The Very Model of a Modern Entertainment

Nothing opened on North Coast stages two weekends ago, and nothing opens this coming weekend, or as far as I know for several more weekends. But this past weekend two shows opened, both musicals. Apart from the box office wisdom of this, it caused me particular problems. As NC Journal reviewer they presented me with two choices: choose one to review this week and one next week, which would mean that one would be unreviewed until late in its run. Or review both but--because of space/word limits--give each of them half the review they would have had separately. For me, it meant twice the work for half the money. But that's the choice I made---this time.

So in Stage Matters in this week's Journal, you'll find reviews of Humboldt Light Opera's Pirates of Penzance and Ferndale Rep's Rent. What follows right here, right now, is an expanded version of the Pirates review. In a few days I'll post an expanded version of the Rent review.

Maybe it’s the current affection for piratical affectations, or maybe just the prevailing local approach to musicals, but Humboldt Light Opera Company dispenses with the smirks and self-consciousness that can mar Gilbert and Sullivan revivals. Instead they present a buoyant, colorful and joyful Pirates of Penzance at Humboldt State’s Van Duzer Theatre.

James Gadd and Fiona Ryder reunite (from last year’s The Light in the Piazza) as the appealing skull-and-bones-crossed lovers. Gadd is as handsome as any classic matinee idol, and a capable singer. Fiona Ryder brought a youthful energy that immediately made her credible as the boldest of the innocent young ladies, and the part showed off her voice to thrilling effect. Bill Ryder as the stalwart Pirate King, the dynamic Cindy Cress as Ruth and Ellsworth Pence as the Major General (his entrance is a high point) are just the most obvious standouts in a huge and capable cast. The dances, especially those choreographed and led by Craig Benson, add another layer of delight.

Musical direction by David Powell and Katri Pitts, the orchestra conducted by Justin Sousa, choreography by Shaelan Salas and sound by Justin Takata admirably support the local gold standard of singing. Carol McWhorter Ryder’s wise direction together with Jayson Mohatt’s economical but elegant and useful set and lighting design, and everyone involved in creating the colorful costumes, filled the Van Duzer with exciting clarity.

The set was basically simple, but every piece of it was both well-executed and functional. The pirate ship was a wow, and got things off to a great start, but it left the stage for most of the evening. The backdrop for the rest of the first act was very basic, but a sun in the sky and a few rock formations for people to hide behind and climb around on were all that was needed. The second act backdrop was more dramatic--the black sky with twinkling stars, but the sets of columns--which looked like they might have been recycled from the piazza--were again both elegant visually and used very well. All of this worked very well for this particular show, in which realism is not a factor, but I suspect this general approach could work for many others.

There were two other elements to the staging. There was a platform in front of the orchestra pit where several songs were staged, notably the second act love duet. There was also action in the aisles. I'm normally not a fan of this--I believe this is the audience's space, and actors running up and down the aisles (often enough, carrying weapons) is unnecessarily dangerous to both audience and actors. But in this show the action was much more benign--the charming daughters floated by.

I might also mention that in the orchestra pit there was in fact an orchestra--without a covering, so the musicians could see the actors and the actors could see the orchestra, helping both.

Carol Ryder's direction was so impressive because she kept the stage full of color and movement, and used the depth of the stage to do so (especially for the dancing), but most of the singing was done as close to the audience as possible--usually downstage center, or on that platform that was practically in the audience. These singers generally have the most training of any in local productions, and operatic voices like Fiona Ryder's carry beautifully, but even so--director Ryder made sure by her staging that the audience was going to hear every word and every note.

Two of the singers wore body mikes, and there were floor mikes across the stage, but once again, it was the staging that guaranteed this show would be seen and heard to its best advantage, especially in the sometimes troublesome Van Duzer.

HLOC is a community theatre organization, but I doubt if you could find a professional theatre version of The Pirates of Penzance with as perfect a production and as winning a cast. They highlight all the humor, eternal and historical, with skillful song and dance, romantic and euphorical. They ply us with a plot that is at best fantastical, with certitude and grace, droll and enthusiastical. With audience in tow, they sail to this attainment: more ecstatic than dramatic, this is the very model of a modern entertainment.

HLOC’s The Pirates of Penzance continues in the Van Duzer on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm until August 21, with Sunday matinees at 2 on August 8 and 15.

This North Coast Weekend

Avast ye hearties! Opening Friday is the Humboldt Light Opera Company production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance at the Van Duzer Theatre on the Humboldt State campus in Arcata. It's Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm for the next three weekends, with Sunday matinees at 2 on August 8 and 15.

Opening Thursday is the Ferndale Rep production of the 1990s rock opera musical Rent. The subject is young artists in 1980s lower Manhattan. It continues Fridays and Saturdays at 8 and Sundays at 2 until August 29.

To Grandmother's House

An expanded version of my review, with personal/historical context:

North Coast Rep this season seems intent on recapitulating my life. First they disinterred the Sisters of Charity from my grade school in Doubt, although the sight of a forelock peeking out from a stage nun’s bonnet was surprisingly scandalous. We used to wonder whether nuns even had hair. It seemed possible the Sisters were generated by some primitive form of papal hydroponics.

Now North Coast Rep presents Over the River and Through the Woods, a comedy by Joe DiPietro, whose book for the musical Memphis won the Tony this year. The play is about a grandson who dutifully dines every Sunday with all four of his Italian grandparents, and has to decide whether to move 3,000 miles away to pursue his work and an independent life. Despite the last name I inherited from my father, I was nurtured by my mother’s family and relations, most of them born in mountain towns of the Abruzzi. For awhile I apparently understood and spoke Italian and English equally, though my bilingual skills declined once my vocabulary exceeded 100 words.

Given this background (though in western Pennsylvania rather than the New Jersey of the play), when approaching this play I was frankly most worried about cliché and stereotype. So in an odd way I was relieved that the only element of the set I recognized was the afghan on the stage living room sofa, similar in pattern to the one my grandmother made for me, which I can at this moment see if I turn my head to the right.

DiPietro’s script included some historical references worth making, even in a comedy, such as the prejudices Italians faced. (During World War II, Italians in Arcata were not permitted any closer to Humboldt Bay than the hill where Wildberries now stands.) But most of all I was grateful for a couple of outrageously rare hours about Italian Americans with not a single reference to the Mafia. Or to the putrid insult called Jersey Shore.

Though I don’t recall ever hearing anyone utter the play’s mantra, tengo famiglia (literally “I have a family,”) the particular ties and tensions of the Italian family are, well, familiar. Judging from the audience’s responses at Friday’s performance, much of the gentle but pointed family byplay is universal enough to be ruefully recognized and funny. I expect the grandparents’ incomprehension of just what the grandson does (he’s in marketing) is widely generational. Despite some excesses, DiPietro’s script is witty, generous and evocative.

Evan Needham plays the uneasy ambivalence of grandson Nick with skill and the necessary charm, and Brittany Morgan Williams hits the right notes in the small but important role of Caitlin, the girl the grandparents hope will tempt Nick to marry and stay. But the evening belongs to the grandparents, played with both brio and delicacy by David Simms, Laura Rose, Lou Agliolo and Linda Agliolo. Even with some wandering accents, they make it all work by creating distinct characters as well as an overall portrait of a generation that began in Italy and finished their modest and admirable lives in 1980s America. Pace, timing, movement, expression--all the elements are harmonized in Rae Robison’s direction, achieving an evening of laughter and emotion.

Jenneveve Hood designed costumes, Daniel Lawrence lighting, Rae Robison the scenery. Over opening weekend, the Assistant Director officially changed her name to Megan Johnson. Felicitations to the former Megan Hughes and to Calder Johnson, both active in a number of capacities for several local theatres, who were married on Saturday.

Over the River and Through the Woods plays at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka weekends through August 12.

