This North Coast Weekend

 

Just in time to motivate votes for Big Bird, Redwood Curtain presents a satirical comedy about a PBS children's show based on a true story.  Dusty and the Big Bad World is by Cusi Cram, and is directed by Jyl Hewston.  Featured players are Dianne Zuleger, Tisha Sloan, Nathan Emmons and Carrie Hudson, and introducing Alissa Barthel playing the 11-year old Lizzie Goldberg-Jones.

Previews are Thursday and Friday (Oct. 25-6) and official opening night is Saturday, all starting at 8 p.m.  Performances continue Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights through November 17, with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. on Nov. 11.

Dell'Arte presents its Macabre Cabaret Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights (Oct. 26-8) at 8 p.m. in the Carlo.  It features Michael Fields, Ronlin and Lydia Foreman, Laura Munoz, Nicholette Routhier, Lynnie Horrigan, Pratik Motwani and special guest Debbie MacMahon, "along with some folks who came back to life just for this occasion."

Dell'Arte invites the audience to come in costume and be entered in a raffle.  "A full bar, with drinks served at your seat," should suggest the appropriate mood.

In other news, the big fat Centennial edition of The Dramatist, the Dramatist Guild magazine, is out. In addition to a number of known playwrights recalling the plays that first inspired them, there's a cartoon by Mark Krause that says quite a lot about the state of playwriting today.  It purports to display Future Playwriting Awards.  They are the awards for Smallest Cast, Simplest Technical Needs and Highest Theatrical Subsidiary Rights.  The awards may be in the future, but that's the rueful reality now. 

This North Coast Weekend

Women of the Northwest continues with its second and final weekend at the Arcata Playhouse.  I'll add one point to my generally expository and laudatory review: I felt at the time, and that impression has returned, that the section on prostitutes was the one place where the history was overromanticized.  This group scene made it sound like these were empowered women running the equivalent of a restaurant.  The reality was likely a lot more complicated, and unhealthy.

Also continuing (and ending) this weekend: In the Next Room (The Vibrator Play)  at Ferndale Rep, and The Laramie Project at Eureka High.

Women of the Northwest

Women of the Northwest, on stage at the Arcata Playhouse, celebrates 14 or so individual women in local history. But in performance, the lively, inventive, and relatively brief vignettes about them do something more: they shine a different light on that history itself.

 Many of these women are appropriately remembered for individual accomplishments. Elta Cartwright, a track star at Eureka High (which itself made history by becoming the first high school to allow girls to run races in shorts) became the first woman in America to qualify for the 1928 Olympics.

 As Mayor of Eureka from 1926 to 1931, Emily Jones was the first female mayor west of the Mississippi. After Martella Cone Lane moved to Fortuna with her husband in 1899, she revealed the redwoods to the world in her paintings.

 Emma Freeman was a prominent photographer who chronicled Eureka and Humboldt scenes from 1907 to 1920. Known as “The Lady of the Hills,” Margaret Smith Cobb lived in the wilderness near Garberville in those years, and wrote poems and romantic novels that were championed by Jack London.

 Susie Baker Fountain, columnist for the Arcata Union and the Blue Lake Advocate through the 1950s, collected a century of Humboldt County history. Humboldt State claims her as its first graduate in 1915, and houses her historical records in its library.

Stella Patterson, who came north after the San Francisco earthquake, had a full life but found herself alone in 1946 at age 80. She decided to live in an isolated cabin in the mountains on the Klamath River west of Happy Camp, where the two miners who were her nearest neighbors called her simply “Dear Mad’m.” That became the title of her book about the experience, which is still available.
 “I have lived the life I wanted,” she says in this play, “and the life I’ve loved.”

 The core cast of 12 actors presented aspects of these women’s lives, and storyteller Charlene Storr honored her grandmother, Sadie Gorbet (Tolowa), who at the age of 72 was the only Native American in the California delegation to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She counseled her family to take the good parts of their tradition and of the modern world, and throw the rest away.

 Besides historical figures, the play depicts some legendary ones as well as composite characters and representative figures (a telephone operator, prostitutes, suffragettes.) Historical material was gathered and shaped by Jackie Dandeneau, Edith Butler and Tammy Rae Scott, but the presentation was created by the actors. They came up with an entertaining, very theatrical combination of monologues, dialogues, dramatic and comedic scenes, music and movement, plus bustling and lyrical meditations on themes such as food and motherhood.

 The first act was mostly a mosaic of lives, ending with a memorable moment: members of the Native Women’s Collective sang some of the songs associated with the Flower Dance, a coming of age ceremony for girls that local tribes basically have in common. Reviving this dance has been a priority for at least 15 years, as I recall.  They also spoke of the needs it addresses to restore a sense of self-respect, support and belonging to young women.

 The second act had more thematic threads, culminating in a final evocation of childbirth and motherhood, children and the lineage of women. Though the actors typically play several roles each, there were strong individual moments.

 With that peculiar 1930s diction, Dandeneau conveyed the scary if somewhat comic authority of Mayor Jones. Laura Munoz moved easily from an American Indian woman known only as one of Emma Freeman’s favorite photographic subjects to Antoinette Chartin, a cultured French woman who became one of the first non-Native pioneers in Blue Lake of the 1870s, opening a hotel there with her husband. Ali Freedlund was a spirited Elta Cartwright.

The most amazing feature of Siena Nelson’s performance as a cowboy who was secretly female (a not uncommon subterfuge) wasn’t her perfect gait and vocal cadence: it was the hardness in her eyes. There were vivid performances by Jada Owen and Ciara Cheli Collado in the final thematic sections. Musicians Julie Froblom, Jill Petricca, Dharla Curry and Jan Bramlett joined the action as needed. Other onstage participants were Tammy Rae Scott and Rebecca Zettler.

 These roughly two hours did not offer complete portraits, nor were all ethnic groups and occupations represented. But by including themes from women’s lives that influence common events, this production as a whole evokes in dynamic fashion a dimension of experience often neglected in the usual histories.

From a rhythm of life revealed by cooks for a lumber camp to the “river of blood” of childbirth, the play suggests a perspective it is vital to include. Set design is by Siena Nelson, lighting by David Ferney, costumes by Lydia Foreman. Women of the Northwest continues at the Arcata Playhouse Friday and Saturday (Oct. 19-20) at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. before shows in Petrolia Oct. 27 and Briceland Oct. 28.

Additional Notes: A Preview

Women of the Northwest features a dozen actors portraying at least that many women who figured in local history from 1900 to the 1930s and beyond. Actor/writer Jacqueline Dandeneau, researcher Tammy Rae Scott and historian Edith Butler got the project started this summer, but the cast combined to shape the final show. The Native Women’s Collective is also involved.

 “We tell some of the stories through song and movement,” Dandeneau said, “so it’s not all talking heads, which is the danger with a history piece.”

Women involved in logging, mining, ranching and politics, as well as teachers, artists, athletes, mothers, prostitutes and even a stage coach robber are all represented. “These pieces are about women who figured out—by necessity or from some spirit within them—how to live life on their own terms, given what terms might be available,” Edith Butler said.

For background on the women’s suffrage movement in Humboldt, they brought filmmaker Martha Wheelock up from L.A. Coincidentally, her film on the subject airs on KEET next Monday (Oct. 15) at 7:30 p.m. “She told us that it was the men in rural areas like Humboldt that made the difference in voting for women’s suffrage,” Dandeneau said.

 It was in 1912, exactly 100 years ago, that women voted in their first California election (they didn’t get to vote for federal candidates until 1920.) “So we’re hoping to have the League of Women Voters registering voters in the lobby for our shows,” she said. “There are a lot of women’s issues right at the top of this year’s election—things that have been assumed, and things that have been fought for.” By Humboldt women, among others.

