This North Coast Weekend

James Read and Shelley Stewart in Edward Albee's The Goat, opening Friday with Beware the Man Eating Chicken by Henry Meyerson at North Coast Rep, both one act plays directed by NCRT Artistic Director Michael Thomas. Redwood Curtain combines dinner theatre with a live radio show on Saturday (January 24) at the Sapphire Palace in Blue Lake. Info: 443-7688.

Freaks Don't Need No Greeks

[a slightly different--and of course longer-- version of my Journal column as it appeared this week...]

Last April, Crawdaddy: A Freak Tragedy, produced by the Canadian mask and puppet group, the Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS) in conjunction with Dell’Arte and Four on the Floor Productions, came to the Arcata Playhouse for two weekends of workshop performances.

In the performances I saw of that show, Crawdaddy (played by James Griffiths of the San Francisco Mime Troupe) was a dominant and sometimes threatening personality, despite being barely ambulatory due to his grotesque crab tail and feet. His marriage with Veronica, the Fat Lady (Jacqueline Dandeneau) was interdependent with their attempts to take and then keep control of their freak show, which often involved murdering other freaks, including Crawdaddy’s father.

But there was surprising tenderness in their relationship, and in Veronica’s struggle to have children (stillborns that she justified keeping in jars as part of the show), and then in their family feeling when Veronica gave birth to Siamese twins, Lily (Esther Haddad) and Heather (Zuzka Sabata.) The two girls, writhing in each other’s permanent embrace, were lively and real, and of course part of the show, playing odd and haunting melodies on saxophone and violin.

Through dialogue and Crawdaddy’s monologues, and particularly the stories told by the vaguely sinister puppet, LV Willikers (the voice of David Ferney), more of the family drama was revealed, always returning to the particular culture of freaks in freak shows, as well as the permeable definitions yet ironclad realities of freakishness and normality. So when one of the girls fell in love with the dim but otherwise “normal” janitor, Val (Tyler Olsen), the mood alternated quickly between acceptance and menace.

The mood was captured by a story the puppet told with pride and nostalgia about his father’s job testing out the wringers of washing machines by getting wrung through them, and popping back to normal size afterwards. The assembly line as freak show suggested another riff on economic dependence at the edge of existence.

The essence of a freak show—of the need to satisfy the entertainment desires of normal folk with freakishness and freakish behavior—was a unifying theme, and just how this affected the family was often demonstrated in how many coins and bills showered the stage from the darkness around it. When survival was again threatened, Crawdaddy devised a one-time-only showstopper, the chainsaw separation of his daughters, which ended predictably in their deaths. In his last soliloquy, Crawdaddy refused to be judged, judging instead his audience and the darkness within human nature which he shared and reflected.

Together with the music and bizarre comedy, this was an edgy evening, and with themes shared with Shakespeare and especially Greek drama, it certainly was in the neighborhood of the tragedy in its title.

When this show returned to the Arcata Playhouse last weekend, it had a new director (Bob Rosen) and though it had many of the same elements and most of the same actors, it was vastly different. Crawdaddy (now played by Christopher Hunt) was at times vaguely threatening, but up and about on his not very freakish feet. Val was now a comical wannabe freak, and LV Willikers (with David Ferney clearly visible, part of what I presume was some often repeated, possibly postmodern joke about showing how the tricks are done) was now just a corny performer. His grotesque narration was gone.

The performances were still good, but gone also was much of the text and all but hints of the subtext. There was more music (by Tim Gray), fancier scenery and more stage tricks, which a woman seated behind me aptly but repeatedly called “clever.”

The show is now called Crawdaddy’s Astounding Odditorium, and dropping the “tragedy” from the title is fully justified. The family history and drama, and particularly the drama of the freak show and its relationship to money and customers, is mostly gone. Though that’s suggested when one of the separated sisters survives but makes her ventilator part of the show, there is comparatively little emotional consequence to the separation, and the moment is without clear motive or outcome.

Some residual suggestions or fragmentary outlines of a story remain, but the storytelling is ineffective, lost in a furor of attempted effects, too many of which fell flat. The show now seems to want to be a kind of musical comedy, but it’s not that funny, and the music—while impressive, with some dazzling choral singing—just doesn’t have the wattage to carry a show.

Having dumped the tragedy and actual storytelling, it had nowhere to go but as a collection of sportive bits and tricks. Some work, but are they really worth it? It’s odd but not unprecedented to see a show in the process of development go backwards. I can’t totally dissociate what I saw this weekend from the show I saw last spring, but I experienced it as meandering, meaningless and soulless.

