Monsters & Lovers: Musicals Jekyll & Hyde, The Light on the Piazza

The Hasselhoff version of Jekyll & Hyde

Tapping into his own youthful indiscretions and the distresses of his chronic ill health, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a novel based on a nightmare about the good Dr. Jekyll who invented a drug that transformed him into the evil Mr. Hyde.

 Stevenson joined Mary Shelley and other 19th century authors in focusing on the ambiguous power of science to amplify dangers precariously balanced in human nature. As happened earlier to Shelley’s tale of Doctor Frankenstein, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was itself quickly transformed into a popular play that made the story more sensational.

 Subsequent versions of both followed the plays rather than the novels—especially the classic movies. Shelley’s thoughtful “monster” in the novel—sort of an unhinged Spock--became a bellowing Karloff. Stevenson’s sexless narrative acquired a love interest, graphic shenanigans and grimacing horror.

 As a modern fable, the Jekyll and Hyde division was all too perfect for one of the histrionic, made-for-tourist Broadway musicals of the 1990s, complete with bombastic score and florid lyrics that parody themselves. It adds not one but two love interests, plus multiple homicides. Think Phantom Without the Opera.

 The differences in the story (which went through several versions) aren’t entirely arbitrary, and somewhere in the murk is the outline of a compelling variation on Stevenson’s tale. Even so, songs were also shuffled and rewritten with alarming frequency, and the show’s money-losing Broadway run was saved only by the star power of—David Hasselhoff!

 Steven Winn of the San Francisco Chronicle called it the low-water mark of the 90s musical, and that’s saying a lot. Still, it has its fans, and continues to tour the world as well as to appear on regional and community theatre stages.

 In the production of Jekyll and Hyde currently at Ferndale Repertory Theatre, Anthony Mankins as the Dr. Jekyll who transforms himself into a vengeful Johnny Depp with better pecs, plus Elena Tessler and Brandy Rose as the love interests, all have the pipes and the presence to please those who like this brand of musical.

 It is ably directed by Dianne Zuleger, with deft choreography by Linda Maxwell. Production values are also high, with a creative set by Calder Johnson, atmospheric lighting by Ken White and handsome period costumes by Faith Platt, Vikki Young and Jeane Warren. The large cast sings live to recorded music. They give their all for two more weekends, including two Sunday matinees.

Though the story is of more recent vintage, The Light on the Piazza is another novel that received differing interpretations, first on screen and then as the musical currently presented at HSU’s Van Duzer Theatre by the Humboldt Light Opera Company, in association with College of the Redwoods.

 An American mother and her beautiful daughter are traveling in Italy when the daughter sparks a romance with a young Florentine named Fabrizio. But the daughter’s charming innocence may be the product of a childhood brain injury.

 Originally set in the 1950s, the 2005 musical takes a different view on the ambiguity of medical labels and the cultural shame associated with those officially pronounced as not normal. But that’s subtext to what is otherwise a musical spectacle. Though the script by Craig Lucas and the music and lyrics by Adam Guettel delve into other complications, basically it’s a stage love story, set within a gentle contrast of cultures.

The HLOC production appears to be the hot ticket of the summer. Scenic designer Gerald Beck provides a dazzling set of moving platforms and screens, and director Jean Bazemore keeps the stage filled with color and movement, assisted by costumes designed by Kevin Sharkey and Virginia Ryder, and lighting by Jayson Mohatt.

 The music is somewhat unusual for a Broadway show, tending towards more modern complexity and the operetta style which plays to HLOC’s strength, with music direction by Carol Ryder and John Chernoff.

 The live orchestra conducted by Justin Sousa provides both supple accents to the singing and memorable instrumental moments. Carol Ryder as the mother and Bill Ryder as Fabrizio’s father are familiarly brilliant. Fiona Ryder brings charm and fine vocals to the role of the daughter, Clara.

 From the moment he appeared, anxious and smitten, the emotional center for me was James Gadd as Fabrizio. At first he sings mostly in Italian, in a style that reminded me of old popular recordings made by Italian opera singers. Then in the second act, when his character is more comfortable with English, his performance of the climactic love song is simple, direct and yet extraordinary: the highlight of the love story.

 But this show also dramatizes the pitfalls and tragedies of relationships, especially in songs sung by Carol and Bill Ryder, but also in the songs and actions of other characters, as they view their own relationships through the romance they see unfolding in front of them. Ably presenting these characters are Kevin Richards, Molly Severdia and Paula Proctor, with briefer roles made quickly credible by Phil Zastrow and Ellsworth Pence.

Jason in Eureka: Story Power

As noted earlier, there were four openings this past weekend on North Coast stages. For my North Coast Journal column, I get an 850 words, about twice a month. So in this week's issue I reviewed two shows, and will do the other two next week. What follows is a longer version of what I wrote about Cornerstone Theatre's Jason in Eureka, based on its opening night Thursday. It closed with its third performance Saturday.

Under uncertain clouds on a warm August evening, the crowd standing inside the entrance to the Blue Ox Millworks Historic Park heard a witty prologue concerning Jason and the Golden Fleece, performed by a barbershop quartet (the Millworks’ chief, Eric Hollenbeck, sang bass), assisted by a puppet show.

Then a funeral scene on a grassy hill to the left, where a young man on his cell phone learns from his lawyer that he has just inherited a Victorian house in Eureka (“C and Cedar—that area”) from the mysterious great-great aunt now being buried. The mythological theme was sounded again, and there to the right, high on the prow of the Millwork’s historic wooden ship, was Jason himself.

Then the audience was led farther into the park, to the bleachers in front of the large stage where in the quickening darkness the collaborative production of Jason in Eureka unfolded, captained by the Los Angeles based Cornerstone Theater.

As directed by Laura Woolery, half the action was set in the street facing the century-old Victorian house in contemporary Eureka, where the young heirs, John and his wife Maggie, decide to clean out its legacy of old books and make substantial repairs so they can live there. Born in Eureka, John recently lost his timber mill job. Maggie works at HSU. That she’s Wiyot figures profoundly in the ensuing story. They meet neighbors and various others, including those responding to the stranger sleeping in the yard, a silent veteran named Jason.

He is of course the link to the alternating half of the play, which depicts the classic quest of Jason and the Argonauts for the golden fleece. The contemporary Jason is looking for “gold,” too, which causes Maggie some concern, with its reminders of the Gold Rush.

Playwright and founding Cornerstone member Peter Howard used months of interviews and other encounters in Eureka for the contemporary story, and adapted the Jason story from a book for children by Victorian author Charles Kingsley, partly because it was written in the Gold Rush era of Eureka’s birth. (Kingsley is also notable for the phrase “Westward Ho!,” the title of his novel that includes a search for gold in the Americas.)

With Howard’s skillful script but also the elegant scenic design by Nephelie Andonyadis (including a delightfully old-fashioned “wave machine”), clever prop designs and especially the acting, singing and stage movement, these two stories together made ragged magic.

Most of the music and movement and other more theatrical elements were featured in the Jason and the Argonauts story, while the contemporary story was more naturalistic, and chatty. Stylistically, the theatricality along with characters making declarative statements suggested an evening out of the 1930’s Federal Theatre Project: Greek myth meets The Cradle Will Rock. But its content was more careful (so politically balanced that one character expressed sentiments on both sides of the recent Timber Wars) and relentlessly positive. Everyone’s individual quest is honored, beginning with the community’s response to the homeless Jason.

