This North Coast Weekend

On Thursday, HSU Theatre, Film & Dance opens Stefanie Hero by Mark Medoff, a witty fairy tale for all ages directed by Jyl Hewston. It plays two weekends, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 in the Gist Hall Theatre, with a 2 pm matinee on Sunday, April 11. HSUStage.

Also on Thursday, Ferndale Rep opens the classic musical Man of La Mancha, starring Humboldt County’s leading leading man, Brad Curtis, who plays the dual role of author Miguel Cervantes and his iconic creation, Don Quixote. It continues Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 until April 25.

On Saturday at 8 pm, the chaotic comedy of The Cody Rivers Show returns to the Arcata Playhouse with Right Back Where We Finished. This is a one-night- only stop on the duo’s national tour.

Continuing at North Coast Rep is Doubt: A Parable, reviewed below.

Doubt: A Haunting Parable at NCRT

The following review was scheduled for my Stage Matters column in the North Coast Journal this week (April 1 issue.) While I was writing it this weekend, I was informed that it wouldn't run--apparently a space issue. When the paper comes out tomorrow, perhaps we'll know why.

Some version of this review will now appear in the Journal in the April 8 issue (I hope.) But given the short run of the play reviewed, I thought I could at least publish the review here, at the time it was supposed to appear.

Live theatre happens in a particular time in the real world. No one associated with the North Coast Repertory Theatre production of Doubt: A Parable—a 2004 play that concerns allegations of a priest’s sexual misconduct—could have known that it would open as the Catholic Church is facing accusations over its handling of child abuse by clergy---and this time the charges are so serious that some observers suggest it is the gravest crisis the Church hierarchy has faced in modern times.

Some of the cases in the news are from the 1960s, and this play is set in a Bronx parish in 1964. But even though it is pertinent in some respects, it will probably disappoint those looking for complete answers on this issue. As written by John Patrick Shanley, this play has some of the qualities of the topical debate plays that were popular in that era, like Inherit the Wind or Twelve Angry Men. But the word “parable” is in the title for a reason. The play concerns such philosophical issues as the nature of knowledge, doubt and certainty, and the turmoil in the human heart.

The Oscar-nominated 2008 movie version (which Shanley wrote and directed) added incidents and characters, as well as the specific atmosphere of the Bronx. This stage version however has only four characters—all adults-- and takes place in just a few locations.

The story pits Sister Aloysius, the stern veteran principal of St. Nicholas grade school, against Father Flynn, a progressive priest who advocates a gentler approach. Sister Aloysius suspects Father Flynn of improper behavior involving an eighth grade boy, who is also the only black child in the school. Sister James, whose observation sparked this suspicion, is a young nun caught in the middle—trying to live up to the senior nun’s standards, but sympathetic to the priest’s apparent openness and enthusiasm. The fourth character is the boy’s mother (Mrs. Muller), who adds more complications. Sister Aloysius makes her accusation, and the consequences comprise the rest of the play.

Since I attended Catholic schools in this era, taught by this same order of nuns (Sisters of Charity), certain details reminded me of what I’d forgotten I knew. The principal’s office at the center of William Nevins’ efficient set had the right photos on the wall—Popes John and Paul (Popes George and Ringo came later—ha ha, Catholic schoolboy humor), but the crucifix seemed way too small. I was unexpectedly scandalized when Sister Aloysius crossed her legs. The nuns in my school would have considered that provocative, almost lewd.

Janet Waddell as Sister Aloysius was convincingly scary but also complicated, and Josh Kelly as Father Flynn conveyed a more youthful spirit, but also a troubled nature. Wanda Stapp effectively portrayed Sister James’ anguish in trying to reconcile the conflicting influence of the two alphas. Though Michelle Renee Kegan has only one scene as Mrs. Muller, she evoked powerful emotion.

Michael Thomas directed with intelligence and intriguing effects, especially in the riveting climactic scene. Sister Aloysius seemed to get hypnotically demonic, emphasized by Katie Pratt’s dramatic lighting. But when I pried my eyes away from her to look at Father Flynn, his anger was just as dark—and seemed just as emphasized by the lighting.

Though most of the play consists of dialogues between two people, it seemed to be more a set of monologues, in which the actors—perhaps intentionally-- didn’t engage each other. They talked past and over each other, and rarely made eye contact.