There was some criticism last spring over the whole issue of dramatizing a freak show, which might have been avoided had the historical context been made stronger: the program said the play took place in the 1930s but there wasn't much to support that on stage. Freak shows were common then, and still existed at least into the early 60s when I passed by their remnants at traveling carnivals.

The idea of focusing on the culture of the freak show performers--very strong in the first version, still present to a degree in the new version--remains a powerful idea, if used to explore issues such as what constitutes entertainment and what it requires of entertainers (are they all freaks to a degree?) and especially the relationship of money to this enforced identity. If my memory is accurate, there was a strong suggestion in the first version that Crawdaddy had been born into a freak show family but was normal at birth, and deliberately deformed. There was a story told of cruelity to get him to perform.

In any case, the new version treads towards treating freaks with the Barat sensibility--by overtly making fun of them it means you aren't really making fun of them, although everybody's laughing. It's a little uncomfortable without being edgy--and though the freaks are more cartoonish than freakish, it's still a question whether this is derisive. It's worth noting as well that much of the tradition of satire and clowning can be traced to the court jesters, and their origin in the "fools" who were kept as entertainment in homes of the rich as well as royal courts. Early on, these fools were mentally deranged or deficient and physically abnormal: they were freaks.

There's something else about the original Crawdaddy show that upset people. The first version was definitely darker, without any trace the of a happy ending. This disturbed some people, and it was meant to be disturbing--that's what gave dealing with these issues their edge. Could it be that a lighter tone was adopted to please audiences? For a century or more, the death of Lear and his daughter were considered too shocking for audiences, so Shakespeare's King Lear was rewritten with a happy ending. More than the ending was changed in this show, and it wasn't Lear to begin with, although to my mind it had more potential than a lot of new shows I've seen. I hope this isn't why it was changed.

This North Coast Weekend

Crawdaddy’s Odditorium is billed as "a musical theatrical performance that tells the fictional story of a sideshow family. Incorporating sideshow techniques, musical theatre, puppetry and physical performance, Crawdaddy takes the audiences on a wild ride, using comedy and black humor to confront what is 'normal.'” Featuring original music by Humboldt County’s own Tim Gray, the international cast (a Canadian) includes local artists Jacqueline Dandeneau, David Ferney, Tyler Olsen and Jerry Lee Wallace. It's at the Arcata Playhouse this weekend--more info in the post below.

Opening Thursday for this weekend only at the Arcata Playhouse, Crawdaddy’s Odditorium, a new and reconceived production of the show seen here as an ongoing experiment last spring, co-produced by Four on the Floor Productions, CAOS and Dell'Arte. A big opening night Thursday at 8, and performances on Friday and Saturday. Reservations are recommended: 822-1575.

Dell'Arte is combining a fundraiser with Humboldt's own Inaugural Ball on Inauguration Night (next Tuesday). Food, drink, foolery and a reprise of President (yes!) Obama's Inaugural Address on big screen TV. For tickets and information call 668-5663 ext. 5.

Auditions for Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Secret Garden: Director, Ginger Gene, Music Director, Dianne Zuleger, Choreographer, Linda Maxwell. All auditions will be held at the Carson Block Building, 341 “F” Street, Eureka. Be prepared to sing a song that best represents your voice. Piano accompanist will be provided. Casting roles: Mary Lennox a 10-year old girl (casting 10-14, maybe?) Strong singer needed. Colin Craven - Archie’s 10-year-old son.(10-14) Thin and bedridden. Treble, high voice needed. Ensemble/Chorus roles, some with lines. Children (10 – 18 years of age) Audition Times:Jan 17th at 2:00pm – Open Auditions;Jan 18th at 2:00pm – Call Backs. For more information please visit http://www.ferndale-rep.org/.

The CR Drama Production Class will have auditions for the Spring 2009 presentation of Moliere’s classic comedy “The Misanthrope” from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 21, and Thursday, January 22 in the CR Forum Theatre (FM 103). Now in its 6th season, the critically acclaimed Drama Production class offers 2 units of credit for all participants, but acting roles are offered only by audition. For further information, contact the Director, Kjeld Lyth at (707) 441-1592.

Sanctuary Stage announces that it will host a V-Day benefit production of the Vagina Monologues "to raise money and awareness for local organizations that work to stop violence against women and girls. We will be donating all profits from our event to our own local organizations - North Coast Rape Crisis Center, W.I.S.H., and the Wiyot Domestic Violence Program "Vachurr Wimouthwilh".

The Year Not in Reviews

Darcy Daughtry and Erik Rhea in Helen, one of HSU's productions this past calendar year--part of the ecology of North Coast theatre, explored in the post below.