What this is about ultimately is the power of story to help define a community to itself. It combines local facts and testimony with an outsider perspective--much as a journalist might, who asks questions, listens and senses a pattern or story, tests it with more questions and probing, and then shapes it all into a narrative that allows for contradictions and ambiguity. In this case, it is a story that finds a pattern in linking Eureka's past to its future.

It is perhaps a failure of North Coast journalism that this journey was not better documented, so the larger community could participate, absorb this story and test it against other stories. But some version of that will probably occur, especially among the participants and the participating organizations: Blue Ox Millworks, Ink People Center for the Arts, Sanctuary Stage and local schools.

The triumph of this complex collaboration can only be symbolized by the onstage ease and energy of Cornerstone’s Helen Sage Howard (as Maggie), North Coast community theatre’s Sam Cord (Jonathan) and 6th grader Joana Barragan Carrillo (a neighbor girl), each seeming to inspire the other. Adina Lawson, who teaches theatre at Eureka High as well as acting in community theatre, seemed to be having a great time working with the Cornerstone actors and amateur actors in the Argonaut segments. In the contemporary story, Rob Hepburn of Veterans for Peace brought particular reality to the part of Dennis, a local veteran leader. In general, the "non-actors" worked well within the play, and whatever Cornerstone has learned to do to help them do so, seemed to work pretty well.

To name many more isn’t possible: the program has 65 individual bios, ranging from local grade schoolers to elders with no previous experience, to North Coast community theatre veterans, and Cornerstone Institute participants. This local participation included scenic and technical duties.

Dan Stone’s flawless technical direction is just one North Coast contribution to brag on. But those who witnessed Peter DiMuro’s enchanting choreography, or Cornerstone actors like Andres Munar (playing both Jasons), Sage Howard, Brandon Spooner, M.C. Earl and singer Michele Denise Michaels may well have future reason to brag that they saw them here.

All of this plus the outdoor setting made “Jason in Eureka” an enthralling theatrical experience. However, 90 minutes without intermission trapped in bleachers a dark distance from portajohns was probably more than should be asked of even a North Coast audience.

With this weekend, Cornerstone leaves the North Coast, but besides the experiences of participants and audience, it leaves behind the example of its beliefs, summarized in its "Values Statement": "We believe society can flourish when its members know and respect one another, and we value theater made in that spirit. We value art that is contemporary, community-specific, responsive, multilingual, innovative, challenging, and joyful. We value theater that directly reflects the audience. We value the artist in everyone."

This North Coast Weekend

A very busy opening weekend, especially for August: This is the only weekend for the Cornerstone Theater production, Jason in Eureka at the Blue Ox Millworks Historic Park, with a cast of around 35, mostly from the North Coast. This site-specific production runs August 6, 7 and 8th with an 8:30 start, but the audience is asked to assemble by 8.

Ferndale Rep opens the Gothic musical thriller Jekyll and Hyde, based on the famous Robert Louis Stevenson story, tonight. The run of weekends includes four Sunday matinees, and ends with one on August 30. Information and reservations: 786-5483.

Redwood Curtain presents Fiction by Steven Dietz, a contemporary drama about a couple sharing more secrets than maybe they should, at the Arcata Playhouse on August 7, with weekend performances through August 22, including a matinee on Sunday the 16th. 443-7688.

Also on Friday, the Humboldt Light Opera opens Light on the Piazza, directed by Jean Bazemore, at the Van Duzer Theatre on the HSU campus, at 7:30 pm. It runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 and Sunday at 2 pm until August 22.

Hard Travelin

Woody Guthrie, bard of the Great Depression, a time that became the subject of a recent Dell'Arte creation, and some personal research, as told in the post below.

Talking Great Depression Blues

I saw the Dell'Arte original show about the Great Depression, called The Body Remembers, shortly after returning from a visit back home to western Pennsylvania. While I was there, my sisters and I sorted through several boxes of photos and documents, some unopened since each of my parents died (my mother in 1974, my father in 1990.) There were some photos from the 1940s and 30s, and also three letters my father received at his CCC Camp in 1940--one from a hometown buddy who was in another CCC camp, and two from his mother--my paternal grandmother, who died several years before I was born.

My father rarely talked about his past, but whenever there was an economic recession or other economic problem in the news, I could pretty much count on him saying that what they ought to do is revive the CCCs. I've since read about the CCC and other New Deal programs, but those letters provided something more specific: the role they played in my father's life, part of which led to me.

The Civil Conservation Corps was a program that employed young men (starting at 17 or 18) in conservation projects all over America. The projects were developed by the Interior Department, but the Corps was run by the Army. Young men lived in Army-style camps, were provided with food, clothing and shelter, and paid a small wage, most of which was automatically sent back to their families. Between 1934 and 1943, some 3 million men cumulatively worked in more than 4,000 camps.

From the letters we learned that my father was in a camp in Blain, Pennsylvania, a few hundred miles from his home in United, PA. Some guys got sent thousands of miles away, often to the West, but that may have mostly been earlier in the program. His friend was in a camp even closer to home, in the Laurel Highlands, not far from where one of my sisters now lives. There were apparently about 150 guys at my father's camp (though 300 was the norm), and they were building Big Spring state park. The camp was very isolated, probably as far into the woods as he'd ever been (or ever would be again). But besides a military schedule and discipline, they had activities--sports teams that competed with other camps, for example. His friend was closer to a town (Somerset) and so seemed to have a lively social life.

My father's hometown was built by the United Coal and Coke Company, and his father and grandfathers were (or had been) coal miners. Mines were closing in the 30s, and there were big and violent strikes in the 20s and 30s, that got the miners essentially nothing. There were few jobs, no money and no future there.

The plight of the miners in the area was so severe that the FDR administration built one of a few experimental communities there. They built new houses (with a novelty in the area: indoor plumping) and started cooperative farms and eventually a small garment factory. It came to be called "Norvelt," the last syllables of Eleanor Roosevelt's name, after she came to visit it. Locals apparently just called it the homestead.

The homestead is mentioned in my grandmother's letters, though they didn't get to live there. They were still in United. By 1940 Norvelt was changing, and people who lived there were being asked to buy their houses rather than rent them. But I also learned about Norvelt on this trip because there was an article in the local newspaper while I was there: this summer was Norvelt's 75th anniversary. And as it happens, one of my sisters now works for a small business that's housed in the very building that used to be the Norvelt coop garment factory.

At issue in the letters in 1940 was what my father was going to do next. Apparently his hitch was up, and there was anxiety about losing the money he was bringing in. The family was saving to buy their house. The letters left the matter unresolved, but they fit with something else I saw many years before. It was a mimeographed, stapled newspaper, and inside it was my father's name, as editor-in-chief. Probably my mother dug it out and gave it to me, when I started my string of editors jobs in junior high. My father never mentioned it. I've examined it since, though at the moment I've lost track of it again.