Women Ruhl: The Vibrator Play

Edison’s electricity was just beginning to transform middle class American life in the early 20th century. This is the setting for In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl, now on stage at Ferndale Repertory Theatre.

The fictional Dr. Givings (played convincingly by Calder Johnson) has designed what today would be known simply as a vibrator, in order to treat hysterical symptoms in women. The joke in this play is that (with one or two possible exceptions) none of the characters—male or female—has today’s understanding of the vibrator’s effects in stimulating sexually pleasurable orgasm.

 What Dr. Giving’s patients experience was described as tension released in “hysterical paroxysm.” That one idea could easily organize a kind of farce, and there are predictably comic moments. But Ruhl does more, by exploring the mores and relationships that follow from this disconnect.

 Patient Sabrina Daldry (Megan Rae Johnson) gets her first vibrator treatment while Dr. Givings relates an interesting anecdote involving Benjamin Franklin. Meanwhile, in the parlor, the lively Mrs. Catherine Givings (Kelsey MacIlvaine) wonders what’s really going on, in her life as well as in the next room.

 There are plot threads involving a wet nurse (played by Ashley Russell) for Mrs. Givings baby, Dr. Giving’s nurse assistant (Greta Joan Stockwell), Sabrina Daldry’s husband (Jeremy Webb) and a male patient and artist (Bobby Bennett) who sets up contrasts of art and science.

 This play (first produced in 2010) could be described as layered, or cluttered. It sometimes totters from the inspired to the insipid but Ruhl takes the history seriously, with inevitable contemporary resonance. There is enough originality, humor, humanity and poetry in this play and this production, directed by Rae Robison, to engage audiences and foster conversation. It’s an adult theme, but it’s treated within conventional theatrical standards.

 The first night show I saw went smoothly, and except for some vocal projection problems, the acting was at least adequate and sometimes eloquent. All the actors had good moments, with MacIlvaine and her character’s nervous energy moving the action forward.

There were particularly effective and moving scenes between Catherine (MacIlvaine) and Sabrina (Megan Johnson, who continues to add subtle new colors to her acting), and between Sabrina and nurse Annie (Greta Stockwell.)

 But the flow of it all often felt rudimentary, with performances not always accessibly related to each other and to the play as a whole. Perhaps it hadn’t quite jelled yet, or it’s the nature of the script. The play does seem to involve some difficult and dynamic balancing acts in mood and style, which this production manages pretty successfully.

 Liz Uhazy is scenic and lighting designer, Calder Johnson designed costumes, JM Wilkerson the sound. In the Next Room continues weekends at Ferndale Rep through October 21.

This North Coast Weekend

The San Francisco troupe called the Pi Clowns returns to the Arcata Playhouse with a new show, The Good the Bad and the Stupid, a Wild West romp with acrobatics, high speed horse races, dramatic duels, juggling, eccentric dance and live music. Members of the Pi Clowns include Bruce Glaseroff from Arcata and Tyler Parks from Fortuna.

Performances of this all-ages show are at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29, and 2 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 30. Arcata Playhouse impresario David Ferney cautions that last year’s shows sold out, so better advance tickets than sorry, at Wildwood Music, Wildberries, or 822-1575.

Continuing: The Fox on the Fairway at North Coast Rep.  My Journal review is here. 
Final weekend: Circle Mirror Transformation at Redwood Curtain.

The Fox on the Fairway

It was a chilly summer here on the North Coast but the early autumn is warm and sunny, so maybe it’s appropriate that the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka has begun its 29th season with a summer stock comedy about golf, The Fox on the Fairway. 

 This 2010 play by Ken Ludwig is given the full farce treatment by director David Moore, especially with lots of doors entering onto scenic designer Calder Johnson’s set. (Though the game is golf, the action is inside.) People running in and out of doors, chasing and avoiding each other, entering unexpectedly and leaving inconveniently—it’s the signature of stage farce. It’s basically the same setup as in NCRT’s 2009 production of Ludwig’s more famous Lend Me a Tenor.

In this story, Bingham (played by Anders Carlson) runs a country club that holds an annual golf tournament with a rival club run by “Dickie” (Phil Zastrow.) The two make a huge bet on the outcome. But the player Bingham was counting on has changed sides, and all seems lost until Justin (Michael Pietrelli), the callow young man Bingham has just hired as his assistant, turns out to be a golf prodigy. But of course complications ensue, involving Bingham’s business manager, Pamela (Jennifer Trustem), his wife, Muriel (Gloria Montgomery) and a club waitress and Justin’s fiancé, Louise (Kyra Gardner.)

 These descriptions soon turn out to only scratch the surface of their tangled relationships. Their pasts are prologue to the quickly unfolding events. Director Moore keeps it all moving fast whenever possible. The dialogue scenes depend on the comedic characterizations of the actors. Jennifer Trustem’s Pamela is straight out of a 1940s movie, the sweetly hard-drinking and wittily sensual woman with an innuendo for every occasion. Michael Pietrelli is the energetic movie juvenile and Kyra Gardner the winsome ingénue: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, but with modern neuroses.

 At the center of the action and the story is Anders Carlson. He had a key role in Lend Me a Tenor but this production completely revolves around his performance. He plays Bingham with a controlled, rolling frenzy, as a man of constant outrage reminiscent of “the boss” character in TV sitcoms from the 50s onward. It’s a physical and vocal tour de force, and the wonder isn’t just that he pulls it off, but that he does it without becoming insufferable.

 This seems to be accomplished partly by his genuine interactions with the other actors. Together they manage to make something human out of a cascade of contrivances. That includes the contributions of the always believable Gloria Montgomery in her few scenes, and Phil Zastrow, who seems to play Dickie as an affected pretend Englishman breezily unaware of his malapropisms or terrible taste in sweaters.

 The pleasures of the production and the wit of the script (with contrivances from Oscar Wilde as well as I Love Lucy) must race past basic credibility problems, like everything hinging on a bet for very high stakes witnessed by nobody. (And who exactly is the fox of the title?)

 Some of the revelations are at least foreshadowed (pretty obviously), but some developments seem like a child’s improbable improvisations while inventing a story with dolls or action figures (possibly waving golf clubs.) The appeal of Pietrelli and Gardner as the young lovers, and the older four as the love springs eternal ones, mostly overcome the clichés. As a farce, this play adds nothing new except perhaps greater latitude in naughty talk. For farce that actually expands the form, something from early Tom Stoppard or Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw more nearly fit the bill. But there are enough laughs here, plus charm and skill in this production, to extend a summery mood.

 Jenneveve Hood designed the strange and striking costumes. Michael Thomas designed the inventive sound, which is crucial to the story. The Fox on the Fairway continues at North Coast Rep Fridays and Saturdays through October 13 at 8 p.m., with a Thursday evening performance on October 11 and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on September 30 and October 7.

Circle Mirror Transformation

Long ago and far away, I was party to a conversation between two multi-talented and wise women of American drama, Corinne Jacker and Patricia Cobey. Lingering by a stone wall, gazing at the Atlantic ocean in the fading light of a long summer day at the O’Neill Center playwrights conference in Connecticut, they talked casually about the importance of theatre in their lives. “Whenever someone I know is having problems,” Cobey said, “I tell them to take an acting class. It always straightens you out. That’s where you learn that you can’t lie.”
 In Circle Mirror Transformation, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, four members of a small Vermont community gather for a creative acting class. We soon learn that Theresa (Wanda Stamp) is a recently transplanted would-be New York actress trying to get over an obsessive love affair. Schultz (Dmitry Tokarsky) is a recently divorced local, a bit awkward and secretly artistic. Lauren (Mira Eagle) is a high school student buried in her hoodie who wants to try out for West Side Story. James (Gary Sommers) is the still handsome gray-haired husband of the instructor, Marty (Adina Lawson.)