Now to expand upon these themes a little... When I was growing up in the 1950s, Italians were a big part of the common culture--there were even a few hit records with at least some Italian lyrics. Joe DiMaggio was the most prominent of a number of Italian American sports stars, Frank Sinatra likewise of popular singers and movie stars. But portrayals of Italian American life were never far from stereotype, even before the Godfather, Wise Guys and The Sopranos equated Italian with the Mafia (even though the Mafia was primarily a Sicilian invention.) So I cringe a little even at one of the North Coast Rep publicity photos--unfortunately the one the Journal chose to use--with the family apparently dancing their way through dinner. Having seen it before I saw the play, I feared the worst.

As it turned out, the actual moment depicted in this photo was brief and specific to a memory. (For the record, my family wasn't particularly into dancing except at weddings, or hugging as a greeting, except children.) The play flirted with stereotypes, as with the grandmother who says very little until the end of the play except to make invitations to eat. But as the play notes, there is some kind of truth that is distorted by stereotypes. Just as while Italian Americans were victims of stereotypes and prejudice, they also had them.

So I am mindful that my experience and memories--the way Italians were in my part of the world--doesn't make them definitive. So maybe the Italians in New Jersey really have their pasta course after the meat course, a scandalous reversal of practice where I come from. Or they don't know who says grace when there's company--when clearly it's the eldest (or in this case only) grandchild.

A couple of other details rang true to my experience, though. The Mass cards--my grandmother was forever having Masses said, and we were expected to attend the ones for my mother. One of the grandfathers refuses to turn on the air conditioning before a certain date in summer--my grandparents never had air conditioning, but the marker of summer was replacing the glass in the storm doors with screens, and especially the porch furniture: the covers came off and the cushions were in place on Memorial Day, and brought in on Labor Day.

DiPietro doesn't say where in Italy these families were from, which makes me curious, because their experiences seemed more characteristic of a slightly older generation than they could have been in the 1980s or 1990s (when the play was first produced.) Immigration laws made it more difficult for Italians after 1920, although there was another wave of emigrants from certain areas right after World War II, due partly to the bombings that displaced many.

Although my grandfather came directly to western PA via New York (in 1920, on the last steamship to carry auxiliary sails), where others from his town already were, we did have relatives in New Jersey who had come earlier. When my grandmother followed him two years later with my mother (then two years old), he didn't find out what ship she was on (the America) until it was too late to get to the Port of New York in time to meet her. So one of his relatives in New Jersey pretended to be her husband so she could be released. Even after I was born there was active communication with these relatives, but it was my grandparents' generation that kept up. Now in western PA as elsewhere, the Italian traditions have mostly been lost from the suburbs.

My grandparents left Italy, their children left their hometown but stayed relatively close, and their grandchildren are all over the country now, with their own children and a few grandchildren. But like the grandson in this play, I found myself living back in my home area and spending time with my grandmother, though for me it was after years of far-flung schooling and work elsewhere. Oddly, it was in the 1980s. There was a point when I was being pulled to advance my authorial career by relocating to New York, and a friend in New York pointedly told me that it was okay to leave my grandmother. (My grandfather, who had experienced poison gas in World War I, had died in 1966, on the anniversary of his arrival in America.) That wasn't my only reason for not going but it was a factor, and at this point in my life, I'm not sorry. (Eventually I did go, but that's a story for Rent.) By being around, I heard more of my grandmother's stories, ate more of her pasta, and got to see her face when I lit 85 candles on her birthday cake.

This North Coast Weekend

North Coast Rep opens the inter-generational family comedy Over The River And Through The Woods by Joe DiPietro on Thursday July 22 at 8 pm. Directed by Rae Robison, the cast features Linda and Lou Agliolo, Evan Needham, Laura Rose, David Sims and Brittany Morgan Williams.

The comedy Fortune continues at Redwood Curtain. I review it here. What I wrote reflects my experience seeing it at the first preview but in retrospect I was probably too diplomatic about the production. And I'm not sure "wondrous" and "magical" are exactly accurate descriptions of a particular acting moment, but in the context of the evening, the moments did stand out.

Fortune Favors the Farcical

The mysterious Madame Rosa, whose unveiled name is Maude, is a young fortune-teller with a phony accent and an identity crisis. Her mother and grandmother, predecessors in the divination biz, convinced her of ironclad fate. But she longs for other possibilities.

 Jeremy is a sweet but suicidal accountant, tired of being unloved and apparently unlovable, at least since his mother died when he was a child. But before ending it all he hedges his despair by consulting Madame Rosa. She foresees his bitter end, but out of fear and pity (and later other emotions), she lies to him and promises he’ll find love with a red-haired woman he will meet on the nearby Brooklyn boardwalk.

 That’s the premise of Fortune, the comedy now on stage at Redwood Curtain, and you can pretty much write the rest of it yourself. But as directed by Jyl Hewston, and performed by Clink Rebik as Jeremy and Cassandra Hesseltine as Maude, the fun is in the journey.

 Though Rebik is an accomplished director as well as Redwood Curtain’s artistic director, and Hesseltine directs RC’s acting conservatory program, they’ve rarely appeared on stage hereabouts in recent years. Which is too bad, as this show demonstrates. Rebik proves himself a magnetic comic actor from the first moment, and Hesseltine navigates the changing moods of her character with grace —as well as her red- headed variations (her Southern coquette reminded me of Irene Dunne in My Favorite Wife.)

 Between farcical boardwalk impersonations, the two build a delicate relationship back in Maude’s apartment, though she maintains her Madame Rosa disguise. But the scene on the boardwalk when Maude appears as herself to the unsuspecting Jeremy is magical, and Hesseltine especially is wondrous. It suggests what these two actors can do if given more than comic clichés and murky subtext to play.

 For Fortune, at least in this man’s eyes, is a play with its own identity crisis. Written by Deborah Zoe Laufer, a much-lauded young playwright, it is not fast enough for farce and not dimensional enough to be romantic comedy, combining predictable jokes and situations with a more serious subtext that clouds the action more than it illuminates it. Essentials about the time, place and story are revealed so slowly and obliquely that the audience must do too much thinking to be carried away laughing.

 And too much thinking about why an accountant in 2010 would put his faith in an old-fashioned fortune-teller, or why she has such a ready collection of red wigs, doesn’t help. Even one of the funnier lines (when Jeremy, playing hard to get as a hard-as-nails macho man, claims his drink is “whiskey—no ice, no glass”) is a throwaway by Minnesota Fats in The Hustler that’s been parodied before. Although Laufer does contribute an apt topper: “No straw,” Jeremy adds.

 But even though their innocent awkwardness is part of the comic effect, there is little apparent connection between the characters and their role-playing. Based on the first preview, the show must be carried by the actors’ charm, and the sitcom expectations of the comedy. These actors do their best, as does director Jyl Hewston and scenic director Dan Stockwell in using the wide Redwood Curtain stage. Dianna Thiel provides costumes for quick changes, and the effects (including sound by Jon Turney) are mostly effective. For many theatregoers this probably will be enough for a pleasant summer evening.

 Fortune continues at the Redwood Theatre in Eureka (220 First Street, between C and D) on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through July 31, with one Sunday matinee on July 25 at 2 p.m. The new Redwood Curtain theatre has only 80 seats, so reservations are recommended.

 Coming Up: The inter-generational family comedy Over The River And Through The Woods by Joe DiPietro opens at North Coast Rep in Eureka on Thursday July 22. Directed by Rae Robison, the cast features Linda and Lou Agliolo, Evan Needham, Laura Rose, David Sims and Brittany Morgan Williams.

 Out at Dell'Arte, the theatrical portion of the Mad River Festival concludes with Los Payasos Mendigos Rise Again--a reunion show of this locally beloved as well as internationally lauded clown troupe. Original members Rudi Galindo (now with a theatre company based in Brussels), Joe Dieffenbacher (based in Oxford, England), Cosmo Kuzmick (up from Hollywood) and Arcata Theatre impressario, writer and performer David Ferney, all reunite for five shows outside in the Rooney Amphitheatre: Thursday through Sunday, July 15-18 at 8 PM, with a special matinee short show on Sunday, July 18 at 4 PM for Annie & Mary Day. Musicians Tim Gray, Marla Joy and Tim Randles are part of the show, with special guests, including Jacky Dandeneau.