The Year Not in Reviews: Exploring the Ecology of North Coast Theatre

[An extended version of my Journal column last week, without the part I already cannibalized for the previous post...]

By way of a year-end summing up, this column is about what doesn’t normally get into reviews.

The plays we see may have several purposes. Many—including productions by Humboldt State, CR, Dell’Arte International School, local high schools and organizations like the Laurel Tree Learning Center—are part of the participants’ education. Community theatres like North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep provide talented community members opportunities to participate in making as well as seeing theatre. Both provide opportunities that participants wouldn't otherwise have to strut their stuff, and since there are many more talented people than ever get to work in theatre as a career, audiences benefit as well.

I seldom mention this in reviews, because what these and other theatres have in common is that they charge audiences money to see them, and I review their shows from that standpoint. But I do take their other missions into account, and I expect audiences do, too.

Something else I don’t mention in reviews but which productions have in common is the achievement: of a group of people preparing and then presenting a play from beginning to end for two or three hours, and then doing it again, over and over. This is an accomplishment by any definition. It’s also one of the great benefits to participants: to commit their energies from the beginning of the process, weeks or months before opening, to the end of it. For some, simply sticking with it from first to last actually changes their lives. When audiences applaud, it seems to me it’s partly for the accomplishment, regardless of the outcome.

We don’t have professional theatre hereabouts in the same sense as in San Francisco or Ashland, but audiences here benefit from our particular theatrical ecosystem in ways they might not realize. For example, both educational and community theatres emphasize participation, which often means large casts. Elsewhere there is tremendous financial pressure on commercial theatres to do nothing but small cast shows.

But we have these community and school theatres doing large cast shows, together with the small cast or one-person shows produced or imported by the Arcata Playhouse, Sanctuary Stage and Redwood Curtain (for instance), as well as Jeff DeMark’s unique solo work. So we have a pretty rich variety.

Another way our North Coast theatrical ecology is unusual is the predominance of a theatrical style that is relatively obscure in most other places: commedia dell’arte. This is due mostly of course to the Dell’Arte theatre and school, and those associated with Dell’Arte who remain or return here to form other theatrical enterprises. Jacky Dandeneau and David Ferney, impresarios of the Arcata Playhouse, are good examples. But there’s also Dan Stone, co-founder of Sanctuary Stage, who has brought commedia from entirely different sources.

The commedia emphasis on improvisational satires, often on standard themes, with acrobatics and clowning, may be a pronounced local characteristic, but a healthy theatrical ecosystem requires other approaches, too.

So other theatres here (including the companies that wax and wane) bring the balance of classic and newer plays; musicals (including the sterling work of the Humboldt Light Opera), drama and other kinds of comedy. We have theatre for (and by) children, for (and by) adolescents, and for (and by) elders. We need them all, and as fortunate as we are to have this much theatre, there are gaps in the ecosystem, too. Other things being equal (which they never are), we could use more.

Because of my very part-time job doing press for HSU plays, I don’t write about those productions in my part-time piecework columns here. But I’m dismayed that HSU productions aren’t covered much elsewhere in the Journal either. There was more copy in one recent issue about Dell’Arte (including in my column) than there has been cumulatively concerning HSU theatre for the past couple of years, at least. So in this context let me speak up for the role of HSU theatre in the local ecosystem, particularly when the university is taking a hard look at its priorities, and from time to time there have been rumors of threats to HSU theatre’s existence.

Besides benefiting the university as a much-needed public interface with the community, HSU theatre brings particular strengths and important contributions in the kinds of plays it does and how it does them. Its recent commitment to doing new plays, often by North Coast playwrights, is pretty much unique here right now. In general, HSU provides training and people essential to North Coast stages, with participation both by students who enliven local theatre while here, and by faculty and former students who remain active in the community. Just how much theatre would survive here without HSU is a real question.

Lastly, this fall was unusual for offering three productions of Shakespeare. That this theatrical community was able to mount two large cast productions pretty much simultaneously (The Merry Wives of Windsor at NCRT and The Winter’s Tale at HSU), while overlapping with the large cast of Noises Off at Ferndale Rep, is astonishing. That's one indication that there's a lot of interest in theatre here, with lots of participants and audiences.

Talk

The first season of The West Wing created symphonies of dialogue that stirred television and led to multiple Emmy awards--and it all began with a kid who watched plays just to hear the people talk.

We've been watching The West Wing on DVD, beginning from the beginning. What a treat to re-watch this truly great series--one of the three or four best ever--without commercials, and with subtitles (they talk so fast that I often had to tape episodes just so I could watch them later and catch what I missed.)