Catholics in the audience may be more attuned to the issues of religious faith and doubt, and those who remember this era know that it was a time of major transition: in just a few years, such traditions as the Latin Mass would be gone, and that young nun could kick her habit for more contemporary clothes.

But doubt and certainty have political and judicial consequences, and it’s on the central matter of the priest’s guilt or innocence that the play is often a Rorschach test, apparently by Shanley’s design. As a parable, it doesn't seem to have a clear moral. The play both illustrates how dangerous allegations of such crimes can be, and suggests the shadowy machinations of cover-up.

But I think it’s fair to say the play takes no firm position on even the facts of the priest’s behavior, so for some it may feel more like too clever a vagueness rather than a mind-opening ambiguity. Perhaps it works in the territory between the unsettling and the unsatisfying. But for whatever reasons, or from whatever point of view, this is apt to be a haunting 90 minutes of theatre.

But you have to see it to decide. Doubt: A Parable continues weekends at NCRT until April 17.

This North Coast Weekend

North Coast Rep opens Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley tonight for a weekend run through April 17. All performances will be Friday and Saturday at 8, with another Thursday show on April 15, and two Sunday matinees at 2, on March 28 and April 11. Michael Thomas directs.

There's a free staged reading of an original script at HSU this weekend: On Death and Living by Alex Gradine, directed by Steven Robert King. It's Friday at 4 and 7 pm, and Saturday at 7 in HSU’s Theatre Arts building 117. Talk backs will follow the show.

This North Coast Weekend

Did you miss me? Don't answer that. But with the car and the computer both in the shop this week, it's been quiet hereabouts. Elsewhere however, there are shows up and running: Antigone at the College of the Redwoods Forum Theatre at 8 pm Friday and Saturday, with a 2 pm matinee on Sunday (photo above.)

Dell'Arte School's first years present their annual melodrama, titled On the Wings of A Dove, in the Carlo at 8 pm, Friday and Saturday. Arcata High School presents A Midsummer Night's Dream at 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday.

Random People Monologues: SoHum Tales happens on Sunday at 2 pm at the Mateel.

HSU Going Dark

If stage matters on the North Coast, then this matters: the graduate programs of the Humboldt State University Theatre, Film & Dance department are on the list for elimination. The undergraduate programs may be right behind them.

It's getting to be decision time at HSU, in the latest budget crisis. The Academic Senate has formally listed those graduate programs for elimination, and the department has to defend them--has to say why they shouldn't be scrapped.

The evaluation has nothing to do with their value. It has to do with numerical criteria devised to look like a relevant objective measure. It looks to me like the usual bureaucratic smokescreen, but what do I know.

What I do know is that virtually every production of every theatre organization here depends in part on students--graduate and undergraduate--of HSU, as well as faculty and long-ago graduates of the Theatre department. HSU students starred in, designed and worked on the latest North Coast Rep show. An HSU student directed the latest Ferndale Rep show. Even though Dell'Arte has its own fine school, its productions often use HSU faculty and grads. Humboldt Light Opera, North Coast Prep, and the other groups that come and go...none of it would be the same, and some of it wouldn't exist, without HSU theatre.

And then there's what HSU theatre produces--that no one else locally does. That too, is threatened. But it's even worse than that. Part of the reason that the HSU Theatre department looks so expensive is that it is responsible for running the Van Duzer and other performance spaces. Those costs get figured as department costs. So will those venues also close? And will the other theatre organizations who use those spaces need to go elsewhere?

It gets even worse than that. Also on the list for program elimination is the Music department. Another group of students, graduates and faculty that are essential to musical theatre as well as the musical vitality of Humboldt County. I can't imagine musical theatre at North Coast Rep over the past several years, for example, without the talents who came through HSU. Similiar arguments could be made about dance and film.

Part of the horror of the budget process is the zero sum game--if this isn't cut, then another worthy program--and its faculty and students--must go. I don't happen to think it has to be that way, but I'll stay with just this point: the local community has a stake in the decisions being made at HSU. In particular, the local theatre community has a stake in the fate of the HSU Theatre, Film and Dance department.

A particular irony now is that HSU is set to host next year's regional festival of the Kennedy Center American Theatre Festival. That's 800 to 1200 students, along with hundreds of faculty, etc., from colleges and universities in Northern California (San Francisco/Sacramento and north), Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. They'll be in Arcata for a week, going to shows, spending money. I stood in the lobby of the Arcata Playhouse a few weeks ago, and listened to stories from several prominent local theatre figures who participated in past regionals here, including one who got his start in North Coast theatre because of it.