People's Playwright

Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States and a popular speaker on campuses, including the largest gathering I witnessed at HSU, died in January. But publishing lead-times being what they are, The Bloomsbury Review printed an interview with him in its spring issue. In the interview, Zinn talks about theatre:

"I've always been interested in theatre. I'd always been affected by theatre." One reason might be that the first play he saw was a Federal Theatre production. "I think that suggested to me how important theatre--drama--can be in heightening consciousness of any kind of issue."

Living in New York, Zinn and his wife became dedicated theatregoers, even if all they could afford were the cheap seats. Still, they saw the original Broadway productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman. Eventually Zinn tried his hand at writing plays, beginning with one about Emma Goldman, and including Marx in Soho, an attempt to portray Karl Marx "not as a caricature, not as the embodiment of evil, but as a human being with quite extraordinary and very attractive ideas...The idea of the play is to give Marx a chance to say what the difference is between his ideas and what happened in the Soviet Union." Sounds like a play still worth seeing.

This North Coast Weekend

Dell'Arte's Mad River Festival continues with Klinke, a clown show group based in Italy that includes Dell'Arte grads: Friday, July 9 at 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday July 10 and 11 at 2pm and 7 pm. All shows inside at the Carlo.

The Arcata Playhouse’s Summer Youth Ensemble performs Wiley and the Hairy Man, a children's show directed by Bruce Marrs and Tinamarie Ivey, on Friday at 8 pm and Saturday at 2pm, at the Arcata Playhouse.

This North Coast Weekend

Blue Lake: The Opera concludes this weekend at Dell'Arte, Thursday through Saturday at 8. I review it below and in the Journal; excerpts of an interview with playwright Lauren Wilson are also in an earlier post below.

Dell'Arte's adults-only Red Light at Blue Lake has its one night engorgement on Friday night (July 2) after the Opera.

A one-weekend North Coast Rep production of David Mamet’s drama Oleanna with Alexandra Gellner and Gary Sommers, directed by Linnea Conway, on July 2 and 3 at 8 p.m.

Redbud Theatre presents The Money Ball, a homegrown topical comedy by Brian Bottemiller, directed by Bruce Marrs. The play, set on a fictional golf course, is presented at Willow Creek Golf and Country Club at 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays of three consecutive weekends beginning July 2.

Dell’Arte Creates A Classic with Blue Lake: The Opera

[This is a slightly longer version of my review appearing in the North Coast Journal. I've appended excerpts from my interview with playwright Lauren Wilson.]

It’s 1910, early days in Blue Lake. Big civic problems are hogs in the street and the lack of a fire hose. . But there’s a train station, and the train actually stops there. And there's a lake (kind of.)

Enter the woodsmen, suspicious of townies, singing manfully as they bisect a redwood. The town is run by the Odd Fellows lodge and its visionary leader Augustus "Big Gus" Lamont, whose ambition is to outdo “those hicks in Korbel.” The national lodge’s Sovereign Grand Secretary comes from Baltimore to see if the town is worthy of financial help. He falls for Lamont’s daughter--a marriage that promises prosperity, but she’s in love with the handsome town orphan.

And so the opera has begun, and by its conclusion there will have been gunfights, suicidal despair and a climatic fire as well as as a welcoming pageant, an epic party, hysterics, rescues, revelations and several new couples expressing frontier morality and (in 21st century Dell’Arte style) multiple sexual preferences.

When I first heard that Dell’Arte’s summer production, Blue Lake: The Opera was actually going to be an opera, one possibility I imagined was a send-up of grand opera excesses, complete with some Blue Lake equivalent of Brunhilde, perhaps with deer antlers instead of Viking horns on her helmet, bellowing out the final aria. But this is something else: a remarkably straightforward comic opera, which finds its wit and humanity in articulating the simplified and heightened comic reality it portrays. Forget Wagner or Verdi; think Gilbert and Sullivan.

It’s funny and fun, as befits the Dell’Arte summer outdoor show, but it is something more. Blue Lake: The Opera is outstanding and memorable, part of Dell’Arte’s festival tradition but transcending it.

This particular production has a cast without a weakness, from the youngest child and the impressive debut of Maya Fields to the adult performers, including Dell’Arte regulars (Michael “Maya’s Dad” Fields, Tyler Olsen, etc.), locally known players (Jacqueline Dandeneau, Jerry Lee Wallace, etc.) and less familiar performers—especially James Peck, who infuses the visiting Grand Secretary Leonard Bulge with essence of Simon Legree, and yet a touch of sympathetic vulnerability. He also sings the most tongue-twisting Gilbert-and-Sullivan style song with skill and relish.

But the opera absolutely soars in the voices of two trained and excellent opera singers: Emily Windler and David Powell. Windler is a revelation, but Powell is a promise fulfilled—at last he has a part that showcases his voice in several expansive songs. Credit also the music of Tim Gray and his excellent band, as well as sound designer Gregory "Fugazi" Lojko.

As directed by Michael Fields, the action flowed seamlessly. The summer festival component was clearest near the end, when Fields as “Big Gus” has one of his visions, of the new Odd Fellows Hall someday housing a theatre company. The opening night audience not only laughed but applauded—somehow they knew that the rebuilt hall was in reality the Dell’Arte theatre building, and the amphitheatre Big Gus was dreaming is the one he was addressing, where they sat or sprawled in the June night of one hundred years later. It was a magical community moment, exemplifying a Dell’Arte ideal.

Design (Daniel Spencer on Scenic, Michael Foster on lights) costumes (Lydia Foreman) and effects are equally top-notch, but in my view the principal reason that Blue Lake: The Opera transcends its occasion is the writing of Lauren Wilson, which includes the script (much of which is sung) and most notably the brilliant lyrics to the formal songs.

Also credited as the opera’s co-director (as well as Properties Construction), Lauren Wilson wrote Dell Arte’s Golden State, and teaches acting and dramatic writing at the Dell’Arte International school. In a pre-production interview she said her challenge for the opera was “to not have the magic and real power of theatre be destroyed by too much text,” especially in view of Dell’Arte’s practice of ensemble-created works.

Fair enough, but there are also benefits to starting with a script. My first forays into theatre were as playwright, so I admit my prejudice. But it seems to me that Wilson’s script provides a structure and a flow, plus words worth saying and singing, that enable participants in all elements of the production to do their best with confidence. Perhaps strengthened and expressed with new invention in rehearsal, a playwright’s vision in a fruitful script provides direction to improvisations and production, while also inspiring and liberating them. It also tends to make the resulting play more universal. For me, Blue Lake: The Opera proves that possibility.

In any case, this is a play worthy of attention here and now, and beyond. 

Playwright Lauren Wilson

I spoke with Lauren Wilson on the phone a few days before the opening of Dell'Arte's production of Blue Lake: The Opera, which she wrote and co-directed. She described researching the history of Blue Lake, and some of the fruits of that research are included in the production program as well as the opera itself.

I asked Lauren Wilson if she was Dell’Arte’s “playwright in residence.”

LW: They don’t usually start with a script. The training and the company are often based around the actor-creator, so the actors as an ensemble members create a piece and perform it. But once in awhile, like for the festival, for the outdoor stage, they opt to use a script as a starting point. There’s not really a playwright in residence. I just get to write plays once in awhile.

She described how playwriting figures into the Dell'Arte International school curriculum.

I teach acting and what I call writing for performance or dramatic writing, so it’s not so much sitting down and writing a play as it is thinking about how plays are structured, and helping people to write freely. Many people who come for actor training aren't necessarily drawn to writing, but because Dell'Arte asks of its students and performers that they be creative contributors to the piece, sometimes writing is a good avenue for discovery. So I teach a class in how to write as an exercise in group writing—--how to create a show together and use writing as part of that, but not all of that.

I asked what the particular challenges were in writing Blue Lake: The Opera.