It was the publication of the "self-governing community" called Armor City, a National Youth Administration work experience project in South Charleston, West Virginia. It was another federal project under the umbrella of the Works Project Administration. It seemed to be very much like the CCCs, except this was for slightly older young men, and it's purpose was to train them for jobs in industry, not the woods. Eventually it was training them for jobs in national defense, and judging from other information about South Charleston at the time, that's what my father was probably doing. There was a big naval munitions plant in South Charleston. My father was there in 1941 and apparently still there in 1943, when he was called home for his mother's last illness. Soon after, he got a good paying job in industry, in a plant in Youngwood, PA that made military instruments. That's also where he met the young woman who would become his wife and my mother.

I grew up with some tales from the Depression, on both sides of the family, as well as from the lives of parents and grandparents of school friends, and total strangers. I got more interested in it all in the 60s, thanks in part to Bob Dylan being so interested in Woody Guthrie. And of course, Arlo. I've heard stories since--Steve Allen told me a few--and read many more. It's important in terms of what individuals and families went through, though I would stop short of calling those who lived through it and are still alive "Depression survivors," as some of the Dell'Arte publicity did. It sounds too much like "Holocaust survivors," which is a different order of experience. It also tends to distance us from it.

That era is also important in other ways. Another of the WPA programs was the Federal Theatre Project, which not enough theatre people know enough about. I hope to write a little about that on this blog soon. For now, I'll add what I wrote about the Dell'Arte production in the NC Journal, which ends with a statement that suggests what I've just gone on about:


For their Dell’Arte School thesis project, Brian Moore and Liza Bielby explored the 1930s Great Depression experiences of Timber Ridge Assisted Living Center residents, partly inspired by Stud Terkel’s oral history, Hard Times. The result is The Body Remembers, presented most recently as part of the Mad River Festival.

Moore was the appealing onstage host, but the stars were five women from Timber Ridge: Arline Hubbard, Helen Buck, Antoinette Cusumano (a spry 96 years old), Theo Feeney and Dawn Lucchesi. Their stories were supplemented by audio and some often effective but disappointingly projected photos and video.

True to their training, the Dell’Arteans used a variety of physical techniques to unlock and express memories, and to incorporate movement on the stage. The depth of their research and the honing and editing they did were evident and admirable. Together with the enthusiasm of the stars, it all resulted in some lovely moments, and memories that were surprisingly moving because they were otherwise so mundane. The remembered reality could be riveting as well, as in the ordinary photo of happy young adults at the beach. All the men in the photo died within a few years, in World War II.

If the pitfall for Cornerstone is seeming presumptuous, for this production it was being condescending to these elders, but that didn’t happen. Several Dell’Arte students assisted onstage, and the respectful, affectionate intergenerational flow characterized the evening.

The Depression experiences of these women spanned the country, though few were specific to the North Coast. Even though the show was shaped to these particular women, I would have liked a larger historical context (as Terkel provides) for the Great Depression, and more about male experiences. For example, there was audio of a man’s voice mentioning, “hobo—ing…We went any place just to be going some place.” How many people know now that at the height of the Depression, hopping freight trains to look for illusory jobs became this hopeless constant motion, and more than a million (mostly) men were perpetually riding the rails? Terkel is a good guide to the 1930s, but so is Woody Guthrie.

Those days are alive in my own family history, and some final lines in this show sounded similar to something my maternal grandmother used to say: “You just do the best you can, and that’s what we did.”

The Love List: Perfect Summer Comedy at NCRT

Kimberly Haile (formerly known as Kim Hodel) has had featured roles with the North Coast Repertory Theatre, including Roxy in Chicago and Carlotte Corday in Marat/Sade, but this time she’s central to the success of The Love List, the buoyant comedy now earning laughs at NCRT in Eureka.

It’s not that she carries it by herself. Edward Olson as Bill (a solitary statistician) and Victor Howard as Leon (a married but philandering novelist) have more dialogue and stage time in this tale about two middle aged men who draw up a list defining Bill’s perfect woman. They establish the believable reality: Olson with his beguiling voice and early line readings that suggest an active acting intelligence, and Howard with his confidence and crisp delivery (as the writer, he gets more of the witty lines.)

The script is itself a solid foundation, with built-in laughs and defined characters that still provide room for actors to add crucial colors. That it’s perfect for community theatre makes perfect sense, because playwright Norm Foster (author of some 40 plays) started in community theatre in Canada.

But Haile’s role of Justine, the “perfect woman” who suddenly appears, defines the direction that a production takes. When the guys change the qualities that define Justine, Haile ably and delightfully demonstrates more range than she’s been called upon to produce before. But most important is how Justine is portrayed from the start. Since her fantasy perfection is defined by two men, she must be beautiful, but a tick towards the wrong kind of beautiful—too vulgar or too innocent— would throw off the feeling that in this context she’s real and magic at the same time.

With her particular natural beauty, an ingénue enthusiasm channeled into relaxed and economical gestures, and the conviction she brings to the reality of Justine, Haile makes the magic work. She brings a quality of guileless sincerity that is breathtaking, and makes Justine not just a vain dream but the personification of perfection. No wonder Bill is so besotted that he’s willing to forget that her existence is completely inexplicable: this perfect-for-him woman conjured by words and (its broadly hinted) spare skin cells adhering to the household dust.

But of course there are multiple ironies ahead as well as a version of the old switcheroo, plus the lesson that perfection is impossible and the trick is to see “imperfection perfectly.” (Unfortunately the script’s dismissive reference to the perfect game in baseball got additional irony on opening night, because Chicago White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle had pitched the 18th perfect game in Major League history that afternoon.)

Most reviews of other productions parade innumerable clichés to make the point that this play is funny, with some adding that it’s profound, and others that it’s shallow. In at least one interview, playwright Foster glories in insisting that he’s shallow (as he has Justine call Leon’s novels) but for me, the truth lies somewhere in between. There are facile contrivances and conventional and bluntly stated insights, but Foster hides structural subtlety within a strong framework. He’s dealing with both a pop culture phenomenon (“real” mates conjured by a love list, as recounted in the pages of Oprah’s magazine) but also powerful archetypes from Galatea to Pinocchio. So: a fun summer comedy, plus.

Among her accomplishments, director Carol Escobar provides pace and motion, and probably was responsible for making the male characters younger than called for in the script—something else that likely adds to the sweetness and gentle ironies. Edward Olson designed the impressive set, Calder Johnson the effective lighting, and Genneveve Hood the expressive costumes. Howard Lang designed sound, and Olson also designed the poster, which doesn’t look as if it caused him much pain. Kelsey Larson runs the light and sound, and William Nevins provided scenic art.

Without Shakespeare Without Tears

It's been a remarkably Shakespeareless summer here. I haven't noticed any local productions and we haven't made it up to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There was nothing on my recent visit to Pittsburgh, where I used to enjoy attending the Shakespeare festival at the University of Pittsburgh, now abandoned.

But going to Shakespeare is more dangerous these days anyway. The fashion to transpose the plays to dubious times and places shows no signs of waning. Jorge Luis Borges (in his story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote") called such transpositions "useless carnivals" yielding only "the plebeian pleasure of anachronism or (what is worse) to enthrall us with the elementary idea that all epochs are the same or are different."