But next spring, it could be a wake instead of a validation and celebration. Depending on what HSU does this year.

I've got a few obvious self-interests here. I do part-time work for both HSU Theatre, Film & Dance and the Music department. My partner is probably going to be the next chair of TFD. But it seems to me that everybody in the theatre community here has a self-interest to some degree--that's my point.

Maybe that self-interest ought to be declared to those making the decisions--like the Academic Senate and the Provost. Before it's too late.

This North Coast Weekend

I comment in the post below on the HSU production of Pinter's The Homecoming at the HSU Studio Theatre, and my review of Kopit's Sing to Me Through Open Windows (photo above), a Sanctuary Stage production at the Arcata Playhouse, is in this week's Journal. This is the final weekend for both productions: the Kopit is Thurs-through-Sat at 8, and the Pinter is Thurs-through-Sat at 7:30, and Sunday at 2.

For this weekend only, North Coast Rep presents Hidden in This Picture, a one act comedy about theatre people making a movie by Aaron Sorkin (of The West Wing fame) on Friday and Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 2 p.m.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8, The Dell'Arte Company Cabaret features your favorite Dell'Artesans plus special guests and a sneak preview of their epic work-in-progress: Blue Lake: The Opera. Then on Monday, Dell'Arte hosts visiting Le Cabaret Noir's Sin on Heels, advertised as "a tawdry blend of burlesque and gender-bending performances."

The Homecoming

The HSU production of The Homecoming is notable for the clarity of the acting. Every word is clear, and in this play (as in Pinter generally) every word matters. That's despite the English accents, which on the whole are good, or good enough.

The story is deceptively simple: thirty-something Teddy, now a philosophy professor at an American college, returns to his working class London family home with his early-30s wife, Ruth, where she meets his father, Max, and his brothers, Lenny and Joey, and his uncle, Sam. And let the subtext begin, and the darkness be unleashed.

Anthony De Page as Sam and Brandon McDaniel as Joey seem to have an attitude in mind, and play it fully. So in a way does Emily Ruebl as Ruth, though the text makes her character more mysterious. Colin Trevino-Odell is impressively subtle as Teddy. Arnold Waddell plays Max the straightest of all, letting his contradictions emerge from what he says and does. Jabari Morgan plays the key character of Lenny with a disarming combination of languid charm and menace. He also has the best voice and the best accent--it sounded to me a lot like Ian Holm in the original production, as preserved in the American Film Theatre DVD.

The actors also played it straight in that production, directed by Peter Hall, that began in London and conquered Broadway, earning multiple Tony Awards. Personally I'd like to see it played more sharply, with characters getting in each other's faces. Seeing this play for the first time since college, I noted the importance of Max, which I felt when reading the play. His speeches are full of such blatant contradictions and outrageous bullshit, as when he describes a dress he would buy for his wife with language lifted from fashion advertising that no actual person would use. I'd love to see Patrick Stewart play that role.

The Studio Theatre does offer an intimacy that other HSU venues don't, as does the three-quarter round staging. Unfortunately I sat in the worst spot, especially to see much of Jabari Morgan. I did hear him, though, and that was reason enough to attend this play. I admired his playing of Othello a few years ago--it's still the best single performance I've seen hereabouts in a Shakespeare play. Here he was playing a brother and son in a white family, and I wondered how the production would handle this. They essentially ignored the racial difference completely, and played it in "color blind casting" mode. And it worked--mostly because Jabari Morgan made it work. Maybe it was the accents that made everyone equally "foreign" to our ears, or maybe it was simply that he created a character that simply belonged within the world of the play.

With an assured pace on opening night (along with a few more Pinter pauses that director Heckel found), and with its transparency and clarity, this production fairly represents Pinter's play, and therefore is worth seeing. As for what it all means, let the debates begin (I discuss some elements of interpretation here and generally in other posts at HSU Stage & Screen.

This North Coast Weekend

Opening Thursday for two weekends, the HSU Theatre production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, directed by John Heckel. It's in the Studio Theatre, the smallest of the HSU venues, so advance tickets are advised. There's lots more information (most of which I wrote) at HSU Stage, or you can check stories in Tri-City Weekly, Humboldt Beacon, Humboldt State Now or the Arcata Eye print issue of this week. (Photo above.)