The challenge is to not have the magic and real power of theatre be destroyed by too much text. One thing that Dell'Arte does that few other theatres or training programs do is to create a theatre that is physically and viscerally very alive in the space of the stage. Partly that comes from starting with the body, and starting with the actors body as the source of the theatre, rather than starting with the writing on the page as the source of the theatre. So when you start with a script, the challenge is to make that actually live.

It’s really hard, because words have such a paralyzing effect on us. Even really well-trained physical actors, really imaginative people, tend to just stand and deliver text as if it were enough to say the words. its a real hurdle to get over, to have the text serve the theatre rather than just all of us standing around serving the text. So when you write something at a computer it always has too many words, you forget the power of the body to tell a story, or to create an atmosphere or a feeling in the audience. Cause it's impossible to do that at the desk.

So at Dell'Arte I think we’re still figuring out what the relationship of the playwright is to this type of ensemble theatre that we are interested in creating. For me as a playwright it’s really about being able to write things and then let go of them. When the director and I see that we’re just serving the text right now, what would happen if we threw this text out, is there any other possibility?

For an opera—this classical form—it's very conventional,—it's a conventional narrative that tells a story set in Blue Lake in 1910. There’s a plot that is set in motion—there’s nothing abstract or avante garde about it. The fun of it was to take this conventional, classical type of theatre, and place it in Blue Lake, a rural—and in 1910, extremely rural place, where one wouldn’t expect to set an opera.

Comedy of Hope: Human Nature

The Prize of Hope, a kind of international lifetime achievement award for live theatre as a popular and accessible art form, will be presented at Dell’Arte this Saturday as part of the annual Mad River Festival. Given annually by Denmark’s Institute for Popular Theatre in partnership with Dell’Arte, its presentation alternates between the two hosts.

 Not only is the presentation here this year, but the prize is being given to a local Lost Coast ensemble called Human Nature, and its founders, David Simpson and Jane Lapiner. Known for environmentally-oriented shows Queen Salmon, The Wolf at the Door and What’s Funny About Climate Change, Human Nature will perform an excerpt from its work in progress, Two Old Birds or Tripping on the Tipping Point, as part of the presentation program and dinner on July 26, beginning at 4 pm.

 The new show, as their previous one, centers on the complex cacophony of issues called climate change. So among the ironies for Simpson and Lapiner is their home base in Petrolia. “Yes, it’s named after petroleum, because this was the first place in California that oil was discovered,” David Simpson said. “Fortunately it petered out quickly.”

 Burning up the jet fuel to research climate change and its attendant politics from the Arctic to recent conferences in Copenhagen and Bolivia is a more accustomed irony among activists, since the warming is global. Plus the gasoline to tour their show, which uses comedy to expose the deadly folly of fossil fuel dependence.

 If the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists is right, the outcomes are likely to shake if not dissolve human civilization and life on earth as we know it, so comedy may seem a counterintuitive approach. But Simpson and Lapiner outline several of its functions, confirmed by their experience with audiences.

 Satirical humor that they describe as “not light but not nasty” can expose faulty facts as well as dubious motives. But when people are involved, there’s generally plenty of pomposity and delusion on all sides of the issue. So they’ve gone after enviros, too. 

The comedy “gets people to laugh at themselves,” Lapiner said. That’s particularly useful when a major barrier to confronting this complicated and immensely consequential problem is the mental and emotional freeze-up of denial.

 Getting people to lower their defenses often paid off in the post-performance discussions at universities and other venues, which could last for an hour more. “Sometimes a few would stay, often maybe a hundred, “Simpson said. Climate scientists were happy to participate. “We got into some really good discussions, and not just with the converted. There were opponents who took the risk of saying what they felt.”

 Human Nature (which includes their daughter, Joyful) toured the first climate change show over four years, when the agenda was confronting ignorance and denial. The new show is aimed at “provoking action.”

 In their travels they’ve seen the dramatic difference between the most intense present effects on the world’s poorer peoples versus the dithering lassitude of rich nations. Stopping fossil fuel pollution and instituting a clean energy society are necessary steps to head off runaway climate collapse in the far future.

 But nothing will prevent serious effects already underway that will shape the nearer future. So besides helping to shake loose the will to act, comedy can help with the coping. “Climate change is real,” Simpson said. “It’s best to know what’s coming. Comedy is a tool for helping with the transition.”

 “We have to change, but it doesn’t have to be dreary,” Lapiner said. Change can be an adventure, with joy and fun as well as challenge and grim necessity.

 David Simpson was a comic actor and Jane Lapiner a dancer when they met in the San Francisco Mime Troupe of the late 60s. Comedy comes naturally but it also has a definite intent.

 “Hope is a commodity we need now,” Simpson said. “A lot of people know what’s ahead—it’s very daunting. So part of our mission is to promote hope.”

 They are currently getting Two Old Birds or Tripping on the Tipping Point in shape for the fall, but the excerpt they’ll perform this week involves Adam and Eve evicted from their consumerist Eden into the real world. “It gets bawdy, I fear,” David Simpson said, though he didn’t sound too regretful.

 Coming Up: Dell’Arte celebrates its host city’s centennial with its production of Blue Lake: The Opera to start off the Mad River Festival on Thursday (June 24.) Set in 1910, when Blue Lake really had an opera house, this sounds like a collision of comic opera and the usual Dell’Arte summer silliness. It’s performed at 8 pm out back in the Rooney Amphitheatre, Thursday through Saturdays this weekend and next. They promise no chickens will be harmed.

Congrats to Tony Winners

Congratulations to Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, winners of Best Actress and Best Actor in leading roles for August Wilson's Fences, which itself won for best play revival. It was also a good night for Arthur Miller, rock & roll and movie stars. Congrats to all the winners.

Here's a review of the New York Fences production. And speaking of August Wilson, a review of this spring's re-staging of Wilson's Jitney in Pittsburgh. The last production there was one of the last times I saw August Wilson--he was in town to do some rewrites of this play, his actual first. Then we saw him again after opening night. Both plays are set in Pittsburgh, as are all but one of his 10 play cycle.

That 70s Play: Same Time Next Year

 In some ways, Same Time Next Year is the quintessential 70s play. The 70s were when the 60s made it to suburbia, and to Middle America generally. Vietnam protest, the generation gap, sexual revolution, women’s liberation, encounter groups, Open Marriage and a skyrocketing divorce rate—all of it really happened in the decade that began with Kent State and ended with the Eagles doing disco.

 It’s unlikely that this play’s premise could have been accepted as fit for comedy before the 70s: a New Jersey accountant and an Italian Catholic housewife meet in northern California and have a passionate night together—and then they continue their affair for decades, but only for one weekend every year.

 But the 70s were more than ready. To suggest how avant garde this wasn’t, the play is by Bernard Slade, whose previous work included a Neil Simon knock-off and episodes of Bewitched. He went on to create The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family.

 But it was provocative enough, in a 70s way, for some observers to find it offensive, while others thought it was superficial. I suspect there are some in both camps today as well. Though the 1975 Broadway production was a long-running hit, probably more people saw the 1978 movie version starring Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda.

 But given its parentage, it may be surprising that Same Time Next Year works much better as a stage play than a movie. At least it did for me in 2010, in the current Ferndale Repertory Theatre production.

 The play follows an affair that begins in 1951, with the final scene in 1975. Admitting that ordinary people actually had extramarital affairs in the 50s was already a 70s innovation. Novelists could tell you in the privacy of your reading experience, but not plays, with all those people around you who know you’re watching it—and laughing. Now there’s a certain nostalgia to it all, though the slides projected during scene changes depicting events of those decades—including wars and assassinations as well as sex, drugs and rock & roll—also can evoke the pain of the period (even when some events seem shown slightly out of order.)

 Though Slade’s chronology also seems doubtful in places, he had the benefit of those years being recent, and he had the ear to suggest each period’s particular vocabulary. Technologies may be changing faster at the moment, but each year of the 60s and early 70s seemed almost like its own decade.

 Alexandra Gellner as Doris and Ilan Ben-Yehuda as George bring the likeable characters to life. They do the physical comedy well, but don’t overdo it. Especially at the beginning, this starts the audience laughing. But the play doesn’t dwell on the sex comedy aspect. It doesn’t become a farce.