The postmodern fetish for literary mashups goes on unabated, along with the attempt to extend and exploit classic works to take advantage of their brand names. Even poor Jane Austen has generated stories that cannibalize hers, some that overtly mock the author's writing while sucking its blood.

And that's the problem. The richness and power of Austen's or especially Shakespeare's works can inspire fascinating new works. Shakespeare after all was so inspired by his predecessors. But so many are simultaneously acts of cannibalism and oversimplification, exploiting an audience anxiety that they should know these texts but haven't bothered to explore them. They want the plays made simple enough so that they can feel superior to them.

What I did see this summer was an article in Bookmark Magazine called "Reviving the Bard" which begins: "We're certain that all of you haven't read Charles Dickens or Leo Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Ayn Rand. But we're sure that, sometime in your life, you have sampled William Shakespeare."

There are so many things wrong with that first sentence that it's hard to know where to begin. It's obviously false as stated, because it isn't true that "all of you" haven't read these authors. Some of us have. I'm guessing she meant something on the order of "not everyone has read..." Then she caps her short list of three classic novelists with Ayn Rand (to balance male and female writers, I suppose) who has at best a cult following, and no one else would put her in the same league as the others.

The article describes several novels and a play that use themes from various Shakespeare plays to various extents. Some sound interesting, some depressingly banal. But they have nothing to do with "reviving" Shakespeare. There are ways of doing the plays that offer new meanings and experiences, which revive the contemporary audience. But essentially it's not Shakespeare who needs revived. I'm reminded of something Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in an interview: Some say the novel is dead. But it is not the novel. It is they who are dead.

Jason Coming to Eureka

Cornerstone Theater Company, the Los Angeles group famous for its collaborations with communities it visits, is preparing a production in Eureka which will be performed August 6-8.

The process began about eight months ago, with visits by the playwright, Peter Howard and others from the company, making contacts and gathering information. Howard worked out a story that combines the myth of Jason and the Argonauts with Eureka history and present day reality. Last week, the rest of the Cornerstone people involved in the production arrived, headquartered at St. Bernard's School, hosted by Sanctuary Stage.

The Cornerstone process involves participation by local people in most facets of the production, including on stage, so auditions are being held this week. The last scheduled audition is today, July 14, between 1:30 and 4:30 pm at St. Bernard's Elementary School. The first auditions were held at the Ink People.

"No experience is necessary to participate" their statements say, but professional actors from Cornerstone will be on hand to help everyone out. There are no age, gender or other restrictions for potential participants, as long as they can take direction. The final script will reflect who shows up and participates.

So if you're interested and can't make it to St. Bernard's this afternoon, call 1-800-385-7791 and you can probably arrange for a suitable time. Rehearsals will be at the Blue Ox Millworks, which is also where the production will be.

Saturday we met some of the people already working on the production at St. Bernard's. Everyone from Cornerstone was open and engaged, and they seem to have a well worked out process for combining professional theatre with community participation. An early script looks promising. Playwright Peter Howard seems sensitive to the possible pitfalls of outsiders coming in--he used the word "presumptuous" several times, as something they don't want to be. On the other hand, an outside point of view can see patterns and hear music that it's harder for people who live here to see and hear.

This North Coast Weekend

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

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

Dell'Arte's Origins: Fishy Business

Intrigue at Ah-Pah is playing its final weekend at Dell'Arte. This is my review, more or less as it appeared in the North Coast Journal. I note that I stop just short of suggesting theatregoers ought to see it. I try not to cross that line. I'm not interested in writing a consumer guide, partly because I won't presume to tell people how to spend their money, and partly because my columns reflect my response--or more specifically, how I saw it on the night I saw it. Everyone is entitled to their own response, so my general recommendation is to see what you'd like to see, and make up your own mind.

Dell’Arte was basically a mime and comedy school with a summer festival when its fledgling company of players developed their first full-length ensemble work: a script gleaned from fishing trip experiences at a volatile time, plus community input and an obsession with Raymond Chandler novels, called Intrigue at Ah-Pah. After outdoor premieres in Humboldt, the actors went to L.A. in 1981 to sleep on borrowed floors and perform the show at the small Odyssey Theatre. One morning they awoke to a rave on the front page of the L.A. Times arts section (“a happy marriage of humor and concern, intelligence and discipline…Extremely funny, don’t miss a moment of it.”) Their six-week run sold out in three hours, and they looked out from the stage to see the likes of legendary comedian Milton Berle in the front row.

That was the show that got Dell’Arte on the map in Humboldt as well as the rest of the world. Now it’s back for this year’s Mad River Festival, with an entirely new cast, all young graduates of the Dell’Arte school. Call it “Dell’Arte: The Next Generation.” Or like the new Star Trek movie: new Kirk, new Spock, so why not a new Scar Tissue, Wildflower, Woody, Deep Trout and The Man in White?

For those unfamiliar with this show or its sequels, Scar Tissue is a female detective in Eureka, up in the Yurok village of Ah Pah to fish the Klamath River, but she’s quickly implicated in murder and nefarious plots concerning land grabs and water rights, involving hilarious characters. Shannon MacMillan as Scar Tissue leads an ensemble cast that uniformly shines. Brian Moore, Andrew Phoenix, Tyler Olsen and particularly Kate Braidwood in multiple roles all bring an attractive energy and presence in crisp, confident comic performances. Though this version is inevitably different, this cast is fresh, capable and exciting.

Michael Fields’ direction, the scenic design by Jody Sekas, the special effects and the other elements of the production all combine invention and efficiency. Propelled by the cast’s energy, timing and interplay, this is a tighter than usual production for these outdoor festival shows. Even the music of the Dell’Arte band (Tim Gray, Maria Joy, Mike LaBolle and Tyler Olsen) and songs sung by members of the cast, seem more integrated with the bluesy, film noir mood. The result is fast-moving and funny, full of the elements and surprises expected of a Dell’Arte summer show, but with a delightful and satisfying wholeness.

After all this time, the still all-too-topical script is taut and tasty. Deep Trout still warns that “what you let happen today, your children must live with tomorrow.” But there are updates from the ongoing realities of dams and salmon kills, exploitation and misunderstanding—as well as a Sarah Palin joke. The comedy reveals important issues but by design doesn’t deal with them deeply. Salmon is Everything, a production developed a few years ago at HSU, would make an intriguing companion piece.

This production is an important historical moment in several ways. It reminds us of what the Dell’Arte founders pioneered: not just their unique applications of comedia dell’arte and physical theatre, but their approach to “theatre of place” (which they defined in 1991 as “theater about where you are, for the people where you are, based on an observation of the patterns of human and natural life where you live…”) and to what’s becoming known as “ecodrama.” From New Wave film directors Godard and Truffaut in the 50s to the Firesign Theatre’s Nick Danger in the 60s, the hardboiled detective genre was adapted for existential and satirical purposes, but Joan Schirle’s creation of a female private eye was new. And even though Native American characters seldom appear in Dell’Arte shows, this began their commitment to presenting a Native perspective, which is only a little less rare today than it was then.

This show is also historically important for what it portends. To go forward as a living institution, Dell’Arte has to eventually make the transition from its founders. This production of the show that started it all is the best evidence so far that Dell’Arte has a vibrant future. Both for that reason, and because it’s great fun and an excellent show, this Intrigue at Ah-Pah will itself be remembered. But the only way to remember it is to first go see it.