For the uninitiated, The West Wing aired for 7 seasons beginning in 2000, and centered on the West Wing of the White House. I'll leave the political commentary it inspires for another blog. Here I want to mention something about the series that was said on one of the "special feature" featurettes on the final DVD of season 1. (The special features are terrific, the episode commentaries not so much. Producer/director Tommy Schlame and writer Aaron Sorkin do the commentaries but don't actually say much, except how neat it is to see an episode they hadn't seen in awhile. Sorkin especially wants people to shut up and listen to the dialogue.)

The series had fine acting by Martin Sheen as President Bartlet and an ensemble cast, but it got its spark and notoriety from the writing of Aaron Sorkin, who wrote all but one of the show's first 88 episodes, to the end of its fourth season. As cast members in one of the featurettes note, they soon learned to speak Sorkin's scripts word for word, because everything was in the language. The words were not only precise for comedic and dramatic moments, but in weaving the episodes together.

Now here's the comment that jumped out at me. Sorkin said that his parents started taking him to the theatre at an early age, and even before he understood the stories, he loved the dialogue, and how they created symphonies of words. It was the dialogue he heard in plays that inspired him to write.

If you know The West Wing, you know it is dialogue-driven. It's people in rooms--and famously, walking between rooms--talking. Talk became the music that made a multiple Emmy-award winning television series.

A couple of days after I first saw this featurette, I happened to read a review of a volume of Gore Vidal's essays in the New York Review of Books. The review writer, Jonathan Raban, noted that Vidal began as a playwright, and that his experience writing dramatic (and comedic) dialogue became the distinctive voice of his essays. "His best essays are aural performances," Raban writes. "...I can think of no other modern writer, with the possible exception of the playwright Alan Bennett, in his published diaries, who has succeeded as well as Vidal in transforming lines of cold print into an instantly audible speaking voice."

So having been hit over the head with this point twice, I got it: dialogue--words, talk--on stage can become the essence of an individual and successful voice in other media, like television and print.

But this point tends to reinforce another that I also read this week, which gently suggests that talk is as important--possibly more important--in theatre than the visual and conceptual elements that tend to dominate these days. Shakespeare was the specific case in point, and the matter of assigning some priority in staging and direction to making it easier for audiences to hear those words.

Now where did I read that bit...? Oh yes, in my column in the Journal. So here's the relevant passage, with a few more words...

Northcoast Prep doing King Lear got me thinking about Ronald Harwood’s play, The Dresser (also a movie with Albert Finney), which was about a small Shakespeare company playing the English provinces during World War II, based loosely on Donald Wolfit, reputedly one of the great Lears of the century. He was a last exemplar of the “actor/manager” school, and the theatrical style emphasizing the star, declaiming the great Shakespeare parts.

That rejected style had its excesses, but as a general comment, today’s emphasis on concepts and creating “stage pictures” may have gone too far in other directions. Those old-style actors knew how to make sure they were seen and heard clearly. They created the stage equivalent of close-ups. It’s really not that Shakespeare’s language is so difficult; just that there’s a lot of it. Instead of devising distractions, I’m in favor of making it easier to see and hear the words spoken.

That's partly a matter of projection and diction, but it is also a matter of making sure the speaker is seen. That's something those old actors of the classics knew in their very experienced bones: in order to be heard, the words must be seen. Not in phony hand gestures, but in the faces of the speaker.

In Memoriam 2008

Harold Pinter (center) and Eartha Kitt(top left) were the most recent theatre artists who passed away in 2008. They are, top l to r: dancer Cyd Charisse (before Hollywood she was in the Ballet Ruse), musical theatre star Eartha Kitt, Robert Mulligan, film director of To Kill A Mockingbird, actor Mel Ferrer. Playwright, director and actor Harold Pinter (center). Bottom row: actor and director Paul Newman in his stage role as the Stage Manager in Our Town, director Anthony Minghella, playwright Simon Gray (Otherwise Engaged, Butley) and actor Paul Scofield, famous from films but whose stage Lear was legendary. Click collage to make it real big. Here's the Guardian's account of Pinter's memorial service.

Clear on Lear

King Lear is an un-actable part that actors need to play. If playing Hamlet defines a classical actor's career, then playing Lear is the natural challenge to cap that career. Lots of actors have done both. Laurence Olivier made the first modern film of Hamlet and probably still the most famous, though he may have been a bit old for the part by then. (Though he looks a little like 1980s Sting in that photo.) He did his only King Lear for television in 1983. He was judged a bit too old and weak for it by then, though with brilliant moments. I don't know about that, but it's still available and there's a lot to like and learn in his performance. John Geilgud played both parts several times on the stage--he did his first of four Lears while in his 20s. He was happy with only one of them.