 After a few classes Lauren pointedly asks Marty if they are going to learn to act in a play. Marty says probably not. It’s fair warning for the audience, too. This is not the usual stage storytelling. But during the offbeat exercises as well as encounters before and after the six classes we witness, characters are excavated and discovered, relationships change, and there are consequences to revelations and self-revelations.

 Circle Mirror Transformations is one of four plays by contemporary American playwright Annie Baker that are set in this Vermont town. Three of them were staged in the Bay Area in the past year—this one just closed at the Marin Theatre. After successful productions in New York (where it won a couple of Obies), Washington and Los Angeles, it is becoming a regional theatre favorite.

 This play invites and also requires a different kind of attention. The actual plot is fairly simple, and even predictable in TV reality show outcomes. But the story is told by every movement, every stutter and change in body language. It’s in the silences, and the odd and sometimes wildly funny exercises.

These are theatre games—the play’s title is the name of one. Some involve one character pretending to be another. Some involve creating a group story. Others look like a cross between actors’ warm-ups and group therapy.

 Director Nathan Emmons and the cast make the necessary precision of depicting this look natural. There are short fragments and sustained scenes. The dialogue is mostly banal, laced with psychobabble. Some liken Baker’s work to Chekhov because nothing apparently happens, but I see more of Mamet and Pinter in the way the characters use dull received language as masks that reveal them anyway.
 (Considering my last column it is a coincidence however that Baker’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya was one of its New York productions this year.)

 It’s a different kind of comedy. But it is a comedy. At the end of all the accidental honesty there’s a happy conclusion of sorts. And it’s funny (despite the reluctance of the small preview audience I saw it with to join me in laughing.)

 I had problems with both the play and the production, but as long as audience members let go of conditioned expectations, this is an unusual and enjoyable two hours. The cast is skillful and endearing. I’d expect this is one that people will talk about.

 Daniel C. Nyiri designed the intentionally drab set (though maybe it didn’t have to be that drab.) Lighting is by Calder Johnson, the interesting sound design by Nathan Emmons, costumes by Laura Rhinehart.

 Circle Mirror Transformation continues at Redwood Curtain on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through September 29 at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee on September 23.

 More about the upcoming season: Ferndale Rep is going through a management shakeup but early indications are that they are sticking with their season as announced.

 At HSU, students are back and preparations are underway for Theatre, Film and Dance Department productions. The first is a special one-night reading on November 1 of 8: The Play by Dustin Lance Black, about the court case that overturned California Proposition 8 and its ban on same sex marriages. That case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Clint Rebik directs a cast from the North Coast theatre community.

 In late November, Rae Robison directs the classic Sanskrit love story Shankutala in a new adaptation by Margaret Thomas Kelso. In February, Michael Fields directs Hater, Samuel Buggeln’s adaptation for the 21st century of Moliere’s The Misanthrope. Then after the spring dance production and Humboldt Film Festival in April, Michael Thomas directs David Auburn’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, Proof.  Find out more about them at HSU Stage & Screen.

 Coming Up: Fox on the Fairway, a tribute to the stage and film farces of the 1930s and 40s by Ken Ludwig, opens at North Coast Rep on Thursday September 20.

Where Have You Gone, Uncle Vanya?

This is a considerably longer version of a column I wrote for the end of August, which was postponed due to space considerations until the Sept. 6 North Coast Journal.  But since the new theatre season is getting started by then, I thought I'd post this now, the traditional last weekend of summer.

As the 2011-12 theatrical season was ending, I took the opportunity to set aside the year's musicals, contemporary comedies and clown shows, for some different theatrical experiences.  Unfortunately my travel budget doesn’t even extend to Oregon, so I must bring contrasting productions home, where I can travel in time as well as space.

My interlude started when I ran across a movie version of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov on Turner Classic Movies. Featuring a young Vanessa Redgrave and David Warner, and James Mason in his prime, it is a luminous film directed in 1968 by Sidney Lumet. More famous for such movies as Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict, Lumet also made definitive film versions of a number of plays, including O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh, as well as 12 Angry Men and Equus.  Still, he regarded this as his best film (the TCM introducer said.)  TCM seems to be the only place it's available.

This prompted a kind of longing, especially when I realized that I hadn’t seen a Chekhov play ever on the North Coast, nor given the present configurations and situations of theatres here, is it ever likely I will. I checked around, and nobody could remember one here for maybe 25 years. Director, actor and professor James Floss recalled Pacific Art Center Theatre productions of The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters (with Terry Desch, Toodie Dodgen and Bonnie Bareilles,) both decades ago.

  It doesn’t take long for conversations with veteran North Coast actors to turn to the late lamented Pacific Art Center Theatre. It’s clear now that it left a niche in the local stage ecology that’s never been filled, not just for Chekhov but an array of classic modern playwrights.

I’ve seen Three Sisters on stage at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and two productions of The Cherry Orchard: one by Bulgarian-born director Mladen Kiselov at Carnegie Mellon University, and one at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2007, directed by Libby Appel, who did The Seagull at OSF this season.  I also was dramaturg for a production of several of Chekhov's short plays, directed by Margaret Thomas Kelso at a small college in central Pennsylvania where she taught before coming to HSU.

But the Chekhov play that grabbed me this summer was Uncle Vanya. Coincidentally (I later discovered on the Internet) there were two productions of Uncle Vanya in New York City this year, including a much-praised one at Lincoln Center featuring the film star Cate Blanchett, produced by her theatre company. Insert Chekhovian sigh here.

  My explorations were instead via DVD and VHS. I started with August, the 1996 film directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins. It transposes Uncle Vanya to Hopkins’ native Wales, pretty much intact. (It features Kate Burton, daughter of another famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton.) Outside the Russian milieu but in a corresponding context, it illuminates aspects of the play more sharply for English and American audiences. (Hopkins also composed the music.)

Next was Vanya on 42nd Street, the 1994 Louis Malle film of a production directed by Andre Gregory, starring Wallace Shawn (reuniting the trio that did the cult favorite My Dinner With Andre) and Julianne Moore, with lovely performances by Brooke Smith, Larry Pine, George Gaynes and Phoebe Brand.

The conceit here is that we’re witnessing a group of actors who’ve been exploring the play for many months in an abandoned old theatre. It starts with them arriving for a run-through, chatting with a few invited audience members, then with each other. And eventually you realize that this chat has actually become Chekhov—the play has started. Actor Peter Ustinov remarked that Chekhov’s characters are so self-absorbed that they don’t really relate to each other, and so the actors are all soloists. But in this intimate and low-keyed version, the actors and their characters do relate dramatically, even beyond a New York manner of exchanging accounts of their obsessions. It's a little like Chekhov as a Woody Allen movie.

This Vanya uses the adaptation by playwright David Mamet, as does a 1991 BBC version with Ian Holm, David Warner and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio which I’ve watched several times. Mamet gave the late 19th century dialogue a contemporary cadence, sharpening the humor and at times seemingly highlighting the relevance.  It's apparently the thing to do to use a new translation or version for a new production of any Chekhov, and a number of notable playwrights have done one or more versions, including Tom Stoppard.  Both Stoppard and Mamet have apparently done The Cherry Orchard, though I've seen or read neither.  (Stoppard's The Sea Gull is published in his collected works.)