There and Here: London, Blue Lake

Not to be outdone by the glittering past season on Broadway, London theatre shines with stars, writes the NY Times Ben Brantley: that's Gillian Anderson as Nora in a praised production of Ibsen's Doll's House, and Helen Mirren stars in Racine's Phedre. Not to be outdone by the New York revival, London has its own Waiting for Godot starring Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart.

Meanwhile back on the North Coast, Dell'Arte opens the Mad River Festival with a revival of its own first hit, Intrigue at Ah-Pah in its chilly outdoor backyard theatre in Blue Lake Thursdays through Sundays at 8, beginning tonight (June 25) and continuing to July 12. This is usually a community event, with lots of highly bundled people sipping wine, eating grapes and minding children. Did I mention it gets a little cold after sundown?

Broadway Revived

The Lincoln Center revival of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone--besides being Barack's choice for the show to take Michelle to see--is one representative of an exceptionally strong Broadway season, especially for plays.

 The New York theatre season began with a sense of catastrophe--with empty streets and empty seats, as the Wall Street financial crisis morphed into the Great Recession, and tourism threatened to dry up completely.

But it will end--officially with the Tonys--in triumph, and more high quality plays and musical revivals than in recent memory, including The Seagull, Exit the King, God of Carnage, Hair, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Mary Stuart, Next to Normal, The Norman Conquests, reasons to be pretty, Billy Elliot, West Side Story and Waiting for Godot.

New York Times critic Ben Brantley was effusive as well as descriptive in his summary piece. So why did it happen? Brantley offers several reasons, noting that when tourists deserted Times Square, the New York theatre audience returned, and fortunately found the quality that kept them coming. While a lot about this season has to be coincidence, the return of that audience is fascinating in itself--or rather, the existence of a new New York audience.

Years ago, I interviewed Jason Robards, Jr. about New York theatre, since he was the second of three generations of actors who were part of it. He dated the decline to the rise of suburbia, which took the traditional New York audience away. "When I was starting out just after World War II," he told me, "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!'"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...Now I think theatre in New York is going to become like the opera, if it isn't already becoming that: a small, specialized thing."

But lacking that local audience base, for the past decade or so Broadway concentrated on spectacles for tourists. The Disneyfied Times Square more than symbolized that idea.

Somehow, New York City itself seems to have grown a new theatre audience, made up of residents and those who may commute but consider themselves New Yorkers. This is a trend that bears watching.

Of course, not everything about this season screams theatre Renaissance. Many if not most of those shows were revivals. Broadway and New York theatre won't return to the vibrancy of former days until new plays are the talk of the town.

Arsenic and Old Lace: Auntie Mayhem at Ferndale Rep

 “A play was like a watch that laughed.” So wrote theatre critic Walter Kerr, describing the mechanism of Broadway comedies of the 30s and 40s, like The Front Page, Room Service, You Can’t Take It With You and the 1939 play now on stage at Ferndale Repertory Theatre, Arsenic and Old Lace.

 Situations and relationships get wound up tighter and tighter in the first act, and fly apart in the mayhem of the second. There are typically lots of characters and several simultaneous disasters-in-progress. Arsenic and Old Lace is best known today for the movie version starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra, but the play was a Broadway hit during World War II, running for three and a half years and 1444 performances.

 Several of the actors in the original cast are also in the movie: Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the maiden aunt sisters, and John Alexander as nephew Teddy Brewster, who believes he is really Teddy Roosevelt. The movie is pretty faithful to the play, with a few added cinematic scenes and differences in detail.

 The play (the only success of Kansas playwright Joseph Kesselring) begins in a more leisurely fashion, with one of the elderly aunts serving tea in the front room of a solidly traditional Brooklyn house, to her neighbor, Reverend Harper. It’s clear that the aunts are beloved for their cheery charity, but the Reverend is troubled by the romance between his daughter, Elaine, and another nephew, Mortimer Brewster. 

He objects to Mortimer spending so much time in certain unseemly places. That’s his job: Mortimer is a theatre critic. But the sedate witticisms of this scene constitute the only quiet moments of the play. The young lovers, Mortimer and Elaine, sweep in and announce their engagement, but after Elaine goes, Mortimer learns that his aunts have expanded their charity work: they bring peace to lonely old men by poisoning their elderberry wine and burying them in the cellar--with an appropriately prayerful funeral service.

 Further complications ensue, principally generated by the sudden appearance of a third nephew, Jonathan Brewster, the black sheep who returns as an international criminal looking for a hideout, and a place for his faithful plastic surgeon companion, Dr. Herman Einstein, to give him yet another new face. The one he’s currently wearing reminds people of Boris Karloff (the famous Frankenstein), which enrages him. (Original Broadway production audiences got additional laughs because Jonathan was played by Boris Karloff.)

 In the Ferndale production, director Renee Grinnell has the story and the cast moving briskly across the handsome set, though there is so much going on that the play pushes the clock to two and a half hours, with intermission. Several of the performances are reminiscent of the movie: Wanda Stamp has the same sweet charm (if not the same funny walk) as Josephine Hull playing Aunt Abby, Steven Fontain is an even more political cartoonish Teddy than the movie’s John Alexander, and Evan Needham sneaks in some Peter Lorre notes as Dr. Einstein.

 Lexus Carlton Landry as Jonathan is even more menacing (with a deliciously chilling laugh) than Raymond Massey in the movie, and Marilyn McCormick as Aunt Martha has no comparison—with her authoritative voice and the rapturous and murderous gleam in her eye, she ups her auntie.

 Sam Cord has the most difficult role as Mortimer, and it is his energy, clarity and physicality that propel the play forward. He doesn’t quite have the expressions and moves of Cary Grant that made the movie so funny, but then, who does?

 Brittany Gonzales (Elaine), Samuel Dallas McComber (Rev. Harper and Lt. Rooney), Tom McCarthy (Mr. Witherspoon), Neal Schoonmaker (Officer O’Hara) and Denim Ohmit (Officer Brophy) contribute to this competent production.

 In fact, the clockwork machinery tends to obscure just how weird this play is: part romance, part thriller, it’s a macabre comedy with the mechanism of farce. Even Frank Capra couldn’t settle on a consistent style for it. The moral ambiguities at the heart of it are never quite dealt with, though the pieces are there. Too many gears may be going for one evening, but Ferndale fans will find some laughter in the old machinery yet.

 Arsenic and Old Lace is at Ferndale Rep for only two more weekends: June 5,6,12,13 at 8:00 pm, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on June 7 and 14. Incidentally, though there are funny lines about theatre and critics in this show, for my money the funniest play with critics as characters is still Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound.

 Coming Up: The second-year students of Dell'Arte International's MFA program present Tell Me A Story, an evening of participatory storytelling, Thursday through Sunday, June 4-7 at 8 p.m. in the Carlo. Looking forward, Dell’Arte kicks off the annual Mad River Festival on June 20 by presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award to stage and screen actor Rene Auberjonois, in a ceremony followed by festivities (featuring the Joyce Hough Band and Joanne Rand) in the Rooney Amphitheatre beginning at 8:30 pm.