Clear on Lear

When the gasbags in Congress make speeches on the floor, they usually ask permission to "revise and extend" their remarks in the Congressional Record. That's more or less what I'm doing here, for Lear: a gasbag revising and extending my recent Journal column.

Some call King Lear the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, but it is among the least performed of his major plays. In number of productions, it doesn’t make the Shakespeare Top Ten of England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Broadway. The story of the old king who divides his kingdom among his daughters with calamitous consequences is certainly among the most analyzed, and playing Lear has been considered a crowning achievement for elder actors, but the role and the play itself also have the reputation of being un-actable.

There actually have been more productions in the past decade or so, perhaps as a generation of actors reaches that point, but also because the play speaks to contemporary artists and audiences. (See the accompanying photos for some examples.)

Shakespeare is a master of synthesis, and scholar Maynard Mack makes a convincing case that the preponderance of very bad and very good characters surrounding Lear is due in part to this drama’s roots in medieval morality plays. But virtue is not rewarded, and the demise of the king and his good daughter Cordelia was so shocking that for more than a century the play was rewritten with a happy ending. But after two world wars, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, the spectre of thermonuclear Armageddon and now the climate apocalypse, as well as the other automated cruelties of modern life, we don't shock much.

Another of Mack's insights involves themes Shakespeare often uses in his comedies, turned inside out into tragedy in King Lear. A conspicuous one is the court vs. country dilemma, usually weighted towards nature being superior, as in As You Like It. It's somewhat the opposite in Lear, though the court is just as full of snakes. But I think Mack is on to something here, because I feel the theme of shelter is an important one in this play. It is set in a more primitive time than Shakespeare's, and the secure world of the castle seems set against the wilderness, where the exiles are naked in the storm and go mad.

[continued after photos]

A new generation of Hamlet-to-Lear actors: American Kevin Kline, his Hamlet in the 80s (I saw this one at the Public Theatre in NYC) and recent Lear; British actor David Warner, in what Patrick Stewart calls the Hamlet of his generation in the 60s, and a recent Lear.

The updated edition of the New Cambridge Shakespeare volume on Lear is a treasure trove of information on past productions and interpretations, as well as textual analysis and the text itself, with those annotations that enrich a reading beyond price.

The history of the text is crazed and convoluted, especially since several versions from Shakespeare's time exist (the Quarto and the Folio versions, plus variations), so that there seems to be no definitive text--just combinations that are more or less accepted for publication and performance.

And then there was the now infamous Tate version, cobbled together from Shakespeare versions plus additional verses, scenes and even characters, with that happy ending. That Lear lives to reign again, followed after his death by Cordelia, was actually how the old story went, the one that Shakespeare adapted and was known to the audiences of his time. That he kills them both was a rude if very theatrical shock to them, just in terms of what they expected.

In its summary of notable productions, the Cambridge volume (edited by Jay L. Halio) devotes a paragraph to the 2004 King Lear at OSF in Ashland, directed by James Edmondson, who had played the role at OSF in 1997. Kenneth Albers played Lear in 2004. Quoting liberally from Bill Varble's review in the Medford Mail Tribune, it says: "Together they decided to examine the 'personal' tragedy of King Lear--'Lear as a noble and gifted ruler who in his old age has become so self-righteous, imperious and obstinate that he creates the weapons of his own destruction.' Albers performed Lear's descent into madness as a 'portrayal of the tricks an aging mind plays, a Shakespearean examination of early Alzheimer's disease within the context of political and familial disaster.' As the storm echoes his descent into madness, Lear becomes increasingly sane and humane. The ending of the play was uncompromising--no redemption but 'splendor in the ashes...the kind of Shakespeare we need. It has its effect honestly, sans tricks or flash, and so is deeply satisfying.'"

I personally didn't see this OSF production. And I'm not sure from this description whether I would have liked it. I'm a bit leery of a Lear that gets all Alzheimery--it could be a little too easy and pop culturish. I'm not sure about splendor in the ashes either, but as I say, I didn't see it.

[continued after photos]

The New Cambridge Shakespeare introduction praised these Lears: (top to bottom) Christopher Plummer, Donald Wolfit (in the 1940s) and Robert Stephens. Wolfit was the model for the actor in the Ronald Harwood play, The Dresser. The film version starring Albert Finney showed parts of a couple of touring productions of King Lear. (Like the Slings and Arrows story, the actor dies shortly after dying as Lear. Wolfit didn't, though.) Robert Stephens RSC performance was called the greatest of his life. Oddly, he was in David Warner's first film, Morgan! It was also Vanessa Redgrave's first film. As far as I know she's never played Lear, though her brother Colin and her father Michael did. But with Stephens and Warner, this 60s comedy had two future Lears.