The most startling contemporary relevance in Mamet's Uncle Vanya, is a speech by Doctor Astrov, who is passionately committed to saving the disappearing forest, partly because it moderates the climate:

“We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

It's startling of course because Chekhov was writing in the late 19th century, and people in our century are facing the consequences of ignoring even contemporary warnings.  But in the context of the play, it especially emphasizes for us now the themes of  dashed potential and waste throughout this play, and other Chekhov plays.  It also reflects Chekhov's including the future in the thoughts of a character in several plays.

So why multiple Vanyas, one after the other? Besides seeing and hearing how each of these great actors play these roles, there’s the experience of structure—not in the way directors may analyze it, but more like the way actors feel it. Acting in the same play multiple times in a run provides a unique sense of the play’s structure. Actors may see the play from their character’s point of view, but they experience the rhythm of it through their actions, their entrances and exits, and even where they take breaths. The structure of a Chekhov play in particular is difficult to absorb in a single performance, but it’s there. 

In 1958, the Moscow Art Theatre--originally, Stanislavsky's theatre that made Chekhov's plays famous--brought three of their latest Chekhov productions to London, where the great Kenneth Tynan reviewed them.  In considering the character of Uncle Vanya, Tynan zeroes in on his dignity.  "He clings to it even in the shooting spree, which becomes in its mad way a matter of honour, an assertion of principle rather than a display of temperament; and in tenacity like this there is a kind of heroism."  The actor's characterization in this production reminds Tynan of Don Quixote.  "This Vanya always looks capable of tragedy; his tragedy is that he is capable only of comedy."  This sense of Vanya does come out in these productions, particularly as played by Anthony Hopkins.

This Mamet version with Ian Holm is included in The Anton Chekhov Collection from the BBC, a multiple DVD set I've had on my Wish List for awhile and finally broke down and bought for myself.  There's also a 1970 production with Anthony Hopkins as Doctor Astrov, as well as a 1974 production of The Wood Demon, with Ian Holm.  This is an early version of Uncle Vanya with a lot of the same dialogue but very different structure.

There's something of a premiere here as well, of Chekhov's first known play, never produced in his lifetime.  Here it's called Platonov, starring Rex Harrison, broadcast in 1971.  It's long for Chekhov but much shorter than his original manuscript.  He wrote it in his 20s, about a kind of Russian provincial Don Juan.

There are several of Chekhov's early short comedies, including a one-act farce (The Wedding), in an English version by Eric Bentley.  Chekhov began as a writer of comic and satirical pieces for various periodicals, only gradually developing into the classic short story writer that made his literary reputation in Russia, and eventually worldwide. 

The first of Chekhov's great plays is The Seagull, represented here in a 1978 production, featuring Michael Gambon, Georgina Hale, Zoe Caldwell and Stephen Rea.  The ironies involved in Chekhov's experience with this play rival anything he wrote for the stage.  Early in this play, the son of a famous actress is staging an outdoor production of a play he's written, in revolt against the established theatre of his mother, and in favor of "new forms" for the future.  (This is a particularly effective scene in the Lumet movie, because Lumet could stage the outdoor scenes really outdoors.  This play within the play has the lake behind the country house as its backdrop, and Lumet shows us what this really looks like, with a makeshift stage in front of a real lake at sunset.)

But Chekhov's own new form of theatre had to undergo a year of struggle with official censors before it could be produced.  Then it opened with a theatre party celebrating a famous older actress who was not unlike the famous older actress in the play.  All her friends came, probably expecting to see her in the play.  But she wasn't, and it wasn't the kind of play she would have been in, or they were used to seeing.  So opening night was a disaster, and the production never recovered.  Chekhov vowed to give up the theatre forever.

But the Stanislavsky production two years later was a great success, and so Chekhov took another look at the manuscript for The Wood Demon, and quickly turned it into Uncle Vanya.

In this collection there's a 1970 production of Three Sisters with Eileen Atkins, Janet Suzman and Michele Dotrice (and I have another, an Actors Studio production, on VHS.)  There are two versions of The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov's last play. He died of tuberculosis not long after it opened in 1904, at the age of 44.  This play in particular has been interpreted in many ways.  The BBC collection has a 1962 production with John Gielgud, who also did the translation.  It also features a very young Judi Dench.  The 1981 production stars Judi Dench in a different part, and it won her several awards.

I ran across this paragraph about that 1962 production, which like several of these BBC television versions, was first done on stage.  It's about John Gielgud. " During The Cherry Orchard he became a kind of father-figure to some of the younger actors. Judi Dench had been bullied and mocked by [director] Saint-Denis in rehearsal, and was extremely nervous on the first night. As she prepared to go on again after the first act, Gielgud told her: 'If you had been doing that for me I'd be delighted.' From that moment she played it for him, and settled into the role. Dorothy Tutin also remembers his warmth: 'John was very sweet with Judi and me on stage, the way he put his arms around us, the way he looked at us, always in tears. Although he wasn't usually a physical actor, he was with us, he looked upon and treated us as children, and it was easy to nestle up to him and put your head on his shoulder.' "     The next time I watch this, I'll be thinking of this observation.

This collection also includes the dramatization of a Chekhov short story starring Patrick Stewart, and a few radio plays and short story readings.  So at least the year ahead will not lack Chekhov (or Shaw--I just got his BBC collection), if only on my screens.

Cinderella at Humboldt Light Opera

Cinderella is one of the world’s most popular stories, and among the oldest. It’s probably also the only one in which the climactic moment is somebody trying on a shoe.

 There are hundreds of versions from all over Asia as well as Europe (the idea that Cinderella’s beauty is proven by her small feet likely comes from China.) It’s the paradigm of the rags-to-riches tale (the “Cinderella story”), yet these variations include themes of abandonment, incest and matricide that show up in more tragic works from King Lear to Sweeney Todd.

 The best known version is the mildest: the 17th century telling by Charles Perrault, which is the one that Walt Disney adapted for his 1950 film, still the standard for several generations. Until Disney, however, the 19th century Brothers Grimm version was a close rival to Perrault’s. And it certainly is grimmer, with the stepsisters cutting off toes and heels to fit into the (non-glass) slipper, and getting blinded by birds at the end. But fairy tale experts prefer it: it has more of a fairy tale rhythm (everything happens three times), it is more complex (the stepsisters are beautiful outwardly and only ugly inside.) Cinderella is much more pro-active and she’s helped not by a fairy godmother but by nature spirits-- birds who are inspired by her devotions at her mother’s grave.

 Cinderella is also less passive in the musical version now on the Van Duzer Theatre stage at HSU, performed by the Humboldt Light Opera Company. It’s still basically the Perrault tale though, with variations that don’t alter the familiar central story.

Prince Christopher (played by James Gadd) is an uncomfortable royal, happy to be an anonymous guy at the village market, where he literally bumps into Cinderella (Katri Pitts). When the royal factotum Lionel (Larry Pitts) commands that all eligible young women attend the Prince’s ball, the intention to find him a bride embarrasses the Prince.

 But his understanding parents, the Queen (Katherine Kinley) and King (Bill Ryder,) urge him to see what happens, since his father (who also likes to hang out with the 99%) advises him that finding his one true love is mostly a matter of “dumb luck.”

 Back at home, Cinderella is bossed around by her stepmother (Tracey Barnes-Priestly) and her three stepsisters (Molly Severdia, Brandy Rose and Lily Buschmann), while imagining a better life. When she hears about the ball, she goes into action. The rest of the story you pretty much know.

The additional wrinkle is not one but three fairy godpersons: Fiona Ryder, Ellsworth Pence, and 5 year old Aurora Pitts, whose angelic presence and fully absorbed acting reminds us that children love to act out this story in play, perhaps because (as psychologist Bruno Bettleheim suggests) it reveals to them the possibilities of transformation and rescue.