 The emphasis is on the separate lives of Doris and George, and how their relationship supports each of them, and even each of their marriages. There’s a certain quality of a fable about it all, which comes across even as the actors create a convincing relationship on stage with believable charm. They both avoid the temptation of being too whiny. All of this encourages the confidence the audience needs to identify and to laugh.

 Director Marilyn McCormick (former exec director of Ferndale Rep) brings out the skilled structure and deft writing of Bernard Slade’s script, as well as adding some brilliant business. She also keeps the pace from flagging, and so each of the six individual scenes pays off as it should.

 There’s a certain formula to how each of the characters changes in opposite ways from the other, and in how they relate to external events, but the craftsmanship is solid, the actors are winning, and the resulting comedy carries it along.

 I happened to see this on Donor Appreciation Night, and some considerable portion of the audience appeared to recall the 60s and 70s. Their surprisingly randy laughter suggested, among other things, a certain authenticity in the script. They roared at the mention of Berkeley in 1965, and caught Slade’s pitch-perfect Encounter Group psychobabble of the 70s.

 But I suspect that there is enough universal human comedy (and drama) to involve and please those for whom the 70s are known mostly from a retro sitcom. There aren’t that many laugh-out-loud comedies, even in the summer theatre repertoire. This production provides one of them.

 Seth Stone designed the warmly California set, with an assist from Nick Trotter’s lighting design. Vikki Young assembled the slide shows, and designed costumes with director Marilyn McCormick. Same Time Next Year plays two more weekends at Ferndale Rep, ending on June 13.

Coming Up:  Dell'Arte School grad and now teacher Gale McNeeley returns to the Arcata Playhouse after 30 years (when it housed the Pacific Arts Center) to present his one-person play, archy and mehitabel, based on the Don Marquis characters, on Saturday June 12 at 8 p.m.

Script Tease: Gypsy

The musical Gypsy, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka, is the story of Rose, often called the “ultimate stage mother,” and her daughters, June and Louise. Rose sets her sights on making June a child star in Vaudeville during its waning days in the 1920s and 30s, and when June rebels, Rose turns to the lesser talent, Louise. Louise eventually becomes Gypsy Rose Lee, the burlesque queen and show business legend whose memoirs formed the basis for the musical’s story.

 Gypsy is one of the most acclaimed American musicals, with rabid fans and distinguished critics who call it the best ever. It was specifically developed for Ethel (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”) Merman in 1959, and she was followed by other powerhouse actresses in the part of Rose, including Rosalind Russell, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and Tyne Daley.

 The show was created by a one-time combination of Broadway legends: music by Julie Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Arthur Larents (West Side Story), who also directed two of its subsequent Broadway productions.  The original and revivals were showered with awards. Several of its songs became standards. 

Apart from hearing Ethel Merman sing its best-known tune, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on every conceivable TV variety show (the natural heir to Vaudeville) as a child in the early 60s, I knew nothing about this play. I suspect Merman played Rose more heroically than Dianne Zuleger does in this North Coast Rep production, and to her credit and that of director Xande Zublin-Meyer, neither softens the edges of the character or the story.

 Rose is relentless and hard-driving, with a selfless dedication to her children that is ultimately selfish, and the product of her own frustrated dreams. She has moments of appearing admirable, as when she complains to a producer that he interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. “You’re always in the middle of a sentence,” he retorts.

 But the costs paid by her children are also on view. While Rose is a character that remains relevant—check out those child beauty pageant videos, or just go to a Little League game—I couldn’t respond to this treatment, which by now felt familiar, mawkish and tediously extended.

 The production does try to give a sense of vaudeville, that classic American amalgamation of song and dance, comedy teams, novelty and animal acts. There’s even an old fashioned theatrical curtain across the North Coast Rep stage. 

Zublin-Meyer and everyone concerned get extra credit just for managing the logistics of it all, with a large cast of children, seniors and all ages in between, plus a dog, a very large cow with very large eyes, and a duck (I loved the duck—the best vaudeville trick trotted out in the often entertaining but sometimes baffling set pieces between scenes.)

 But for all the show biz, the play seemed a creaky and tenuous platform. There’s a joke in Rose sending her daughters out with basically the same cheesy act for years, but that doesn’t make it easier to sit through variations of it several times, even with different charming performers.

 The 90 minute first act feels very long, and it doesn’t create any real musical sparks until Louise (Christina Comer) and June (Nanette Voss) sing “If Momma Was Married,” which for me was the single musically thrilling moment of the evening—the kind of moment that’s unique to live musicals.

 There are some fine voices in the cast, so it was frustrating that Comer and David Powell as Rose’s long-suffering partner Herbie didn’t have more to sing. Comer’s Louise transforming from supposed ugly duckling to teasing swan was a highlight, though I would have appreciated it more if it had occurred about an hour sooner.

 North Coast Rep regulars like Adina Lawson, Anders Carlson, Evan Needham were solid, and Kyle Ryan’s dance number with Comer was gracefully executed. The opening night crowd was enthusiastic, but I didn’t feel the show itself generating much energy. The live band had flashes of adequacy. Perhaps a faster pace and tighter production will evolve during the run.

 Tom Phillips is musical director (with effective attempts to suggest the 20s and 30s), and Heather Sorter the choreographer. Daniel Lawrence designed scenery and lights. Gypsy runs weekends until June 19.

 For the curious: In reality, Gypsy Rose Lee had a singular career. After beguiling international audiences with her sophisticated strip-teases, she appeared in a few movies and became a Hollywood celebrity, mystery novelist, humanitarian activist and San Francisco TV talk show host. She died in 1970.

 Her sister, the actual runaway daughter June of Gypsy, became June Havoc, movie (My Sister Eileen, Gentlemen’s Agreement) and TV actress (a regular on “Search for Tomorrow” and briefly on “General Hospital”) as well as an author, playwright and Tony-nominated director. She died in 1991.

This North Coast Weekend

Not a lot of activity this weekend, but certainly a variety. North Coast Rep opens the musical Gypsy tonight (Thursday) at 8 (bottom photo). Directed by Xande Zublin-Meyer, it features Dianne Zuleger, David Powell, Christina Comer and Nanette Voss, with musical direction by Tom Phillips. Performances continue on Fridays and Saturdays, with 2 pm Sunday matinees on May 30, June 6 and June 13.

Now in its second and final weekend,the Dell’Arte International School MFA’s present their Thesis Festival (top photo.) There are four original works, all presented at each performance: an “investigation into the rhythm of tension and the nature of fear,” a surrealistic comedy, a comic meta-operetta, and a day in the life of three eccentric clowns. All performances are at 8, Thursday through Sunday in the Carlo: May 20-23.

At the Arcata Playhouse, the final Playhouse Family Fun Series presentation is Monkey King: A Circus Adventure by the San Francisco Circus Center's Clown Conservatory. This is the same group that brought an Alice in Wonderland circus adaptation to the Playhouse last year. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7pm, Sunday at 2.

Marking the Twains

The Twains Meet! Never the Twains shall meet, you say? I beg to differ, for here they are: left to right top row, that's a portrait of Mark Twain, then the Cal Pritner version. Bottom left is the most famous Twain impersonator, Hal Holbrook, who won a Tony and an Emmy, and revived his Broadway show just a few years back. Finally, Jarry Hardin, as Twain with Counsellor Troi aboard the Enterprise. This role for Star Trek: The Next Generation inspired him to create and tour his own one-Twain show.  He appeared at Center Arts/HSU a few years back in a play about the Scopes trial that also featured Ed Asner and John deLancie.

Samuel Clemens, known as Mark Twain, was born in 1835 in the tiny town of Florida, Missouri, then numbering 100 citizens, and now down to 9. Cal Pritner, who pretends to be Mark Twain, was born 100 years later in 1935, nearby in the somewhat larger Kansas City. In this centennial year of Twain’s death, Pritner brought one of his one-Twain shows, Mark Twain: Traveling, to a sellout crowd at the Arcata Playhouse recently, for his third appearance there.