Also opening Thursday for two weekends, Sing to Me Through Open Windows, an absurdist play by Arthur Kopit, directed by Dan Stone. It's a Sanctuary Stage production, on stage at the Arcata Playhouse. Check either web site (linked over there to the right) for details. (Photo below.)

There's a Clowns Without Borders benefit on Friday and Saturday at the Redwood Raks World Dance Studio in Arcata. 845-5842. Meanwhile, Ferndale Rep's Wait Until Dark has its final weekend. Beti Trauth gives it a rave.

I seemed to have missed the theatre story of the year, involving an angry phone call and a Nazi uniform. Who would have thought that The Sound of Music could be controversial? It's a sidelight to what seems to have been a very successful run by the third and fourth years of North Coast Prep in their dinner theatre experiment at Arcata's Abruzzi restaurant. Kevin Hoover has the story in the Eye online.

From the Sanctuary Stage production of Arthur Kopit's Sing to Me Through Open Windows, opening this weekend at Arcata Playhouse.

Shake and Quake (A Love Story)

Musical Tragedy, comedy, musical, historical-pastoral and all possible combinations crowd the stage, but one old standby—the thriller, the suspense drama—has mostly been ceded to movies and television, which have more ways to scare people.

 That’s the conundrum faced by Ferndale Rep in presenting the thriller, Wait Until Dark, opening this Thursday (Feb. 11.) Though this play by Frederick Knott began on Broadway, it’s probably best known for the 1967 movie starring Audrey Hepburn as the young blind woman beset by strangers searching for hidden heroin.

 The Hepburn movie is on the Bravo list for film’s scariest moments, but how do you achieve that on stage, without quick cuts and lingering close-ups, cued by spooky music? For the Ferndale production, director Jasper Anderton’s answer is: make it real.

 “The challenge was to make this as realistic as possible,” he said in an interview last week. “That’s how we hook people.”

 “The entire show takes place in a New York basement apartment. There are no scene changes, and this one place is all the audience sees.”

 To add to the realism, the set was designed not by a stage designer, but by an architect: Brian Morrison. “He designed a basement apartment,” Anderton said. “We devoted a lot of time to getting the details right.”

 Lighting is also kept as realistic as possible. “Otherwise I felt it would jump out at people if there was anything that didn’t look exactly the way it was supposed to look.” Once the environment is convincing, the actors use it to complete the reality connection. “Theatre has an advantage in creating suspense,” Anderton said. “It’s easier to draw the audience into the reality when they see live people up there on stage. Then you can really get to know the characters, and you watch them slowly realize that things aren’t what they seem to be.”

 Not that there won’t be effects—there’s lightning and light bulbs breaking, as well as something like 32 different sound effects on a 7 channel mixing board. Light design is by Dell’Arte veteran Nick Trotter, and the sound mix is by Ian Schatz. Anderton is also intent on pacing the show for maximum impact. “In a thriller you really have to make sure the momentum stays up, and the tension stays tight.”

 The young blind woman coping with persuasions and threats is played by Alexandra Gellner. “Alex is a wonder to work with. She has instincts regarding what motivates her character that I haven’t seen in many actors,” Anderton said. “Besides Alex, we have stage veterans Gary Summer and Bob Beideman. The other half of the cast are actors in their first major roles —Tom Conlin, Ian Schatz and Ian’s daughter, Brianna.”

 Audiences should expect tense and scary moments, as well as stage violence and threats of violence. Wait Until Dark plays at Ferndale Rep on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoons until Feb. 28.

 There’s scariness of another kind at the Arcata Playhouse, where Quake: A Love Story played last weekend so successfully that it’s been held over for another two shows this weekend. It takes place in a steel-lined closet before, during and after a big earthquake.

 Minnesotan Tyler Olsen got all shook up at the Arcata Coop on 6.5 Day, so he spent the last few weeks doing what we all do in response to earthquakes: he wrote and staged a play about it.

 With songs. Olsen and fellow Dell’Artesan Zuka Sabata play a couple in the midst of breaking up, but life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans (to quote a song that’s not in the show.) While they’re separating their belongings, they get trapped in what might also be called a cupboard, or walk-in closet.