 This is a big, colorful production, with a sumptuous set by Jayson Mohatt and dazzling costumes by Kevin Sharkey. Director Carol Ryder and choreographer Ciara Cheli-Colando orchestrate the graceful crowd scenes and other movement. Ryder positions the singers well and makes the most of the key moments: Cinderella entering the ball, and of course, the slipper revelation.  Makeup by Hannah Jones and Jayne Bauer especially transform the stepsisters.

 James Gadd is convincingly diffident, sincere and then ardent as the Prince, Katri Pitts is a vibrant Cinderella. Larry Pitts adds acerbic comedy as Lionel, and the three stepsisters each have a particular clownish talent. Tracey Barnes-Priestly plays the stepmother as more worried with ambition than evil, and Bill Ryder is a star even in a small role.

 The fine individual singing aside, for me the ensemble singing (Katrina Haeger and Molly Severida are musical directors) and the orchestra (conducted by Justin Sousa) provided the most musical emotion.

 At just under two hours, it’s not too much of a stretch for the natural audience of children, especially little girls (who can get a Cinderella makeover before the show-- by appointment only.)

 But there are levels of humor to keep adults involved, and spectacle for all. This musical Cinderella, with songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, began as a 90-minute television special in 1957 starring Julie Andrews. For later stage and TV versions, songs dropped from Oklahoma and South Pacific were added, along with a song from the Richard Rodgers show No Strings and from a movie, Main Street to Broadway, in which Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves perform “There’s Music In You,” the song that ends this version of Cinderella.

 The songs generally aren’t considered to be among the composers’ best (and the Disney songs are more memorable) but they’re pleasant and occasionally witty. The story HLOC tells also seems to be a hybrid of these various musical versions. The HLOC production of Cinderella runs two more weekends on Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 and Sundays at 2 p.m., closing August 18.

Is Texas Funny? The Red Velvet Cake War

The Red Velvet Cake War is the summer comic confection now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. The Verdeen girls--Gaynelle (played by Jacqui Cain), Peaches (Denise Ryles) and Jimmie Wyvette (Gloria Montgomery)—live in the small Texas town of Sweetgum. They chafe under the domination of the family matriarch, Aunt La Merle (Toodie SueAnn Boll) whose basic attitude is “you can agree with me, or be wrong.” Family trouble, man trouble and cake trouble ensue.

 If that sounds funny to you, it is. If it doesn’t, well, it’s still pretty funny. To be sure, these are more akin to joke-transmitting caricatures than characters. They are so deeply cliched that we know Elsa Dowdall (played with panache by Janet Waddell) is a psychologist because she speaks in a German/European accent, which in the real world hasn’t been new or particularly likely for decades. And of course she’s repressed.

 But the actors bring individual touches to these stereotypes and animate them. Gloria Montgomery is particularly deft at physically embodying the tomboy cowgirl, Jimmie Wyvette. She might be the one character you want to know more about.

Arnold Waddell as the elder Verdeen delivers several of the funniest lines with a curmudgeon’s delight, and Matt Cole as the would-be hero is outstanding in a role you can pretty much see the young Tim Robbins playing. Not that the televised familiarity of these characters matters much. Because what they do—and particularly what the say—is funny.

The Red Velvet Cake War was written by the team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope (past winner of the Texas New Playwright Award) and Jamie Wooten. Not surprisingly, they’ve all written comedy for television, including for the classic Golden Girls and shows on every cable channel from USA to Fox. As a team they specialize in stage comedies about the South, especially Texas, tailored for community theatres. According to their website, this play has been widely produced, from Plant City, Florida and Brick, New Jersey to Baraboo, Wisconsin and Blind Bay, British Columbia. It’s even spawned a sequel, Rex’s Exes.

 The dramaturgy of this play is paint-by-numbers but the playwrights know their (all white) milieu, and are admirably adept at creating humorous language without being exploitive or insulting. While the wit is even subtle at times (including some of the copious vulgarity), the physical humor is time-tested farce and slapstick.

 The plot however is an increasingly incredible and wearying mashup of reality show colliding with sitcom. The verbal humor is especially sharp and frequent in the first act, before the mayhem punctuated by exposition takes over in the second act. Catastrophes mount unbelievably and with very little at stake, and it starts to feel like you’re clicking through cable TV hell--with the comfy sitcom resolution, of course.

 So in the end there’s little to say about this show except that it’s wildly funny at times and it’s basically good-hearted fun while it’s happening.  Afterwards you might feel a little sick about indulging, like eating way too much cake.

 Director Gene Cole has apparently taken care to make sure the cast members exploit the particular music of this Texas accent while still making themselves understood. Again, this is particularly impressive in the first act, before the decibel level gets wearing. He also keeps the physical comedy pot boiling.

 The universally funny cast includes Shannan Dailey, Laurence Thorpe and David Simms. Calder Johnson designed the set and lighting, Jenneveve Hood the costumes, Michael Thomas the sound. The between-scenes music—bright Texas tunes that sound like they’re synthesized for a video game-- is especially twisted. The Red Velvet Cake War continues at North Coast Rep Fridays and Saturdays evenings through August 18, with Sunday matinees on August 5 and 12.

Two 1930s Musical Portraits: Cabaret and Woody Guthrie's American Song

Fledging American small town writer Cliff Bradshaw (played by Charlie Heinberg) comes to Berlin in 1929, and falls into a relationship with British singer Sally Bowles (Elena Tessler).  He sees her in the infamous cabaret, the Kit Kat Club, where the androgynous Emcee (Kelsey MacIlvaine) presides over a carnival of decadence.

 Meanwhile, Bradshaw’s landlady (played by Rae Robison) is courted by an equally late middle-aged fruit grocer (JM Wilkerson.) Their relationships with each other and several other characters are the principal focus of the first act of the musical Cabaret, as produced at Ferndale Repertory Theatre.

 But the realities of a country moving towards Nazi rule intrude in the much shorter Act II. Elena Tessler’s vitality, her strong and supple voice, are again evident, though the role of Sally Bowles is less prominent on stage than in the Liza Minnelli movie. MacIlvaine is energetic and magnetic, Heinberg is winsome, Robison and Wilkerson are charming and convincing. Among the capable supporting cast, Caitlin McMurtry is again incandescent. The band is especially important and especially good.

 Additional cast members are Jeremy Webb, Jessie Shieman, Linnea Hill, Julia Giardino, Zoey Berman, Dante Gelormino, Qaiel Peltier, Jeffrey Ray Kieser and Jaison Chand. The orchestra is Dianne Zuleger, Justin Ross, Tamaras Abrams, Stephanie Douglass, Michael Lewis, Gina Piazza, Amber Grimes, Monica Dekat and John Petricca.

 Director Ginger Gene, musical director Dianne Zuleger and choreographer Linda Maxwell have constructed a fluid production, while lighting by Liz Uhazy and costumes by Erica Fromdahl match the moods.

The songs are by the team of Fred Ebb and John Kander, who later wrote the songs for Chicago. The sexuality it portrayed was still scandalous when Cabaret became a Broadway sensation in 1966, and there were many who remembered the actual 1930s (in fact, the original cast included Lotte Lenya, famous for singing in Brecht and Kurt Weil productions in Berlin at the time this musical is set.)

 The original production (and the 1972 film) emphasized the grotesque elements of this Berlin with theatrical techniques new to Broadway. But today in Humboldt County, nothing much of the show’s sexuality is unfamiliar, let alone shocking. The textures of those times and that place—even as then known through media filters—are mostly remote, replaced by a few symbols and images. So this show could now be considered a cautionary tale about the peril of ignoring political dangers. Or it could be seen as sentimentalizing a complexly horrible time, while approximating a style that has lost its edge. Or you can see it as both, which is pretty much my view.