This North Coast Weekend

North Coast Rep continues the musical The Producers, reviewed below. Ferndale Rep opens the classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace for a three weekend run, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 2. Members of the Dell'Arte School Class of 2009 present their "Finals" in the form of six short plays, Thursday through Saturday at 8 in the Carlo.

The Producers and Quixote at North Coast Rep & Prep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don Quijote de la Mancha

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

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

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

This North Coast Weekend

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

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

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

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

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

Little Women

I feel pretty good about my review of Little Women, produced by the Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods, so I'm reproducing it below. I'm not happy with all my reviews, for one reason or another, but this one is okay.

A couple of additions to the historical background: The humorous newspaper article by Louisa May Alcott I refer to, was in the form of a letter she submitted under the name Tribulation Periwinkle to the Springfield MA Republican. It's described and excerpted in the introduction to the new book, American Trancendentalism: A History by Philip Gura (Hill and Wang.) Referring to Concord, MA, she writes: "No gossip concerning this immortal town seems to be considered too trivial for the public." She writes of a new hotel for visitors to "this modern Mecca," eager to see Emerson (who "will walk by at 4 pm") or hear her father, Bronson Alcott, (who will "converse from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m.")

Later in this book, it's mentioned that Bronson Alcott's own book was an account of the education he provided for his daughters. Apparently Emerson was hard put to say anything in its favor.

As it happens, there's a review of several books about Margaret Fuller (mentioned below) in the May 24 issue of the New York Review of Books. Fuller was also educated by her father, and her achievements were substantial. She had read Virgil and Cicero by the age of ten, and Horace, Livy and Tacitus in her teens--all in the original Latin. This level of achievement was unusual, especially for a girl, but not entirely unknown among these New England families. Josiah Quincy, son of the president of Harvard, was reading Virgil by age six. Thomas Wentworth Higginson entered Harvard at 13.

In 1868, Louisa May Alcott created a classic American story that enthralled and inspired generations of (mostly) girls, by writing about aspects of her own life and family—and also by ignoring other aspects.

In Little Women, a mother and four sisters are isolated in a small New England town, dreaming their dreams despite an absent father and poverty that contrasts with the better off characters around them. Actually, Alcott’s family was fairly famous (though comparatively poor). Her father, Bronson Alcott, began and ran a well-known school, and was associated with the liberal thinkers known as Transcendentalists. He took particular pride in educating his daughters, and among Louisa May’s personal teachers were Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. Their presence made Concord (and her own house) a magnet for reporters and tourists, which she herself noted in a satiric newspaper account.

She had strong and accomplished women models as well, including her own mother, an activist for womens’ voting rights and abolition of slavery. Perhaps the most brilliant and independent women of the era, Margaret Fuller, taught for awhile at her father’s school.

But when the publisher of her romance novels (much like Jo’s in Little Women) requested something in another genre—an uplifting book for girls—Louisa May Alcott concentrated a story that transcended its time and place, and elevated creativity from Puritan disrepute to a natural element in moral development. In some of the many stage, screen, etc. versions since, bits of her background were added back. A little got into the 2005 Broadway musical version, currently performed by the Humboldt Light Opera at the College of the Redwoods.

Even more than the novel, the musical emphasizes the quest of second-oldest daughter Jo March to become a writer. Some of her swashbuckling fantasies are acted out on stage (with spirited performances, particularly by Coral Bourne), but her success comes from writing the home truths, and by her devotion to others. Essie Bertain as Jo capably unites the show, maturing before our eyes from the petulant bravado of adolescence to a centered young woman.

The script dramatizes the novel’s most cherished moments, but with so many characters, the other players must make the best use of their brief time on stage. Shaelan Salas is sweet and then steady as the eldest daughter, Meg. As Amy (the youngest), Rachael Fales breaks through with her energy and commitment. Jessica Malone is so perfectly pretty and angelic as Beth, that even if you didn’t know the story and only the conventions of melodrama, you’d be sure she’s doomed. But she’s affecting anyway, with an especially attractive voice. Her duets with Bill Ryder (as the wealthy Mr. Lawrence) and especially her second act duet with Bertain felt to me like the show’s most emotionally effective moments. The final Bertain-Sharkey duet was another high point.

Tyler Rich (Laurie), Tandy Floyd (Marmee), Valerie Bourne (Aunt March) and especially Kevin Sharkey as Professor Bhaer played their important supporting roles well. Since this is an HLO production, directed by Carol McWhorter Ryder, with musical direction (and piano accompaniment) by Sharon Welton, the singing is superior.

Some of the songs are charming, some are Broadway- bombastic, and with so many characters and so much to do (and sing about), plus frequent clamorous scene changes (though the crew was very efficient), the play feels choppy, without dramatic momentum. The costumes, designed by Kevin Sharkey, are dazzling, though I’m not sure how well they support the impression of poverty.

With comic moments in the mix, Little Women is reasonably entertaining for those not already devoted to the story. I can’t speak for devotees—mostly what I recall from watching the 1949 movie on TV with my sisters was getting a little buzz from June Allyson. But maybe all that devotees need to know is that the characters are more contemporary interpretations but still the same March girls, and their favorite scenes are given life, ready to evoke memories and tantalize another generation.

Little Women concludes its run this Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 in the CR Forum Theatre.

Does This Explain It All?

I'm fascinated with a dialogue in the March/April issue of the Dramatist, in which playwrights Marsha Norman ('Night, Mother, and--among other works, the book and for the musical The Secret Garden, seen recently at Ferndale Rep) and Christopher Durang (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, which coincidentally was also on stage at the Rep recently, performed by the teen ensemble.)

They were talking about a playwrighting class they taught together at the Julliard School in New York. The students, described as a year or two out of college (grad students then?), numbered only four in the beginning, though the next year another class of four was added to the four who remained for a second year.

After describing how they came to teach the class together, the playwrights talked about their approach and how things worked out. Early on, Marsha Norman described the effect of the second year students on the first years': "They're also very good about helping the first year writers learn to talk in the Julliard way. We really do speak about plays in a very particular language, to the point that when they leave us they go out and start writers' groups and still kind of travel in this pack. Which is great, because what you need as a writer is to feel that you're in some kind of group that's going to help you. You can't make it if you're out there by yourself."

There is no denying the truth of those words I've put in bold. But the spectre of a pre-elite is pretty stark, as is the danger of groupthink. Going to "the right schools" is pretty much defined by the advantage those schools provide, not just in excellent teaching but in excellent connections. Theatre is susceptible to this, especially since it requires that people work together. Actors need producers need playwrights need directors need each other. Right now the road to success in American theatre (as well as TV and movies) often runs through Julliard, Yale Drama, Carnegie Mellon and no more than a half dozen other programs. (Here on the North Coast, it runs through Dell'Arte, and in design and technical areas, HSU. )

Those eight students are likely to be among the most serious and most talented, but they are also most likely to be from upper middle class big city families. Now they are being formed into packs, which will hurt them a little (if they come up against other gangs) but will help them much, much more.

There are other ways to form and become part of groups that support and advise each other. The young black playwright from HSU, John ADEkoje, is now plugged into a couple of strong support groups: Boston University, which has a production arm in the Boston Playwrights Theatre, and an informal but very involved group of black playwrights on the East Coast.