Lear by Young Actors Guild

Though the play invites it, the laying on of theory is not always useful to those who must act it. A couple of famous 1960s productions (Herbert Blau’s in San Francisco, Peter Brook’s in England) took an existential tack, emphasizing the march towards nullity. But when Brook explained this approach to Paul Scofield, his lead actor who became the most praised Lear of his generation, Scofield replied that this might be true but it didn’t help him. “I can’t play negative actions.” He had to be “fully active, moment after moment, even in loss, even in defeat.”

Undaunted by any of this, the Young Actors Guild of the Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy presented King Lear in the Gist Theatre recently, directed by Jean Bazemore. The audience was greeted with only a crown on the edge of Gerald Beck’s otherwise empty set, inviting us to consider kingship, which could suggest mastery of the self as well as others, and the ideal of completeness in the fullness of years. Whether Lear attains this through the coming trials is a central question.

The set remains mostly bare throughout the play, which is probably how Shakespeare’s troupe first staged it. In the choice of where they stand, the actors could use the many platform levels to express the shifting power relationships.

Bazemore also chose minimalist effects, particularly in the troublesome storm scene and the blinding of one character. The storm had some cheesy lighting effects but I admired the sound choice: an unseen drummer on a trap set played a kind of thunder solo, punctuating Lear's ravings, sometimes emphasizing them, sometimes cutting against them. It didn't always work, but when it did it was impressively musical.

The acting style seemed modest as well: brisk and presentational, giving us the words and actions to interpret ourselves. Though probably also borne of necessity, this was a wise choice. A teenager trying to mimic the infirmities of age, for example, could easily become comic.

Instead there was emphasis on making the words clear—both their poetry and what they mean within the play. Except for some uncertain and cell phone-sounding diction, this was largely successful. Several of the actors I saw were particularly good vocally, with moments of eloquence: for example, Caleb McIlraith as Lear, Alexander Johnson as Kent and Keenan Hilton as Edmund.

Hilton also managed to alternate obsequiousness with a sneer to give us the character of Edmund in a glance. (Maybe he’s worked in fast food?) Jules Eubanks played the good brother Edgar with quiet assurance, while Nick Roney portrayed his alter-ego Tom O’Bedlam with a slithery physicality. Samantha Biasca was instantly sympathetic as Cordelia, and in their better moments Navarra Carr trembled with rage as the bad Goneril while Hayley Connors-Keith was an insinuatingly evil Regan. Jesse Drucker as Glouchester, Izzy Samuels as Albany, Keli Rael Floyd as the Fool, Evan Mahoney-Moyer as Cornwall and Patrick Roberts as Oswald acquitted themselves well.

The other actors I saw included Dawut Sassanapitax, Nicholas Mundy, Elena Hernandez, Shantal Polit, Gisela Bueno, Galina Schroder, Serena Sprater, Vasin Pasda, and Yagmur Khan. Many major roles were double-cast, so I didn’t see Sylvan Arevalo as Lear, or Miriam Cook, Kaylee Wennerholm, Genay Pilarowski, Rachel Scherer, Rosie O’Leary, Reed Benoit, Camden Bruner, Aimee Talmadge and Zoe Huber. Chris Sutter and Kaela Sutter designed excellent costumes.

Of the many themes and elements of this capacious play, I thought in watching this production not only of the personal journey of age but a societal journey of the moment, from the sheltered wealth of Lear’s court to his mad stumble through the storm of loss and naked need, eventually warmed by the brief candle of compassion.

The quality of Northcoast Prep productions often make you forget that these are high school students. This wasn’t always the case with King Lear, but the beauty of an un-actable play (as Shakespearean actor and Slings and Arrows star Paul Gross points out) is the freedom to try things when failure is inevitable. And some of the beauty of Shakespeare involves the worlds his plays open up to participants and audience alike, redefining the perfect production that can never be attained.

I suppose my own perfect production would begin with distant thunder, and the conversation among Kent, Glouchester and Edmund just outside the castle--out of the wind but not entirely inside. The throne room however would be bright and warm, with all the comforts--food and fire, well-clothed courtiers.

Lear's daughters, Regan and Goneril would be particularly well-dressed, in a provocative, almost lascivious way. Their dialogue with Lear--their flattering professions of love-- would involve physical touching. I imagine Lear as having little to do with his daughters beyond these court displays, except perhaps for Cordelia. I think I buy the idea that part of what's going on in this scene is Lear trying to marry Cordelia off.