In addition to his work as an actor (including a featured role in Robert Altman’s movie about his home town, Kansas City), Pritner has a distinguished career as a teacher, administrator and mentor to various theatre notables, such as our own Dell’Artisan, Michael Fields. He started the theatre program at the University of Illinois, out of which came many of the stalwarts of the now legendary Chicago troupe, Steppenwolf.

Even with unfamiliar tales, this show fulfills expectations of Twain as a wry humorist and observer of the textures of earlier times. One reason that Twain adapts well to one performer stage shows is that he created and performed them himself, in several tours around the world. Pritner’s show pretends to be one of Twain’s lectures, though Pritner also took stories from Twain’s travel writing as well as his lectures. Pritner’s other Twain show is about race and racism.

Among the books Pritner has authored is How to Speak Shakespeare, and while Twain’s prose presents fewer difficulties (no couplets or anything), his rich 19th century vocabulary requires clarity and interpretation. Pritner did that so well that eventually he had the crowd audibly responding to his every sentence. That he looks the part also helped.

In important ways, Twain was the first authentic literary voice of the American West, and even with the pleasing but unfamiliar vocabulary, it’s clear that voice still connects with an audience that’s about as far west as you can get. With his irony, mixture of sharp description and fantasy, his moral sense that related the usually ignored ordinary people to the cosmos, as well as his narrative voice, Twain influenced a lot of American literature of the past century. That especially includes our twentieth-to-twenty-first century Twain, Kurt Vonnegut.

Pritner is nevertheless not the only Twain you might meet. The most famous is Hal Holbrook, who did the whole Twain: the funny yarns, the sometimes harsh social and political commentary, and the insightful stories from childhood. Jarry Hardin played Twain in a Star Trek: Next Generation story, and liked it so much he created his own traveling one-Twain show. Hardin performed at HSU several years ago (though not as Twain) in a play about the Scopes “Monkey Trial” that featured Ed Asner and another Star Trek alumnus, John (“Q”) de Lancie.

A Modest Tutorial

I don't have advanced degrees in any aspect of theatre, and scant experience in productions. But neither does William Goldman, who got his education and experience in writing. I have long admired his book on Hollywood and screenwriting, Adventures in the Screen Trade, but I had never read his book on a year of Broadway theatre (1967-68) called The Season. Until about a month ago.

Like Adventures, it's fun to read, well-crafted and opinionated. And again, I don't agree with all his opinions, but there was one observation that jumped out at me that I agreed with completely--because I had said exactly the same thing in this 2009-10 season on the North Coast.

Goldman was writing about the staging of a musical that failed, directed by a famous name with major credentials. Goldman complained that "he had the bulk of the action taking place on stage at a distance far removed from the audience, making the show, in a musical-comedy sense, all but invisible."

I said something like that, but here's the part that's nearly word-for-word: "Most musicals need to be brightly lit and played as close to the footlights as possible so that the audience can see and hear them."

That just makes sense, it's just extrapolation, as well as (I would guess) veteran lore. When I said it, I was just stared at as if speaking an alien language. Goldman got a different response, or at least he made one up, with the story about an encounter with three theatregoers after the show, that follows the above observation:

"Well, it's not as bad as they say," the first said. The second said, "I liked that patriotic number a lot." A man walking out ahead of them turned and said, "May I tell you why you liked that number?" The ladies nodded.

"Because it was done down by the footlights. You could see it."

"Yes!" all three ladies said, and they all but jumped up in the air on the word.

Since I was the man walking out ahead of them, I can swear to the veracity of the anecdote.

I suspect that part of why such observations seem alien is that they basically come from the experience of being in the audience, a point of view that both academics and professionals can too easily forget.

There are other such simple rules, violated at the peril of everything else that goes into a production. For example, the David Letterman rule: if you want the audience to laugh, keep the theatre temperature cool. People don't laugh when they're too warm and drowsy. (However, after attending an outdoor performance one cold clear night last week I would add the corollary, but not too cold. It's hard for people to laugh when their teeth are clenched.)

People stare at me when I mention this as well. But all the hard work, the actors' sweat, the creative blocking, the expensive scenery, the ads and the opening night buffet--they all depend on people laughing, and ventilation is dangerous to ignore.

Here's another Old School comedy rule: make sure there's a Laugher in the audience. Somebody who laughs out loud. It's not just that laughter is infectious, but that the audience needs permission to laugh. Especially these days, when the appropriate response to plays isn't always clear, and life is complicated--people may worry if they laugh at the wrong stuff, they will either embarass themselves or offend someone. So whenever possible, don't leave it to chance. Get a Laugher.

There was a great Laugher behind me at the preview of Glorious! at Redwood Curtain. In fact she was so loud that she nearly deafened me. That she was an actress, and the vocal coach of the leading lady, doesn't matter. The time to be embarrassed is after the show is a success, because people laughed. Assuming of course that it's funny (something else that was missing at that outdoor show.)

Of course, you don't have to listen to me. Or Bill Goldman. But don't say we didn't warn you.

Doom Boom: Don't Waste My Aocalypse

Pig Tree: a post-apocalyptic comedy in two acts played last weekend at the Arcata Playhouse—or rather, outside of it. Theatregoers were led from the Playhouse lobby into the cold night, to bleachers facing a set (a bench, steel desk and a few other pieces), in front of a few stylized bare trees and the cement wall of a real building.

 It gradually emerged that the actors in tattered clothes (Sarah Peters and Adam Curvin) were playing former servants who remained at the aristocratic house they served, even after some unspecified apocalypse. Their employer (“the Laird”) is missing, apparently along with almost everyone--except for two thugs on bikes (Scott Simmons, Eric Puttre), a self-appointed boss called Potts (James Peck, also the playwright) and Pap (Ben Clifton), his minion with the convenient hunchback he beats.

 All the actors performed admirably—especially Peters and Curvin-- and the outdoor arena allowed for some effects less likely indoors, including tall shadows created by Michael Foster’s lighting.

But the setting, the style, the story screamed meanderingly of attempted Samuel Beckett, plus minor acrobatics. For me, a determined imitation of Waiting for Godot needed more than some poetic dialogue and a familiar rendering of power relationships to justify freezing for art.

 After the one hour first act, I joined the 20 or so hardy souls who returned for the remaining 45 minutes, but when Pozzo reappeared beating Lucky—sorry, Potts beating Pep—I headed for warmer pastures, perhaps missing the moral of the story.

 I don’t want to fall into the trap of praising the pleasing execution of basically lightweight fare like Glorious! or Man of La Mancha, while dwelling on perceived flaws of plays that attempt something different. In some ways, Pig Tree was textbook “theatre of the absurd”, but audiences don’t come from textbooks, and this needed to do more than illustrate the form. Though well-executed, for me this experiment raised more expectations than it met.

 That partly had to do with the premise. Several plays done locally over the past few years involved doomsday, often as a starting point, including more than one at the Arcata Playhouse. Maybe there should be a festival of them—“The Apocalypse Playhouse: Where the world ends, and the fun begins!” It has built-in drama, but I wonder if it’s getting too easy.

 Some 20th century literature saw partly in the blasted landscapes of two world wars the evidence of civilization as frenzied wasteland, piling up its own doom. But there were also elements of the cautionary tale—of warning—that implied there was still time to prevent apocalypse.

 These days, particularly in books about climate cataclysm I’ve been reviewing elsewhere, some kind of apocalyptic future is seen as probable, if not inevitable, and not far away. People may deny it, but they feel it. It may not happen, but it seems to be gradually getting real. It is something people may have to make a life within. I think this raises the bar for apocalyptic stories on stage. Not that they can’t employ humor, but we need them to say something new, something useful.

 Humboldt Light Opera Company presents the musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the CR Forum Theatre Friday at 7:30, continuing Fridays and Saturdays through May 15, with Sunday matinees at 2 on May 9 and 16. I received no advance information on this show as NC Journal theatre columnist either from HLOC or the Journal. Apparently (from what I read in the paper) the show includes some celebrity ringers as spelling bee contestants. I wasn't asked for that either. I pretty much knew where I stood in North Coast celebrity terms--apart from how funny I find that idea to begin with--but when I don't get information, let alone an invitation to review, repeatedly, it kind of discourages the attempt. It certainly has discouraged this one.