The summer Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center in Connecticut also was an institutional support mechanism, which re-generated and broadened itself every summer with a dozen or so new playwrights from various backgrounds and parts of the country. That's much less the case there now, and it's more of a pre-elite situation. O'Neill participants never forgot each other, or what they learned there: not only how to approach plays, but how to support each other.


This isn't all that interests me in this dialogue. Norman and Durang have interesting things to say about how they approach the class, which also suggest what playwrighting and theatre are like these days. The playwrights are encouraging, positive and supportive, but they try to get the student to focus on some practical matters. Norman suggests that "On page eight you have to tell the audience when they can go home," meaning that early in play, the audience should know what the question is that the play is asking, so when it is answered, the play is over.

"Rules" like this are distillations of experience, and I especially like suggestions that get writers (and others involved) to think about what they're doing from the audience perspective. August Wilson told me that one of the most useful pieces of advice he got at the O'Neill was to make sure that at the beginning of the play, the audience knows where the action is, and when. It's very simple, but it's smart, because if the audience is trying to figure that out, they miss what else is going on. And we all make sense of things based on time and place.

Something else that emerged from this class I learned at the O'Neill and elsewhere: it is very useful for a playwright to see the play read by actors, and to get actor feedback, because it is usually specific to their character, or to how that character might or might not say something. That's another major advantage of a place like Julliard, which attracts excellent acting students.

Another "tool" that Marsha Norman uses also suggests that not everything works for every play. To test the attraction or power of a play idea, she has everyone write five sentences about their play ("This is a play about___. It takes place___. The main character wants___. It begins when___. It ends when___. ) Then after each 5 sentence summary is read, students are asked which ones they remember (other than their own.) Norman says that out of 20, the most that are remembered is usually five. And then she asks, which would you pay to see? The money question, in both senses. Usually it's one, or two.

Two would be about right. It's the ten percent rule which governs the arts, and possibly a lot more. When he was director of the O'Neill, Lloyd Richards told me that it's uncannily consistent: of the plays that come in, 10% are passed on by the first readers. Then 10% of those are considered worthy by the judges. And so on.

But I wonder if this exercise doesn't have some pitfalls. I'd like to see added to the mix those five sentence descriptions of a few other plays, like say Waiting for Godot. It would be interesting to see if it makes the cut. (Maybe it's worth mentioning in this regard that Christopher Durang told me that the reason he stopped sending plays to the O'Neill was that he was afraid the first readers would screen him out and he'd be crushed.)

But this isn't to criticize their teaching techniques. I'm frankly in awe of the whole thing--of the attention and care they give, the discussions they have about every student's work. But I'm also very aware of the many of us who never got and never will get that kind of attention and support.

This North Coast Weekend

Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods presents the musical version of Louisa May Alcott's classic story, Little Women, Fridays and Saturdays through May 23, starting at 7:30, with a 2 p.m. matinee this Sunday (the 17th), in the CR Forum Theatre. My review in the NC Journal is here. Photo: Essie Bertain as Jo and Jessica Malone as Beth.

The Dell'Arte School students who created the Glasnost Family show last Christmas present original short plays as their individual thesis projects. The first set is this weekend, Thursday through Saturday and the second May 21-24, at 8 p.m. in the Carlo.

Jeff DeMark performs a selection of his stories together with music by UKExperience at the Westhaven Center for the Arts on Saturday night.

At the Arcata Playhouse, this is the final weekend for Third Base, a comic presentation by Nick Trotter and Jerry Lee Wallace Thursday May 14 through Sunday at 8.

This North Coast Weekend

Jeff DeMark does his 200th North Coast solo performance Friday night (May 8) at Muddy's Hot Cup in Arcata. He's presenting his Writing My Way Out of Adolescence for the first time in two years--and the Great Recession price is right: just $3.89.

The Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods opens the musical version of the classic Little Women on Friday (through May 23) at 8 in the CR Forum Theatre.

Third Base, the Jerry Lee Wallace and Nick Trotter clown show, is at the Arcata Playhouse Thursday through Sunday at 8, and again next weekend.

The HSU Ten Minute Play Festival concludes this weekend, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 in the Gist Hall Theatre.

The Tainted Muse

A new book by Robert Brustein explores prejudices in Shakespeare, reviewed below.

Shakespeare With Prejudice

The Tainted Muse: Prejudice and Presumption in Shakespeare's Works and Times
by Robert Brustein
280 Pages
Yale University Press

Robert Brustein is one of the most familiar names of authority in American theatre. He is perhaps most widely known as a critic and a public speaker, but within theatre he is recognized as the founding director of the Yale Repertory Theatre at Yale and the American Repertory Theatre near Harvard. He has also written and adapted plays, and is now officially enshrined in the Theatre Hall of Fame.

This book focuses on an uncomfortable area of surmise: the evidence for various gender, racial and ethnic prejudices in the plays of William Shakespeare. Some are obvious and often discussed: the Jewish Shylock, the Blackamoor Othello, the shrew that is tamed. Others that Brustein emphasizes are not so widely held: he considers Hamlet as drenched in misogyny, for example.

Brustein focuses on six prejudices: misogyny (or the hatred women), dislike of womanish men ("effemiphobia"), the correlative prejudice in favor of macho men, a political prejudice against "mobocracy" and for monarchy, racial prejudice and religious prejudice.

Though Brustein recognizes that prejudices and how they are seen to be expressed is a matter of interpretation that changes according to the times, he is using current standards, especially as applied by today's cultural/political theorists. (He is however, mercifully a better writer.) He traces Shakespeare's exploration of these themes through various characters, and finds (at least to his satisfaction) lines of development in the playwright's attitudes.

All in all, the salient effect of this book may be to counteract the too easy enthusiasm for Shakespeare as a mirror of whatever the current attitudes are. On the other hand, since we are such an either/or society, such sweeping charges of prejudices could taint readings and discourage productions--particularly by producers sensitive to political pressure groups and the various loudmouths who can get pretty vicious.

In fact this does seem the book of a scholar but mostly a producer, who has faced such controversies when mounting these plays. Less obvious is the approach of the playwright, who does things for any number of reasons having more to do with the internal dynamics of the play--as well as the players, the playhouse, the public and so on.

So while I can take Brustein's interpretations into account (though I don't agree with them all by any means) I see them as interpretations from a particular point of view, at a particular time. I haven't lived quite as long as Brustein, but even I have seen the meaning imputed to various words and actions change over the years. Still, a contemporary production should face these issues without becoming overwhelmed or especially defined by them. This book can be a useful tool to that end.

But it's only one point of view. Brustein is mostly pretty literal. He doesn't deal with the symbolisms and mechanisms of the Elizabethan theatre in the way that, say, Northrop Frye does. He acknowledges that in his terms, Shakespeare infused characters like Othello and Shylock with a humanity than other authors of his time did not. But my guess is that Shakespeare the playwright also likely had other considerations beyond such statements.

So this book goes on my Shakespeare shelf, to be consulted when I'm seeing one of these plays, along with studies that take quite different approaches.

