of these actors to guide them.

They started in a way no playwriting teacher would ever advise: with a peripheral character, not even a member of the family.  But Kaufman wanted and got Frank Conlan, a comic skilled in pantomine.  He signed him up to play Mr. De Pinna, a guy who had delivered ice to the house seven years before and never left.  Kaufman and Hart designed a pantomime for him--posing in a toga as the Discus Thrower for the family painter (and playwright.)  Once they knew they had Conlan, they pretty much wrote the play to lead up to this scene, providing its structure.

The classic film of "Stage Door," though very different
from the Kaufman play.

Then the two writers drew from everything around them. Hart recalled a word association game he’d played with Richard Rodgers and Barbara Stanwyck (among other show business luminaries of the time), and used it in the play to reveal character. Kaufman got a pretentious invitation from a former Russian nobleman now in the fur business, and this inspired the Russian émigrés who are so essential to the story. The exile of a Russian grand duchess who is pretty happily working as a New York waitress is a neat variation on this family nobly falling into humble fates that fulfill them.

 Kaufman had just done a large ensemble comedy (Stage Door) and the movie he’d been writing may have influenced this play’s zany moments—it was the Marx Brothers’A Night at the Opera. Meanwhile he was literally hiding out to escape a court subpoena in a Hollywood sex scandal, so he placed two of his characters in legal jeopardy.

 Kaufman emerged from hiding to direct the play with a title he and Hart didn’t like: You Can’t Take It With You.  Author Geoffrey Whitworth (who G.B. Shaw credited as one of the most important figures in British theatre) described Kaufman's directing style: "the director has rehearsed his players as though they were an orchestra and this mad family played a lunatic symphony against a background which served as a staccato accompaniment."

There was one casting problem that took awhile to overcome: they couldn't find the right young woman to play the only "sane" person in the family, the ingenue/love interest Alice. Out of town tryouts weren't encouraging. It was only solved  at the last minute with the hiring of a new actor right before the play was scheduled to open on Broadway.

1936 Broadway. One or more of these actors were also in the Capra film.

By then Hart was near hysteria, certain the play would fail. It opened on Broadway on Dec. 14, 1936 and was an immediate and enduring hit, the most honored of the Kaufman and Hart collaborations.

the Capra version

The play tells a very American tale, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Oscar-nominated film version got the Frank Capra treatment. The play is better.

The Spoiler Problem

Some weeks ago when reviewing a show at NCRT in my Stage Matters column I mentioned something that some people regarded as a serious spoiler, on the order of telling the true meaning of "I see dead people."  In fact, it was about somebody who saw a dead person.  I thought it was obvious early in the first act, and at least one summary of the play backs me up on that.  But there were audience members who didn't think so, and apparently it was not fully revealed until near the end of the play.  For me, the main character's interaction with this dead son was the main interest of the story.

I did hesitate before mentioning it in my review, but without it there wasn't much to write about except the usual responses to the performances and music.  I found the same problem with Becky's New Car, which recently closed at Redwood Curtain.  In the NCJ review I went on vaguely about its contrivances and coincidences that were both predictable and fantastic.  But I couldn't say what they were.  Because: spoilers.

Now it can be told. Here's what they were: Becky has a husband and a son.  Early in the play she starts an affair with a man who has a daughter.  Her son is wooing a mysterious new girlfriend, and guess who she turns out to be?  The daughter, of course.  Later Becky's husband is hired to do roofing work for the man she is having the affair with, I think by the daughter.  These two families don't live close to each other and they are from vastly different socioeconomic worlds.  And yet, all those coincidences.  Except for the members of these two families there are two other characters, a man and a woman, themselves from different worlds.  They wind up together in the end.  All fantastic, and yet completely predictable, since these are all the people on stage.

If this were a blatant farce, it might get by.  But the level of realism is such that we're asked to think of these people as real, to appreciate and even identify with them.  Yet even on the purely comic level, the story of a Marx Brothers movie makes more real sense, however surrounded by wildness.

Further, the implications of what is going on are blithely ignored.  It doesn't have to be Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, but an affair has more moral and emotional weight than this, in some direction.  And if Becky had in fact dumped her husband for this new guy, and the son and daughter decide to get married (the first didn't happen, the second did), Becky's son would be marrying his sister-in-law.  We're entering Greek tragedy territory there.  But the play cheerfully ignores the implications.

The performances were entertaining and believable as usual at Redwood Curtain.  But the set was so nondescript that there wasn't even a set designer named in the program.  Normally I don't mind a minimal set and costuming.  In this case however the play makes little even metaphorical sense without the guiding metaphor of the title: the car.  The lure of the road.  Careening down the highway of life.  Etc.  But there was one conspicuous absence on the set.  There was no car, no representation of a car, no photo or painting or any sort of imagery (not even in the car dealership) that said "cars" in a way that the audience would absorb.  (There's at least a steering wheel in the publicity photo and poster, though not in the production.  Becky is depicted driving with other characters present and freaked out, but nothing like this ever happens in the play.)