In any case I would emphasize the comfort of the court and the shelter of the entitled King. I can see his desire to retire and "put off care" as reaching for more comfort as well as enjoying the honor of his reign. He might see retirement as endless feasts and hunting expeditions with his knights, interspersed with testimonial dinners--if that's not too modern an idea of retirement. Cordelia and Kent mar his picture of a perfect retirement and are banished.

Things change, when he realizes his powerlessness, and he becomes an exile and outcast. He loses his life's security and literally he loses his shelter. At this point I can see Lear not as suffering from a disease or even becoming infirm--he seems feisty enough throughout. But he is dealing with humiliation and limitation, which is part of what aging is about. He goes in and out of madness, and the wisdom he is acquiring is at first the dislocated wisdom of the fool (the Fool) and the lowest of the outcasts (Tom.) His journey is mirrored in its way by Glouchester, as he begins to see realities he missed before he was blind: that revisiting of the worst of the past, particularly regrets and their causes, is another familiar aspect of aging, at least for men.

What happens when security is gone--including the world order you felt entitled to--right down to your shelter: that's a theme for today. That Lear reaches certain insights and perhaps wisdom, and yet there is no immediate happy ending--this too is the natural course of aging, since it ends in only one way. The unsettled state of the state at the end of the play also may remind us that transformation doesn't always lead instantly to happily ever after. Maybe it takes a younger generation, learning enough from the hard-earned insights of the older not to make all the same mistakes.

Lear to Leer

Although I started my Journal column on the North Coast Prep production of King Lear by observing that it is not among the most produced of Shakespeare's major plays, that doesn't mean there aren't both regional and high profile productions--particularly recently, it seems. Ian McKellen headlined a much praised production in England, directed by Trevor Nunn (top photo.) According to the Internet Movie Database, a TV version will be released on DVD. It probably will also be shown on PBS.

But now in the works is a feature film treatment starring Anthony Hopkins as Lear (the photo is from one of his stage productions), with Keira Knightley as Cordelia (terrific actress, and not too heavy to carry!), and Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Watts as the evil sisters. It's scheduled for release in 2010.

In the meantime, King Lear is the play at the center of season 3 of Slings and Arrows, probably the most thematic of its 3 seasons. As usual, there are some great scenes from Shakespeare, including some amazing Lear from veteran Canadian actor William Hutt. His character does one last Lear while fighting off cancer, and dies shortly after the performance. In real life, Hutt died about a year after these episodes first aired, of leukemia at age 87. This series is available on DVD right now.

This North Coast Weekend

A student production by the Laurel Tree Learning Center of two original plays, directed by Jabari Morgan is onstage at the North Coast Rep theatre in Eureka this weekend, Thursday through Saturday (Dec. 18-20) at 7 pm. The plays are Don't Fear the Reaper by Eddie Zipperer and A Long Bridge Over Deep Water by James Still. Info: 822-5626. (Wish I'd known about this earlier.)

The Dell'Arte show, The Glasnost Family Holiday, returns to the Carlo this weekend, Fri. to Sunday at 7:30, but this time, be prepared to pay. And A Very Playhouse Christmas finishes at the Arcata Playhouse this weekend as well, Thurs to Saturday at 8.

This North Coast Weekend

The annual A Very Playhouse Christmas variety show plays this weekend (Dec. 12-14 at 8 pm, with a 2 pm matinee as well on Sunday) and next at the Arcata Playhouse. The North Coast Prep production of Shakespeare's King Lear plays at Gist Hall Theatre, Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm, with a Saturday matinee at 2. Dell'Arte presents "Missing Persons: Plays for One Character," 11 playlets by the International School's second year students, Dec. 11-13 in the Carlo, while the Glasnost Family continues touring.

Dell'Arte Christmas Show: Glasnost Family Holiday

If you’ve ever been mooned by gypsies in the Les Halles shopping mall in Paris, as I was, you’d know how much fun they can be. In Dell’Arte’s Christmas show, the Glasnost family first appears pulling a gypsy cart, which contains, among other things, the set. As the family members decorate the bare stage, they introduce themselves and explain their purpose: they’re strangers in America, and they’d like to stay. So they’re putting on a show.

 That’s about as straightforward as The Glasnost Family Holiday gets. The rest is music, storytelling (both with Christmas themes) and comic family brawls. The Glasnosts appear to have learned how Americans like their entertainment from TV reruns of 1950s variety shows, Rose Bowl Parades and 1980s music videos. The younger family members also adopt rapper poses.