 Cabaret resumes its run at Ferndale Rep Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. July 27-28, and again on August 10-11 and 24-25, with Sunday matinees on July 29, August 12 and 26.

 In roughly the same period as Cabaret takes place, the Great Depression was taking hold in the U.S. just as an ecological disaster called the Dust Bowl was driving away thousands of already poor farmers from Oklahoma and other states, principally to California. An itinerant self-taught musician named Woody Guthrie joined their journey and wrote songs about the experience. Five of those songs, collected on Guthrie’s first commercial album, are among the 19 featured in Woody Guthrie’s American Song, the show that alternates with Cabaret on weekends this summer at Ferndale Rep.

 Woody Guthrie collected folk melodies and chronicled the 1930s and 40s, from California (as his song says) to the New York island. Some of his songs (like “This Land is Your Land”) are so ubiquitous that many listeners today probably don’t know he is their author.

Those old enough to remember the folk revival of the 60s (and the smaller 90s revival) are likely to recall songs like “Bound for Glory,” “Pastures of Plenty” and “Hard Travelin’” as done by Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, the Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger or by Woody’s son, Arlo Guthrie, or more recently by Bruce Springsteen.

 Guthrie’s songs do reflect America but not in a generic way, and their relevance recurs in our time. Just as Cabaret may remind us that beyond the repugnant noise of politics truly dangerous forces may be on the march, Guthrie’s lyrics reveal the human costs incurred by the rich exploiting the rest, masked by the smiley face of fake patriotism.  That songs like “Union Maid” and “Deportee” (both in this show) are again topical in 2012 should be the real shock.

 Members of the ensemble performing these songs at Ferndale Rep are Devin Galdieri, Jo Kuzelka, Steve Nobles, Dianne Zuleger, Jeremy Webb, KJ Jusefczyk and Roger Vernon. Pete Zuleger, Val Leone and Larry Hudspeth are the accompanying band. Woody Guthrie’s American Song is directed by Dianne Zuleger, with lighting design and technical direction by Liz Uhazy. It plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. on July 20-21, August 3-4 and 17-18, with Sunday matinees on July 22, August 5 and 19.

This North Coast Weekend

Parents who enjoy an outdoor show with the family at the Mad River Festival but had doubts about explaining Mary Jane: The Musical to their children can confidently bring the kids to Dell Arte’s The Fish in My Head this coming weekend, July 12-14 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday July 15 at 4 p.m. in the amphitheatre out back. It’s a self-created, circus-style fantasy about “the untold stories that swim around in our dreams,” complete with music, acrobatics, physical comedy, masks and stilt-walking. There are special family-friendly admission prices, too.

The Berserker Residents, an ensemble from Philadelphia, will perform their “burlesque cabaret meets three-ring circus” production of The Jersey Devil at the Arcata Playhouse on Friday and Saturday, July 13th and 14th, at 8 p.m. There’s an opening act at 7:30, too: San Francisco clown Summer Shapiro.

Speaking of cabaret, Ferndale Repertory Theatre opens the famed musical Cabaret on Friday (July 13) at 8 p.m. Though this show set in 1930s Berlin has been revived and revised several times since its 1966 Broadway debut, many probably still know it from the 1972 film version with Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. However, the stage play is different from the film to an even greater degree than usual.
This production is directed by Ginger Gene and stars Elena Tessler and Kelsey MacIlvaine.  It will run weekends in rotating repertory with Woody Guthrie's American Song.


Meanwhile, the contemporary comedy Show People continues at Redwood Curtain.  My review is in this week's NC Journal.


On Saturday (July 14), North Coast Repertory Theatre holds a fundraiser at the Wharfinger Building in Eureka. It’s the 2012 Pirate Ball, with music by the Delta Nationals and performance by the Ya Habibi Dance Company, among other swashbuckling features. Doors open at 7 p.m.

On Sunday, Jacqueline Dandenau hosts a social get-together for any women with stories about women in local history, in anticipation of a fall production called Women of the Pacific Northwest, which will open at the Arcata Playhouse and tour regionally.  The idea is to swap stories, particularly from "elder womenfolk as well as daughters and granddaughters with family stories from the 1940s and before."  Over snacks, of course.  It's happening at the Arcata Veteran's Hall from 1-4 p.m. (If you've got stories but can't make it this time, a separate time can be arranged.)   Contact Jackie at northwestwomen12@gmail.com or at the Playhouse at 822-1575 for more information.

Show People: Game-Playing Comedy

 In Show People, the contemporary comedy now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka, the middle aged acting couple of Marnie and Jerry (played by Bonnie Halverson and Ron Halverson) begin their latest performance. But it’s not on stage, where they haven’t worked in a decade: it’s at a posh vacation home with an ocean view.

 All they know about Tom, their employer (Nathan Emmons), is that he’s a software entrepreneur currently negotiating a huge buyout by Microsoft. They’re supposed to play his parents, for the benefit of his soon-to-be fiancé, Natalie (Nanette Voss-Herlihy.)

 Any ethical questions are bypassed for the work of improvising convincing characters, as well as to the sorely needed payday. From here the plot moves quickly but in directions that it would be unfair to divulge, in deference to potential audiences. A first act revelation only complicates the possibilities, leading to a buzz of intermission wonderment. Though the second act wanders a bit, it does resolve neatly.

 Apart from clever plot twists and turns, the thinness of the play is counteracted by the characterizations and performances, with room to grow. Bonnie and Ron Halverson play the realities rather than the stereotypes of professional actors. Nanette Voss-Herlihy plays Natalie’s earnestness and vulnerability.

 But none of it would work without yet another superior performance by Nathan Emmons, who again proves he can be subtle as well as powerful. In the course of the play, we learn of Jerry and Marnie’s dappled careers as a Broadway couple who never quite achieved stardom, including an opening night Jerry believes could have taken them to the next level, but it was ruined by a backstage mishap. That night will return to haunt him one more time.

 We learn of the strong crosscurrents of their marriage, as well as Natalie’s youthful ambitions and doubts, and as the play strays into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? territory, shards of Tom’s family background are sent flying. But the play pulls back from any real engagement, leaving us to ponder the subtext of powerful yearnings for the conventionally perfect family and perfect life.

 Though not at the level of the theatrical in-jokes of Shakespeare in Love (for instance), there is some sardonic commentary on theatrical history and contemporary practice. There is also a version of a famous Hamlet soliloquy that is a slightly exaggerated version of an all too familiar approach.

 The credibility of the plot depends on the seductive mystique of the garage-to-riches techie billionaires, and their potential position as the wealthy eccentrics of the age, especially as combined with the quiet desperation of financially as well as emotionally vulnerable actors, dependent on capricious outside forces for their sustenance and their opportunities to perform.

 The result is a mostly clever though convention-riddled diversion, conveniently packaged in a nice two hours. It would be nothing more than this except for the humanity that these actors bring to roles that reviews suggest have been interpreted much differently elsewhere.

 Playwright Paul Weitz first attracted attention as a screenwriter and director, beginning with American Pie in 1999. He followed up his successful romantic comedy film In Good Company (2004) with three stage plays, including this one in 2006. He continues to work in film, directing Little Fockers in 2010.

 Show People is very capably directed by Clint Rebik, with an attractive and functional set by Liz Uhazy, lighting by Greta Stockwell, sound by Jon Turney and costumes by Sarah McKinney. It continues at Redwood Curtain Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through July 28, with a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee on July 22.