Glorious Debut for New Redwood Curtain Theatre

Lynne Wells plays Florence Foster Jenkins, the operatic singer who was so bad she was great, in Glorious!, the comedy that inaugurates Redwood Curtain’s new theatre in Eureka.

 Jenkins, who died in 1944, was a real if forgotten footnote to the New York City musical and society scene, until she became the subject of three plays in this decade based on her life, or at least her legend. The North Coast has now hosted two of the three.

 In 2008, Humboldt Light Opera did Souvenir by Stephen Temperley, with Carol Ryder as Florence and Kevin Richards as her longtime piano accompanist, Cosme McMoon. As I recall, it was told mostly from McMoon’s perspective, and accented by Jean Bazemore’s direction and Gerald Beck’s moody set, it maintained a sense of wonder about this woman and her effect, and explored what I suspect most musicians fear: that what they hear in their head is not what comes out of their mouths or their instrument.

 Glorious! is different—it is completely a comedy, adding three comic characters to the mix. Bob Wells plays St. Clair, a British-born itinerant actor who is Florence’s companion. When he learns the young McMoon grew up in Chicago during Prohibition, he exclaims “You must be thirsty.” That pretty much sums up this character, and Bob Wells performs it with judicious hilarity.

 Dorothy is a middle-aged friend with her own artistic pretences (and a dog), played by Bonnie Halverson with an oblivious bright-eyed enthusiasm that’s mesmerizing. Maria is the Spanish-speaking maid no one understands, and while this is hardly original or even very funny in itself anymore, it’s amazing how the old bits can still work, and Elisa Abelleria skillfully plays them with the attitude and timing to earn the laughs. Pamela Lyall has an effective scene as the comic villain, Mrs. Verrinder-Gedge.

 Directors Peggy Metzger and Clint Rebik have nicely balanced the comic tones of the characters. This script (by Peter Quilter) gets around the mystery of why Jenkins was such a sensation by suggesting her biggest fans (like Cole Porter) were gay, so she was camp. He accents this by emphasizing that pianist Cosme McMoon is gay and that Florence has no idea that he or anybody is, or what it means. Again the jokes aren’t original, and Larry Pitts as McMoon plays them pretty broadly, but the general comic energy seems to propel them well enough.

 So with the Manhattan society version of the cast from You Can’t Take It With You for support, Lynne Wells is free to build the central character as clueless but not really guileless. The comic moments of the exposition-laden first act, and even a well-managed big comic twist, are all just preliminaries to the musical numbers.

 Since Carol Ryder is principally a singer, Souvenirs provided a certain substance to exploring the musical mystery of Florence. But Lynne Wells is principally an actor, and appropriately so for Glorious!, she goes full out for comedy in these numbers, accentuating Florence’s dramatic seriousness and determination, as she not only sings expansively but acts out operatic scenes in astounding costumes.

 She has the audience rooting for her. These scenes are well supported by the direction and Amy Echeverria’s costumes, but basically they are Lynne Wells unleashed. Particularly in the Carnegie Hall concert scene, she careens across the wide stage, singing with full-throated sincerity and outrageous awfulness. Florence’s triumph is doubled by that of Lynne Wells, in a stellar performance.

 Scenic design is by Daniel C. Nyri, lighting by Michael Burkhart, sound by Jon Turney. And if you haven’t figured out the play’s meaning, not to worry, the author spells it out for you at the end.

 As for the new theatre, it’s been a long time coming, but Redwood Curtain finally is in its new theatrical home down on the waterfront in Eureka, between C and D on First Street. There’s parking on the side and nearby, with the walk-in entrance in the back, from Snug Alley. Because the building is long and narrow, the stage configuration is unusual—very wide, not very deep, facing the eighty or so seats on the other wide side.

 I still remember the first Redwood Curtain production I saw, which I believe was also their first: Terrence McNally’s provocative, dour yet oddly exciting A Perfect Ganesh, in the Eagle House. I was new to the North Coast then, and so much seemed possible.

 Glorious! at Redwood Curtain continues Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights through May 15.

 Coming Up: Pig Tree, an apocalyptic comedy by Dell'Arte International faculty member James Peck, plays May 6, 7 & 8 outdoors behind the Humboldt Creamery Building, in conjunction with the Arcata Playhouse.

 The HSU 10 Minute Play Festival does its final weekend, Thursday through Saturday, at Gist. Humboldt Light Opera Company continues The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee in the College of the Redwoods Forum Theater Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30, and Sundays at 2, until May 16.

This North Coast Weekend

At Ferndale Rep, the annual Teen Show this year is Beyond the Fringe, April 30 and May 1 at 8, and May 2 at 2pm. I am impressed by the boldness and taste of this choice—it is such sophisticated humor, and so British. A Broadway hit in the early 60s, it starred a young foursome who individually became icons: Jonathan Miller (far left in photo) became an author and TV, stage and opera director; Alan Bennett has become a major playwright; Dudley Moore (foreground) became a movie star (Arthur, etc.) after teaming with Peter Cook (far right) for a couple of films (the original Bedazzled) and Brit TV series--the excerpts I've seen are some of the funniest bits ever.

But when they did this show, they had simply been four of the funniest student performers at Oxford and Cambridge. Peter Cook, the least "successful" of the group later, wrote most of the sketches, and was regarded by the others as the funniest. Together with David Frost's Brit TV series That Was the Week That Was, and Richard Lester's early movies (including the two Beatles films), this show not only launched a new style of British satirical humor in the UK and internationally, but sparked a taste for a U.S. approach. Still, with one or two exceptions, this style remained decidedly British.

The Beyond the Fringe performers were heroes to members of Monty Python, and gods to Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who) and his generation. The Oxbridge connection is clearly in the humor, especially in the absurdities of language. Both Oxford and Cambridge were 20th century centers of language philosophies--Beyond the Fringe even has a satire on philosophers starring Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore.

Again, I congratulate these students for engaging this material. It's great to know the work of these comic greats--so different from the sad run of comedy today--still lives on.

Update: Well, I stand corrected. It turns out this show is a combination of Monty Python and Beyond the Fringe sketches, with the numerical emphasis on the Monties.

12th Annual 10 Minute Play Festival at HSU, always a popular show, begins its two weekend run tonight (Thursday, April 29). Just six plays this time, but it's a veteran group of student playwrights, directors and actors--graduate student and producer Alex Gradine has been part of five annual Festivals. Photo above is Omari Howard (his third Festival), Everado Cuevas and Sarah Dwyer in A Life at the End of the Tunnel by Mackenzie Cox (her fourth), directed by Steven Robert King (at least his third.) The Festival runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 in Gist Hall Theatre this weekend and next, with a matinee this Sunday, May 2, at 2 pm.

Books: Theatre Craft

Theatre Craft: A Director's Companion from A to Z
by John Caird
Faber & Faber paperback, 797 pages

Born in Canada and with his first theatrical experience there, John Caird has directed extensively in the UK as well as in Japan and Sweden: classics with the Royal Shakespeare Company, musicals, television, pretty much the gamut. He's done adaptations, fringe theatre, opera, World Wildlife Fund fundraisers. So he knows the territory.

And indeed, this book is organized as an A to Z guide (though it gives out at W; "there must be dozens of really good Zoroastrian theatre companies but I've never seen their work.") Caird is witty and he may be wise, but I'm not sure how useful this book really can be, organized in this way. I can see a young director looking up "Design and Designers," but when stumped, who is likely to look up the six pages on "Denouement?"

Even the "Design and Designers" pages may have limited value, in that they seem to describe a particular kind of theatrical organization, probably not applicable to every kind everywhere. I suspect a lot of this will be lost on American directors, and certainly on theatres that don't count the proper use of animals on stage as one of their typical problems.