 The result is reminiscent of everything from musical Borat and those Two Wild and Crazy Guys from the old Saturday Night Live, to an eastern European Fellini movie about a demented Lawrence Welk Christmas special.

 This hour show was created by the ensemble with director Joan Schirle, plus choral director Tyler Olsen and music director G.A. Moore. The actors all create and maintain individually defined characters, and they are all musically accomplished. The comic fights are more sophisticated and acrobatic versions of the Three Stooges, suitable for children.

 In this style of holiday entertainment, any subtext may be mostly in the eye of the beholder, but I especially noted those moments in which the weirdness of American customs and customary entertainments are revealed by these earnest but off-kilter outsiders, “maximizing their minimum skills.”

 For example, the family is enthusiastic but perhaps not always clear on the appropriate effect, as when they push the rhythm of a particular Christmas song to make it sound more threatening than festive.

 The ethnic stereotypes are relatively gentle, although the accents are sometimes impenetrable. The onstage narrative is more a pastiche than a story, but it all adds up to a good time, particularly for children--though there didn’t seem to be many in the opening night audience at the Carlo, that’s very likely to be remedied when the show hits the road this week.


 On a recent Saturday night, Jeff DeMark brought his particular brand of storytelling to an overflow crowd at the Muddy Cup in Arcata. He told some new stories along with selections from his fully-formed shows, accompanied by the UKExperience ukulele band. The combination was often magical.

 DeMark’s stories are funny, and they seem to touch a chord with the local audience as shared experience and nostalgia. But they also penetrate with a poetic humanity, and this versatile ensemble of two ukes, electric bass and drums added to all these effects, but particularly the warmth. Some of the stories were a little rough in presentation but the final one perfectly summed up the potential of this combination.

 DeMark’s story about giving his mother her first marijuana high (at her request) was hilarious, backed at one point by the marching chords of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Then the images of his mother the day after, relaxed and liberated into a youthful freedom, dancing to her favorite recording of Patsy Cline, got just the right accent from the band playing “I Fall To Pieces” as DeMark remarked that he never saw her happier than on that day.

Nothing new this week until Wednesday, when the brave students of North Coast Prep open Shakespeare's King Lear Wednesday. It plays through Saturday, Dec. 10-13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Gist Hall Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata, with a Saturday matinee at 2. Tickets at Arcata Plaza Design or call 822-1670.

Continuing this weekend however is Dell'Arte's Glasnost Family Holiday, the subject of the cover story (by both Hank Sims and Bob Doran) in this week's North Coast Journal. I also review it briefly in the same issue. (If you're wondering, I had no part in the decision to do this story, and didn't see it in advance. I probably only found out about it before publication because I'd committed to reviewing the performance.)

Anyway, it will be in Orick Friday and Fortuna on Saturday before it hits the Arkley Center on Sunday. Find the full schedule and ticket info (all free until the last weekend back at the Carlo) here.

Dell'Arte has also announced a new marketing director. Maybe he can fix their web site, probably the least useful on the North Coast.

Also continuing: The Christmas Story at Ferndale Rep and She Loves Me at North Coast Rep. The Christmas Story is based on the cult movie of the same name, celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. People who love it presumably will love the stage version. I suppose it's possible that people who loathe it (like me) will still like the stage version, although that seems very unlikely.

As for She Loves Me, I noted in my review that this play was also the first production at North Coast Rep, also 25 years ago, but that there's a dearth of documentation concerning that production. (NCRT exec director Michael Thomas recalls seeing a program at some point, but doesn't have anything now.) I invited those who remembered the 1983 production to contact me, and one of the principals did:

"I was one of the leads in the NCRT premiere, directed by Roby Agnew," writes Lisa Monet of Bayside. "My husband Rick St. Charles and I had recently moved here from San Luis Obispo, where we'd been active in community theater ... During the period of rehearsals, (which took place in the remodeled Eagle House) I learned I was expecting our first child, Matt St. Charles. After that production, my musical focus turned to albums for children. We now have two children, and two national award-winning CDs, Circle Time, songs and rhymes for the very young, and Tingaleyo, a bilingual treasure trove of songs in Spanish and English, and plans for the upcoming release of four more titles."
More information can be found at http://www.lisamonetmusic.com/.

This North Coast Weekend

A Christmas Story--the stage version of the cult movie--begins this weekend at Ferndale Rep. Dell'Arte kicks off its series of free Christmas shows this weekend at the Carlo. It's The Glasnost Family Holiday, a comic romp with a musical gypsy family. Then the show moves to various community locations--the schedule is posted at the Dell'Arte web site. She Loves You continues at North Coast Rep.