Mary Jane: The Next Generation (A Review)

A Sharper Focus for Dell’Arte’s Musical Extravaganja

Last summer’s Mary Jane: The Musical was a box office success that many more people wanted to see than could, so bringing it back this summer made sense—especially with recessionary blues still playing in the background. It was also an opportunity to shape a sharper evening, as well as add some new songs and more dancing. So Mary Jane, Queen of the Emerald Ball returns with most of the original cast in a show about the business and culture of cannabis in Humboldt. Mary Jane: The Musical 2012 is now onstage in the outdoor Rooney Amphitheatre at Dell’Arte in Blue Lake.

They’re back: the Humboldt Honeys, the Bollywood finale with Pratik Motwani, Tim Randles’ “Why Is Whiskey Legal and Pot Is Not” and an even sweeter, breathtaking duet by Joan Schirle and David Powell on Lila Nelson’s “Grow Inside.” There are elaborate, acrobatic new dance routines choreographed by Laura Munoz. Joan Schirle (as Mary Jane) is again a better world’s bona fide Broadway star.

But for all the energy and exuberance, the content tips towards a darker assessment. Dell’Arte’s call to the public to contribute ideas for this year’s edition resulted most specifically in a new song, “The Trimmers’ Flamenco” by Tim Randles, about the women employed to trim the outer leaves from the cannabis buds. Other comments, especially relating to Mary Jane’s song about her son, led to major new themes: the effects on children as well as legacies and responsibilities for the future.

There’s not much nostalgia this time. It was pretty much over in the pre-show song set, with Powell’s powerful singing of the John Lennon wordless vocal center of “A Day in the Life,” and its innocent ecstasy and wistful wonder as well as the pain of awe and longing, those foregone possibilities.

Mary Jane replaces reminiscence with reevaluation. While last summer she called the local situation “complicated,” she describes the year since as “one big eco disaster all around. I mean, like the price has hit the floor, the feds are pouring in, the clinics are getting squeezed...” Soon it’s all reminding her of the Gold Rush: “Folks discover something valuable that is just laying around on the ground, everybody rushes in, takes what they can, leaves a wreck behind...”  Last year she introduced old friends who bantered about their common past. This year those friends are moving on and away.

What they leave behind is the devil or the deep blue sea—the black market greed of “The Industry” or the legalized corporate greed of “This Bud’s For You” and the corporations’ intent to “corner the market/legalization’s opened up.” (both songs by Scott Menzies.) “Rasta Tea Party” by Zuzka Sabata opts for the current situation:“We need to keep the black market free/ No need to live in debt slavery.” Either way, it’s the rule of “Green Like Money” ( also by Zuzka Sabata): “I’m false like smoke/I’m empty hope.” But complete withdrawal is also disastrous, leaving nothing but a “Ghost Town”—a song by Joani Rose: “A ghost town, when the pot money stops/A ghost town, when the pot bubble pops.”

When Mary Jane’s estranged son appears and she meets her infant granddaughter, the focus moves to the effects on the next generation, as in Sabata’s new song “Officer and Child” about being taught to lie and hide. “Innocent no more”—a phrase in this song repeated in Randles’ “Nightmare”—might be this year’s subtitle.

    But the voice of experience is not hopeless, and as in many ancient and modern myths, it is the elder who guides to the future. Mary Jane rallies in an eloquent final speech: “I am tired of living in the shadows...I am tired of profit over people...My mantra is—never leave your consciousness at the door.”

The presence of Mary Jane’s son, also a grower, gives a stronger and more personal connection to “The Industry” that was simply implied last year, as the struggle of the second cannabis generation. The introduction of a son and grandchild also cries out for human interaction and emotion (especially in a musical) but I felt a lack of that in the opening night performance, as well the usual spontaneity.

  Otherwise this is a more cohesive, confident, resonant and haunting update, as well as upping the entertainment quotient. Michael Fields skillfully guided the script and staging, Daniel Spencer is scenic designer, Lydia Foreman the costume designer, Michael Foster designed lighting. Musical director Tim Randles joined by players Marla Joy, Mike LaBolle and guitarist Dan Perez comprised the ever-excellent band. Returning members of the dashing cast not yet named are Ryan Musil, Zuzka Sabata, Joyce Hough, Janessa Johnsrude and Meridith Anne Baldwin, joined by Jacob Trillo. Fred Neighbor didn’t return, and he and his character are missed.

    This is the final weekend for Mary Jane: The Musical at the Mad River Festival.

Mad River Fest: Of Rain and the Times

 In the previous 21 years of the Mad River Festival, the outdoor show was rained out only twice. But that number was equaled opening weekend with a complete rainout Friday and a move indoors Saturday for Mary Jane: The Musical. Producing director Michael Fields says he makes the decision to cancel by 6:30 p.m. and it gets posted on the Dell’Arte website. If it rains during a performance, he’ll likely end it then--because of all the electrical equipment necessary for this show it can’t be quickly moved inside (as a 2008 performance of Tartuffe was—one which Fields remembers as the best of the run). If the show is cancelled, ticketholders get a raincheck.  Since the climate it's a-changin,' this may happen a bit more frequently.

Fortunately, the show got through opening night Thursday, resulting in an article in the Los Angeles Times, datelined Saturday. (That's the photo from the Times piece--it's from the first few minutes of the show.)  It also meant I could review it for next week's NC Journal, with probably an expanded version here.

Mad River Festival 2012

In case you've been out of range of the hype, Dell'Arte opens take two of Mary Jane: The Musical on Thursday at 8 p.m. in the amphitheatre out back. There are four new songs along with the old favorites of last summer, and some new story, directed by Michael Fields and again starring Joan Schirle in fabulous mode, along with nearly all of last year's cast.  It kicks off this year's Mad River Festival and runs for three weekends, Thursdays through Sundays.

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 26, 27), an evening derived from Dell'Arte School third-years Pratik Motwani and Meghan Frank's Community Based Project, Exit 101: " performance, storytelling and discussion" about how we "as a community speak to each other about...death and dying."   It features songs and stories (music by Jeff DeMark), and is produced in cooperation with the Humboldt Coalition for Compassionate Care.  It starts at the un-Dell'Arte time of 7 p.m. in the Carlo.

On Saturday (June 30) this year's Prize of Hope will be presented to the father and son theatrical duo of Geoff and Dan Hoyle. Geoff Hoyle's career will be celebrated, from the Pickle Family Circus to his latest San Francisco solo show Geezer, and including his work with Cirque de Soleil and The Lion King on Broadway, as well as his stint teaching at the Dell'Arte School.  Dan Hoyle began his solo career at Dell'Arte, which continues in solo touring shows like his current The Real Americans, along with performances with his father.  The Prize presentation is at 4 p.m. followed by drinks, dinner and of course, Mary Jane.

The annual Red Light in Blue Lake late night cabaret--this year with special guest stars Bada Bling! Burlesque of Southern Humboldt-- is Friday July 6 starting at 10:30 p.m. in the Carlo.

For families who aren't sure about taking the kids to this year's main show there's a totally family friendly romp outdoors, The Fish in My Head, featuring all the traditional physical theatre, masks, circus skills and music--and stilt-walking--for three nights, Thursday through Saturday July 12-14 at 7:30 p.m. and a Sunday show at 4 p.m., all in the outdoor Rooney Amphitheatre.  It's directed by Ronlin Foreman.

Avenue Q

Avenue Q, a much-praised 2003 musical that’s still running in Manhattan, is currently onstage at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka with a superior production. The individual singing and acting is flawless. The group singing, thanks to musical director Molly Severdia, is excellent. Kudos as well to director, costume, video and puppet designer Rae Robison, to Calder Johnson’s set, and to Jennifer Trustem and Megan Johnson for the construction of the elaborate puppets. The packed opening night house (which appeared to be younger on average than the usual audience) cheered and laughed frequently.