The most dramatic events in the play are simply narrated very quickly at the end: a suicide and Becky's pretending she's dead for some significant period, and they all happen without much consequence.  Becky shows up again, her husband is a little pissed off but not for long, and Becky and Joe live happily ever after, driving down the highway in her new car.

So the full degree of this play's insipidity could not be noted without spoilers. In my darker moments (especially while writing a review) I think sometimes that's what some playwrights count on.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening Thursday at North Coast Rep is the 1930s  comedy You Can't Take It With You by two of the titans of American theatre, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.  Directed by Mack Owen, it features David Simms, Evan Needham, Ken Klima, Lora Canzoneri and Molly Harvis.  Opening night is a benefit for cast and crew.  Shows continue Fridays and Saturdays at 8 and Sundays at 2.

Becky's New Car continues for two more weekends at Redwood Curtain.  My Stage Matters review is here.  Yes, you need the link because apparently the Journal is doing its best to hide the column from online browsers.  I'll have more to say about this show after it closes, and all the annoying "spoilers" are moot, as well as mute.

States of Plays: Where North Coast Shows Come From

As we pause after the traditional end of last season and before the start of the next, here’s a retrospective question: where do the plays we see on the North Coast come from?

 For many decades the answer to that would have been easy: New York. After tryouts in select northeastern cities, a show would play Broadway, then go on tour until years later community players would get their chance. Musicals, comedies, dramas—New York generated pretty much everything. But that’s no longer true.

Back in the mid-1980s I interviewed Jason Robards, Jr. backstage at Broadway’s Plymouth Theatre during a revival run of the 1930s classic You Can't Take It With You (soon to be seen at NCRT). He was the second generation of three (so far) to be New York stage actors. His father performed on Broadway in the 1920s.  One of his sons, Jason III, was in this production.

 “When I was starting out just after World War II,” Robards, Jr. said, “my father came to see me and he told me ‘This is terrible! When I was an actor there were 700 road shows out, and two hundred some-odd theatres on Broadway.’ But even when I was starting out we still had 134 theatres in New York, and many road shows and stock jobs and resident theatre jobs.”

 New York City dominated largely through size. Even in 1940 it had a bigger population than the entire state of California, or any other state. But war industries spread out across the country in World War II,  the population boomed and so did suburbia in the 1950s. Robards believed the new highways that sliced through city neighborhoods and led to the suburbs depleted New York City audiences. “Now I think the theatre in New York is going to become like the opera, if it isn’t already becoming that: a small, specialized thing.”

 Robards didn’t reckon with the rise of tourist-oriented blockbusters in a Disneyfied Broadway. That trend continues, as movie companies invest more in huge stage productions. The Off-Broadway and then Off-Off Broadway stages rose in the 60s and 70s, then settled to a sustainable level as “a small, specialized thing.” So now Broadway produces bigger but fewer shows, and non-Broadway houses have become incubators for shows that will live most of their lives in independent regional and community-based theatres across the country.

 So last season on the North Coast for instance, we saw products of traditional Broadway, from one of the earliest musicals (Anything Goes at North Coast Rep) to one of the last of its kind (Victor/Victoria at Ferndale Rep.)  The new blockbuster Broadway was represented by Shrek The Musical (Humboldt Light Opera) while Circle Mirror Transformation (seen at Redwood Curtain) had a modest Off-Broadway run before productions by Seattle Rep and the Guthrie in Minneapolis, and stages in Marin County and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Some shows used to be developed outside New York, but became successful when they transferred to Broadway.  David Mamet's Chicago-born American Buffalo (NCRT) is that example.  The New York run still lends a reassuring patina, but more and more shows developed outside New York don’t even bother with the legitimizing New York showcase. The Fox on the Fairway (seen at NCRT) started in Arlington, Virginia before productions in New Brunswick, New Jersey and Naples, Florida. These shows are typically designed for export. Even prize-winning shows with decent Broadway runs (like the musical Next to Normal at NCRT or the drama Proof at HSU) have the small casts and modest staging to be done almost anywhere.

 Prolific American playwright Steven Dietz is a prime example of this new decentralized situation. His work is seldom performed in New York, but appears so often in regional and community venues that he’s in the top ten of produced playwrights in America. His comedy Becky’s New Car is currently onstage at Redwood Curtain.

Except for local group-generated shows and classics, the North Coast is primarily dependent on this new circuit of shows built for quick and relatively easy replication. Some may have virtues and perspectives a New York-generated show might not. But at worst they approach a stereotypical script that’s clever and a little odd but safe and small, with a slick first act and a slack second (that nevertheless includes a thesis statement.) The script too often shows signs of too many hands that got tired before the end.

 More generally, what are we missing on local stages? Due mostly to the demographics of our performers as well as our audiences, we seldom get shows centered on non-white characters or communities. On the other hand we get plays written about southerners, New Englanders and even New Yorkers, but not about North Coast characters. Fortunately, our live actors are surprisingly adept at bringing out the universal (or the North Coast) in any play.