But there are categories of more universal usefulness, from "Rehearsing a Play " and "scrims" to "Verse and Verse Speaking." The usefulness of these depend on what you already know, and what his writing suggests to you. They are in no way definitive. Some entries, like "Pace and Rhythm," are pathetically short and not necessarily to the point. Were I directing, I would not depend on this book, though I might consult it.

The cover begins with a blurb by the great Judi Dench: "This book is written with such humour and common sense that I may have to carry it around with me all the time." Well, Dame Judi may be bossing James Bond around these days, but she probably still would require an assistant to carry this huge volume, even in paperback. It's a badly made book to boot--hard to hold, hard to keep open, but it feels flimsy enough that to really crack it open might break the binding. That makes it physically difficult to simply read this book, for pleasure as well as practical advice. Of course, there is the humour.

This North Coast Weekend

Motion Collage, the annual dance concert from HSU Theatre, Film & Dance is performed for one weekend only, Thursday (April 15) through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 in the Van Duzer. Dances range from social commentary to comedy (a water ballet on dry land) and traditional dances from the Yucatan. Though the local press (except for the Arcata Eye) apparently doesn't care, this is the only dance event of its kind in Humboldt County for the entire year. It's really too bad the Eureka papers didn't bother to note it, since these authentic dances from the Yucatan might appeal to some of the growing Mexican American population. More information and photos at HSU Stage.

Iphigenia Must Die, based on a play by Euripides, is the Dell’Arte School annual presentation on tragedy by second year students. “Tragedy was born in a time when the gods were believed to have some control over our destinies," said director Joan Schirle. “What the students are hoping to do is create a tragic vision that works for today-- that admits a inextricable link between free will, Fate, and human choice.” Performances are Thursday through Sunday at 8 pm in the Carlo, on the now standard pay-what-you-will basis. 668-5663.

Jeff DeMark performs his Writing My Way Out of Adolescence, the show that started it all, at 7:30 pm on Saturday (April 17) at Redwood Yogurt in Arcata. He’s joined by singer songwriter Josephine Johnson and guitarist Andrew Goff, playing before the show and in it as well.

Ferndale Rep continues Man of La Mancha, which I reviewed in this week's NC Journal, and Beti Trauth reviews in Tri-City. This is North Coast Rep's final weekend for its production of Doubt: A Parable.

Auditions

Ferndale Rep is bringing in guest artist, Director/Choreographer, Millicent Johnnie, to direct its production of Rent. Preliminary auditions will be held on Saturday April 17th and Saturday April 24th at the St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1675 Chester Avenue Arcata, CA 95521-6827. From 11am – 3pm. By Appointment Only. To make an appointment email FRT Executive Director Ginger Gene at ggene@ferndale-rep.org or call 707.786.5483.There are both male and female singing lead parts, in addition to many chorus roles for men and women. A cast of fifteen, between the ages of 18 and 30is required for the play. Audition Requirements: The first round of auditions will be video taped and consist of singing only. We are asking each auditioner to prepare one of four available selections from the show.Sheet music is available in Ferndale at FRT, 447 Main St. Ferndale CA 95536.Sheet music is available in Eureka from Musical Director Nan Voss, nanettevoss@gmail.com.

North Coast Repertory Theatre announces open auditions for Over The River And Through The Woods, a comedy by Joe DiPietro, directed by Rae Robison. There are roles for two men and two women aged 55 or older; one man aged 20’s to 30’s; and one woman aged 20’s to 30’s. Please be prepared to do cold readings from the script. Prepared monologues are optional but always appreciated. Auditions will take place Saturday, May 1 at 4pm and Sunday, May 2 at 6pm at NCRT, 300 Fifth Street in Eureka. Production dates are July 22 through August 14, 2010. Please call 268-0175 if you have any questions.

A Quixotic Triumph: Man of La Mancha

If ever a role and a North Coast performer seemed made for each other, it’s Don Quixote in the musical Man of La Mancha, and Brad Curtis. In the current Ferndale Repertory Theatre production, that dream is not impossible—it’s fulfilled.

 The frequent star of Humboldt Light Opera, North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep productions, Curtis has the looks, voice and bearing of a leading man. But he can also act, and he commits to shaping a character. So at a given moment, his Quixote is somewhere between addled and innocent, deluded and shrewd, confused and committed.

 Curtis also plays the author Cervantes in the framing story (telling of Quixote’s adventures while in prison), with a little earthier mixture of practical bravado and ironic humility (“I did not have the courage to believe in nothing.”)

 The emotional high point of the play—not surprisingly—is Quixote singing “The Impossible Dream” to start the second act, and Curtis nails it. As Aldonza (the serving wench Quixote decides is his ideal lady, Dulcinea), Andrea Zvaleko again astonishes with her powerful acting and singing, providing the other emotionally resonant moments.

 In the mostly comedic first act, John Ludington shines as a vaudeville Sancho Panza, while Kyle Ryan stands out in his brief but bracing scene as the cowardly barber. In one of those sneakily crucial roles, Steve Sterback is steady and believable as the innkeeper, and Danielle Cichon’s sinuous dance enlivens the second act.

 The cast as a whole performs admirably, with most excelling in their group and choreographed scenes, and their individual moments. Ginger Gene directs with both a command of the whole and attention to detail. In the musical comedy genre, this production is an artistic and technical triumph for all, including Dianne Zuleger as musical director and conductor of the live band, Daniel Nyiri as scenic designer, Michael Foster’s lighting, Lori Knowles and Ginger Gene’s costumes, Jasper Anderton’s fight choreography.  A special shout-out for the clarity and support of both the speaking and singing by sound designers Ian Schatz and Dillon Savage, and sound board operator John Riddenour.

 The Ferndale production provides solid musical theatre entertainment, especially if you aren’t bothered by a certain dramatic sketchiness in the play. Admirers of Cervantes might also point out that in this script Quixote has not been adapted so much as kidnapped. Despite lifted lines, including some from Cervantes deathbed note, this play turns Cervantes’ satire of heroic romance into heroic romance. Still, it’s more ambitious than usually credited, and the music, while mostly forgotten, was innovative. But it’s the energy, judgment and skill of this Ferndale production that stands out.

 Coming Up: Jeff DeMark performs his “Writing My Way Out of Adolescence,” the show that started it all, at 7:30 pm on Saturday (April 17) at Redwood Yogurt in Arcata. He’s joined by singer songwriter Josephine Johnson and guitarist Andrew Goff, playing before the show and in it as well.

 Iphigenia Must Die, based on a play by Euripides, is the Dell’Arte School annual presentation on tragedy by second year students. “What the students are hoping to do is create a tragic vision that works for today, that admits a inextricable link between free will, Fate, and human choice,” said director Joan Schirle. Performances are Thursday through Sunday at 8 pm in the Carlo, on the now standard pay-what-you-will basis. 668-5663.

 Motion Collage, the annual dance concert from HSU Theatre, Film & Dance is performed for one weekend only, Thursday (April 15) through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 in the Van Duzer. Dances range from social commentary to comedy (a water ballet on dry land) and traditional dances from the Yucatan. HSUStage.blogspot.com.

 On longer-range radar: I stopped by Redwood Curtain’s new theatrical home at 220 First Street (between C and D) in Old Town, Eureka, as Clint Rebik and crew were busily applying paint and otherwise preparing for the opening show: the comedy Glorious! starring Lynne Wells as Florence Foster Jenkins, a singer so bad she was great. Co-directed by RC founders Rebik and Peggy Metzger, it features Bob Wells, Bonnie Halverson, Larry Pitts, Elisa Abelleira and Pamela Lyall. It opens April 29, and continues Thursdays through Saturdays until May 15. The theatre has fewer than 100 seats, so advance tickets are recommended. 443-7688, www.redwoodcurtain.com.

 Also opening on April 29 is the annual HSU Ten Minute Play Festival, for two weekends in Gist Hall Theatre.  By then the fate of HSU theatre may have been decided, as the university looks to cut programs to save money.

Stage Matters Special: Humboldt Staged Marathon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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