This North Coast Weekend

The annual HSU Ten Minute Play Festival begins tonight at 7:30 in the Gist Hall Theatre, and continues Thursdays through Saturdays this weekend and next. Check HSU Stage for more. Also opening this weekend, the Ferndale Rep annual All-Teen production--this year they are doing two Christopher Durang plays: the classic Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You, with its traditional curtain-raiser, Actor's Nightmare. It's Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 at the Rep theatre. The Dell'Arte School presents its clown show Thursday through Saturday at 8 in the Carlo. And The Misunderstood Badger plays its second and final weekend at the Arcata Playhouse, Friday and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 7. I review it in this week's North Coast Journal.

The Misunderstood Badger

The mascot of the University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten football team is (like the state of Wisconsin’s) the badger. There’s a costumed Bucky Badger on the sideline, and thousands of screaming fans identifying themselves as badgers. But Professor Harold Burroughs of that university takes this badger thing even further.

 As portrayed by David Ferney in this solo show The Misunderstood Badger currently at the Arcata Playhouse, the fictional professor is obsessed by this “noble but misunderstood” animal, and begins to identify with it.

 We see the professor act out scenes in the wild (some in photo projections), recount the childhood origins of his fixation and a dream encounter with a giant badger who has a taste for Scotch and cigars. We hear portions of his badger research lectures, delivered in a faintly Southern, faintly 1930’s accent that reminded me at times of actor Charles Ruggles, the fussy big game hunter in the Cary Grant-Katherine Hepburn comedy, Bringing Up Baby.

 But in this piece the humor flashes with surreal discovery, and hints of dread. Burroughs digs out some badger lore, like early American badger-baiting (sending dogs to harass badgers for entertainment), from which comes the verb “to badger,” describing human behavior towards the animal, not the other way around. Human-badger transference is a theme played in various ways, including Burrough’s elaborate attempt to learn one badger’s true name.

 David Ferney’s wrote this solo show with fellow Four on the Floor member Nick Trotter. Trotter also contributes slide guitar interludes, Greg Lojko handles sound and lights, and Bruce Marrs did the painting and construction of the evocative badger hat-mask, which Ferney deploys with comic magic.

 In its first official performance of what I presume is still a work in progress, Ferney brought his considerable physical and vocal skills to this character. I experienced the show as entertaining but uncertain. I was intrigued, but never sure where it wanted to go. For example, the program quotes from Jack London’s Call of the Wild, and it’s clear enough that Burroughs feels that call. If this show’s intent was only to portray a befuddled professor gripped by badgermania, then it could be clearer.

 Tone determines our attitude. The mad scholar is a comic type that must go back before the Romans, and was in the repertoire of vaudeville-trained comedians, so it’s familiar from movies. Even though this piece seemed to at least nod in that direction (as with the professor’s name of Burroughs, you know, the badger burrows…you dig?) Ferney wasn’t broad or frenetic enough to push this into madcap sketch territory.

 Instead, his more deliberate pace suggested the intent to offer a dimensional character, and certainly the professor’s clueless projection and identification with the badger had autobiographical back story, as well as those surreal but also obvious dreams. But that went only so far. For example, apart from his clichéd professor appearance, we don’t learn much about any contrast between his wild yearnings and any academic and civilized life. And why of all animals the badger? Is it accidental, so essentially his obsession could be any geeky frenzy?

 There’s a mother lode of connections between the badger as a digger and the scholar who digs for facts, (Wisconsin is reputedly the Badger State not because of the animal, but because of its miners who dig like badgers) but while this possibility is mimed, it seems otherwise unmined.

Digging into the unconscious is another theme that seemed partially realized. There were hints of a mythic realm, of Native American stories in which animals and humans transform into each other, but this also came and went. Maybe the intent was to remain ambiguous in that ol’ postmodern portmanteau way. In any case, it’s got a lot of absorbing and entertaining moments. I guess we can identify with an awkward guy possessed of a helpless obsession and no self-awareness. But I left wanting more meat on this badger’s bones. The Misunderstood Badger continues at the Arcata Playhouse this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7.

 Coming Up:  There’s a new Great Recession pricing policy for all the Dell’Arte School shows in May: pay what you will. You can still make reservations, then name your admission price when you arrive. That goes for the Clown show this weekend (Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Carlo) and also the Thesis Festival and the Finals on the remaining May weekends.

 The annual HSU Ten Minute Play Festival begins Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Gist Hall Theatre, playing this weekend and next, Thursdays through Saturdays.

 Next weekend, Humboldt Light Opera and College of the Redwoods open a musical version of Little Women, beginning Friday, May 8 in the CR Forum Theatre at 7:30.

Pulitzer

The 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to Lynn Nottage (top photo) for her play, Ruined (bottom photo, from the Manhattan Theatre Club production), a play about the brutalizing of women during a decade of war in the Congo, modeled on Brecht's Mother Courage. Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey visited refugee camps in Uganda, Rwanda and other parts of Africa to base this play on reality. In an article in the March American Theatre magazine by Randy Gener, Nottage said, "You can't reconcile the incredible beauty and gentleness of the culture with the horror and the suffering. The play is about how they coexist." Among her other plays, Nottage wrote Intimate Apparel which was produced a few seasons ago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Here's my brief review:

Intimate Apparel by contemporary playwright Lynn Nottage is set in early twentieth century New York, and concerns a modest young African American seamstress (played by Gwendolyn Mulamba) whose correspondence with a man from Barbados while he is laboring on the Panama Canal (Erik LaRay Harvey) leads to marriage. Their lives intersect with a wealthy and lonely white socialite (Terri McMahon), a ragtime piano-playing prostitute (Tiffany Adams), a Jewish cloth merchant (Gregory Linington,) and a maternal landlady (Perri Gaffney.)

 This drama (directed by Timothy Bond) uses graceful language, generous acting and expressive staging (with scenic design by Richard Hay) to portray complicated and often warm relationships, in an historical context in which we see class, race, ethnicity, gender roles, economics and even technology influencing the fates of these characters. The audience in the 600-seat Angus Bowmer Theatre were spellbound, and audibly got the main character’s final secret, expressed in a single gesture.

 Lynn Nottage is a fast-rising playwright, and Intimate Apparel is a solidly built and subtle play. 

This North Coast Weekend

Humboldt Light Opera presents the childrens show Seussical Jr. the Musical this weekend at College of the Redwoods. A one woman show from Portland, The Last Show You'll Ever See, is on stage at the Arcata Playhouse on Saturday. The HSU Opera Workshop presents a children's opera and other theatrical offerings on Friday and Saturday at the Fulkerson Recital Hall. The HSU spring dance concert, From Floor to Flight, has its last weekend at the Van Duzer Theatre, with the annual Silent Auction on Saturday (photo above). And Ferndale Rep continues The Secret Garden (top photo above.) For specific information, click on the appropriate organizations in the links list to your right at you go out.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening this weekend is the annual HSU spring dance concert, From Floor to Flight, at the Van Duzer Theatre. I don't have the vocabulary to write about dance, but I can say I was really moved by three of the dances presented on opening night, and admired other dances and dancers in them as well. In the finale, dancers interact with the 60 member Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir. It was a good theatrical evening. The shows start at 7:30, this Friday and Saturday, and next Thursday through Saturday. More information at HSU Stage.