 We also rarely get political plays in the larger sense, apart from gender politics. But hardly anyone in America does. We don’t have a David Hare (one of several British playwrights who look outward) or even a Robert Sherwood, who wrote three Pulitzer Prize winners in the 1930s and a book about FDR and World War II. Wallace Shawn and Tony Kushner are the closest. We’re unlikely to see a play as complex and provocative as Hare’s A Map of the World, for instance. For whatever reasons it’s not a time for singular playwrights with big voices.

 Our North Coast stage institutions do include variety, often at some risk. We're going to see that in the coming season, as well as examples of the kinds of plays I've described.  But our local stages operate in a particular theatrical environment, in a particular national context of this time.

Becky's New Car

Prolific American playwright Steven Dietz is a prime example of this new decentralized situation I described in my end of season column. His work is seldom performed in New York, but appears so often in regional and community venues that he’s in the top ten of produced playwrights.

In writing specific plays, Deitz has been inspired by Chekhov, Ibsen, P.G. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle. For his 2008 play Becky’s New Car, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, he appears to have been inspired by Oprah.

 Or is it a coincidence that one character gives away lots of cars, another spouts Dr. Phil-like psychology, and the main character is a woman who talks to the audience, and occasionally brings audience members up on stage? Maybe it is, and it can join the cluster of coincidences that drives the action (and no, I’m not beginning a series of car puns.)

 Here’s as much of the story as seems safe to tell: Living in a Seattle-like city, Becky Foster (played by Peggy Metzger) is a vaguely restless middle-aged woman who has been married for 27 years to Joe (Randy Wayne), who runs a roofing business. One night while Becky is catching up on paperwork at her desk job in a car dealership, a wealthy billboard magnate named Walter Flood (Gary Sommers) bursts in to buy nine cars as gifts for his employees, because he can’t think of anything else to get them.

Articulate and apparently guileless, Walter is a widower who for some unexplained reason thinks Becky is a widow. In their evolving relationship (which includes trips to his island estate), Becky keeps neglecting to tell him otherwise.

 Becky and Joe have a 26 year-old son named Chris (Luke Tooker), an unattached psychology student (and budding Dr. Phil) who lives in their basement. Walter has a daughter, Kensington (Jessi Shieman) who is fed up with her rich boyfriend. The secondary characters are Steve (Steven J. Carter), a car salesman who can’t get past his wife’s death, and Ginger (Shelley Stewart), a formerly rich neighbor and friend of the Floods.

 Almost exactly two years ago Redwood Curtain staged an earlier Dietz play, Yankee Tavern, a drama that depended on extraordinary coincidences. This time the coincidences are played for laughs, and along with the conventions of the happy ending they are so obvious that even my brief description of the characters practically gives away the rest of the plot.

 So on one level this is a skillfully fluffy domestic comedy, a middle class American farce, a blithe foray into contemporary self-absorption, an arty sitcom that alternates irony with sentimentality. As such, it’s an enjoyable romp. Peggy Metzger commands the stage with charm and believability, and Gary Sommers infuses Walter with an appealing innocence. All the actors perform well, with Wayne and Tooker in particular perfectly delivering their characters’ deadpan humor.

 Relationship traumas and tribulations among older people is a welcome and viable subject for the stage-- especially for the usual audience demographic. (The playwright is 55.) For at least some people, troubling issues may arise from Becky’s actions, and perhaps this breezy style frees the audience to debate them later.

 Dietz’s smart dialogue has the characters saying intelligent and provocative things, while events (plus sudden audience involvements) happen fast to surprise and mesmerize. But beyond the distracting razzle-dazzle I felt a certain emptiness.

 For instance, Becky delivers the guiding metaphor of the play in her first monologue. Quoting someone unnamed, she recites something like: When a woman says she needs new shoes, what she really wants is a new job. When she says she needs a new house, she wants a new husband. And when she says she wants a new car, she wants a new life. Becky has just told us she wants a new house and a new car (which doesn’t arrive until near the play’s end.) But she does not appear to really want anything very much.

 Maybe her drift into an affair is supposed to be “realistic” or at least comic. But this is too earnest to be bedroom farce, and too flatly and fantastically contrived to be emotionally effective. The script does hint at other metaphors that might be realized onstage (the car as vehicle for life’s journey, etc.) but aren’t. At least, not in the preview performance I saw.

 The actors get you to like these gently and helplessly self-absorbed people. But as characters, none seem to have a truly defining moment onstage. (Several tell us what they decided offstage.) Except for flashes of danger in Randy Wayne’s eyes as the regular Joe, there’s little beyond cascades of contrivances on the busy surface. Some may find this liberating. To me it felt like emotional cheating. Becky’s New Car is directed by Gail Holbrook, with lighting by Michael Burkhart, costumes by Jenneveve Hood and sound by Kristin Mack. It continues weekends through Sept. 28.

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.