 The story is set on Avenue Q in New York City, a version of Sesame Street but populated largely by former college students in their early 20s who can’t find good jobs, purpose or partners. Some of them are puppets, and some of those look suspiciously like familiar Muppet characters.

 Principal roles are played by Alex Moore, Keili Simmons Marble, Luke Sikora, Tina Toomata, Clayton Cook, Evan Needham, Lindsay G. Reiss, Dmitry Tokarsky and Megan Johnson, with supporting roles played by JuanCarlos Contreras, Tyler Elwell, Shea King, Reen Kay Savage and Sara Parsons Scibetta.

 The orchestrations and arrangements by Stephen Oremus, and the orchestra of Laura Welch, Jonathan Webster, Michael Lewis, Riley McFarland and Amber Grimes supported unobtrusively and well.

 Avenue Q is a High Concept musical, and the concept is this: filthy muppets. Muppets who curse, proclaim “politically incorrect” sentiments and have sex on stage. The simple pop music and lyrics (by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx) also mimic the Sesame Street style, though more in the direction of South Park.

Despite being in their 20s, few of the good-hearted sit-comical characters seem much beyond a pre-school level of maturity. How funny you find this depends on whether it seems funny to you at all, or whether it seems funny to you for more than two hours.

 Some potential audience members might be offended by the language and the goings-on. I wasn’t. (There is a sanitized version for high schools. This isn’t it.) The insistently saccharine music and obvious lyrics did eventually threaten my sanity, but Andrew Lloyd Webber fans may find them bracing.

 The book by Jeff Whitty is a whit witty, a fast-paced mashup of the corny with almost-in-your-face aggressiveness, but without the integrity of a fable. Beyond the joke of the concept, its function is forming the story into something like “Revenge of the Sesame Street Generation.” Because apparently, adult life is not actually like Sesame Street. Who would have guessed?

 The themes that may resonate with generations of college graduates are there in the song titles: “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?” “It Sucks to Be Me,” “Purpose.” The identity crisis of a gay character in New York seems a bit historical now, but otherwise the referents remain ruefully relevant. (Portions of the previous sentence were brought to you by the letter “R.”)

 The sense of dislocation after college, of not seeing a path to a place in society commensurate with your dreams, and the resulting pain and confusion, are real, repeated and important. But there is a line between satirizing and trivializing.

 Even given the illusions we may all absorb from popular culture, you might wonder what anybody is actually learning or teaching in college if graduates are as devoid of inner resources as these characters. They muddle winsomely through romantic, identity and vocational problems, with the obligatory crisis at the first act curtain, and a quickly contrived happy ending. And a message in a final song, the wisdom of which by then may seem as cynically sentimental as much of what preceded it.

The actual irony might be that much of Sesame Street itself is funnier, smarter, more sophisticated and more musical than the raw material of this show.

 Again, the actors make these characters likeable, the puppets are cute, and the show zips along. Some—probably many--may find Avenue Q to be a delightfully ironic and insightful musical cartoon, which in its own perversely silly way is daringly realistic. Nothing wrong with that. Others may find it to be funny, charming or perceptive here and there, but so carelessly cynical and manipulative, so confidently, numbingly and soul-crushingly shallow that despite (or because of) such talent and heartfelt effort, the cumulative effect over hours is alienating and depressing. I am one—maybe the only one--of those others.

 Avenue Q plays at NCRT on Fridays and Saturdays through June 23, with Sunday matinees on June 3, 10, 17, and a Thursday evening performance on June 21. “This production contains adult language,” not to mention “adult situations” involving puppets.

Dell'Arte Thesis Projects 2012: Beyond Belief

I remember my mother standing at an ironing board in the motel room where our family was staying on a vacation trip in the summer of 1960, as we heard the radio report of what came to be called “the miracle at Niagara”: a 7 year old boy had been swept over the titanic Horseshoe Falls and survived. He was picked up at the bottom by the tourist boat, “Maid of the Mist.” We had visited the Falls just hours before it happened. It was a wonder just hearing about it.

 The first person to intentionally go over those falls and survive was Annie Edson Taylor, a down on her luck teacher who said she was 43, but was actually 63. She did it in a specially built barrel in 1901. Her story is the basis of one of the two original pieces on the Carlo Theatre stage at Dell’Arte for its second and final weekend, under the umbrella title of Beyond Belief. They are the thesis projects of third year students in the MFA program at the Dell’Arte International School.

 The story of this remarkable woman is preceded by The Most Remarkable Man of the Age, although he’s fictional. MFA candidate Myque Franz adapted a story (“The Man That Was Used Up”) and a poem (“The Conqueror Worm”) by Edgar Allen Poe, and created this piece with three former Dell’Arte students: Eric Hoffman, Zita Nyarady and Brandon J. Wilson.

 It has the satiric mood of the Poe story but owes as least as much to his macabre side, as well as perhaps to melodrama, morality tales, German Expressionism and those beloved (by some) cheap horror flicks. An Everyman named Thompson seeks the secret of the rumored immortality of the elusive figure, General Doctor John A.B.C. Smith, PhD. Thompson meets various bizarre characters (Pompeygirl, Dr. Guru Stretchmout, the Cognoscenti Twins, Sinivate the Worm etc.) before learning the secret the hard way, in a kind of Alfred Hitchcock Presents twist.

 At least that’s what happened when I saw it. The nature of these projects is that they change, especially from one weekend to the next. It was an entertaining and skillfully presented piece, with all the expected physical flourishes on, behind and even under the stage. It managed to incorporate a variation on the Actor’s Nightmare: finding yourself onstage—maybe in your underwear—with no idea of what the play is, or the words of your next line. This helped give this entire piece the quality of a nightmare.

 Heroine of Horseshoe Falls is the work of the three third-year participants: Rachel Brown, Meghan Frank and Pratik Motwani. It follows the general biography of Annie Edson Taylor, though it shapes it for affecting and artful effect. But it also adds much texture and detail. It begins with a striking theatrical image, which I won’t spoil except to say that it, like some other images, postures and dance movements reminded me of photos and films of Agnes de Mille’s early work.

 When Taylor’s husband is killed in the Civil War she is left to her own devices. After her wanderings and struggles as a teacher, she gets the idea of plunging down the Horseshoe Falls to make her fortune. The real Annie Taylor’s desperation seems softened by a delusion well-known in our time, of self-affirmation and immorality through a famous accomplishment.

 Pratik Motwani (who rocketed to local stardom in last year’s Mary Jane: The Musical—and yes, he’s back this summer!) plays her carney-eyed manager who siphons off what little money she makes. He sees Annie as a freak attraction, while she sees herself as an inspiring story.

 Meghan Frank, who is excellent as Annie throughout, is especially riveting as her elder self: the former “Queen of the Mist” selling penny postcards memorializing her exploits. Her rueful sweetness in defeat feels true. Meghan Frank is an actor with range.

 Rachel Brown plays the “inner Annie” and a half-dozen other parts with efficiency and charm. Spoken exposition got confusing at times, but some of the writing was especially evocative—the remembered scene of Annie getting the news of her husband’s death, for instance.

 There were bursts of comedy, as in the old “Niagara Falls! Slowly I turn...” bit I first saw in a Three Stooges film—barely integrated but fun. Michael Foster designed lighting and Lydia Foreman the costumes. Daniel Spencer is Technical Director and Kristin Shumaker the Production Stage Manager—all for both shows. The lighting for each was especially effective in setting the mood from the start. Beyond Belief continues this weekend at Dell’Arte in Blue Lake, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.