 In addition to playing these characters, Olsen and Sabata offer earthquake facts that are pretty scary in themselves. The songs they perform are by various recording artists. They credit Bobby McFerrin for the arrangement of one, but their a cappella versions of the others seem also in the McFerrin mold.

 The songs alone are attraction enough. Most seem to express a character’s dreams or fantasies, and the guy’s nickname is apparently the excuse for a great rendition of Bob Schneider’s “Hulk.”

 Though the basic situation of troubled couple trapped into realizing they still love each other is familiar, the story has some neat and surprising twists. The performances—dramatic, comic and musical—by Olsen and Sabata are flawless, charming and convincing.

The only names on the program not theirs are a trio of light and sound board operators (Jennie Kaplan Woodson, Julian Oakes Norman, Zoe Troxell), and for good reason: the sound and light cues are important and also performed seamlessly.

 Though the show is under an hour long, that it was written and prepared in a few weeks is astonishing and heartening: there’s a place for instant theatre. I’d planned to write more about the story, but now that there are two more performances (Friday at 8 and Sunday at 2 at the Arcata Playhouse), why spoil it for people smart enough to go?

This North Coast Weekend

Quake: A Closet Love Story, a musical by Tyler Olson has its world premiere at the Arcata Playhouse this weekend (Feb. 5-7). The sked is variable: February 5 at 8pm, February 6 at 9pm, February 7 at 2pm. The Dell'Arte School First Year's present Buffo! (photo above)--clowning, music, acrobatics, etc.-- Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm in the Carlo.

Romeo and Juliet continues at North Coast Rep Thursday through Saturday at 8, with a matinee on Sunday at 2. My review is in the Journal here.

Fatal Attraction: Romeo & Juliet

One of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, Romeo and Juliet is deceptively difficult to stage. One production I saw at Stratford, Ontario presented a sparkling surface. The most recent Oregon Shakespeare Festival version illuminated the story. The 1968 Zeffirelli film best portrayed the violent context, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie used post-modern wit to focus the star-crossed stars, Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.

 In decades past, the lovers’ passionate speeches were often the principal emphasis, and their power can still be felt in scenes acted in the Slings and Arrows TV series, or in the film, Shakespeare in Love.

 The current production at North Coast Repertory Theatre presents an appealing stage set: a timeless Italian street scene angling away in perspective, with a set of marble columns on one side balanced by the famous balcony on the other. The rose hues of the street painting are matched by the warm lighting. (Both scenic and lighting design are by Calder Johnson.) Then the street disappears behind a simple black curtain for the indoor scenes.  Scene transitions are unobtrusive, covered by the recorded music of Gabriel Groom’s economical and almost filmic original score.

 The first act of this production emphasizes action, with Ethan Edmonds establishing a dangerous Tybalt and Victor Howard performing several tour de force scenes as Mercutio. The tinderbox of menace from these feuding families is suggested, though the emphasis on acting out every possible sexual innuendo detracts from the danger. The fight sequences here and later are well designed (by Jasper Anderton) and executed.

 The second act is more focused on story, as the previously colorful costumes (by Pat Hamilton and Jennifer Trustem) become somber. Juliet’s parents (Ken Klima, Delcie Moon) schedule her wedding to Paris (Neal Schoonmaker), setting in motion the final fatal happenings.

 Director David Hamilton continues to move the actors energetically, and works with the set design to solve problems inherent in this limited space. As for the words, at best the actors conveyed a meaning with a colloquial ease that matched the fluid physicality of their movements. Lonnie Blankenchip as Friar Laurence and Carol Escobar as the Nurse in particular projected and paced their words well.

 But there were also plenty of examples from the Mime-and-Mumble School of Shakespearian acting. This is not just a point-keeping quibble. While the momentum of a three hour play is important, when Juliet and especially Romeo are speaking too fast and too softly to be heard and understood, it has consequences.

 As the audience sees it, a play is a combination of the script (shaped by textual cuts), the interpretation by director and designers, and the relative strengths of performances. So the Romeo and Juliet I saw was about a monk and a nurse trying to deal with two confused and inarticulate teenagers.

 The principal focus is on Juliet—especially her emotional scenes played with full present-tense commitment by Megan Hughes-- and her fatal attraction to the cute, dashing but feckless Romeo, played by Michael Roscoe.

 Though other dramas before and after this one use its mythic story, this is the play that is considered a poetic masterpiece. Why is this a tragedy, as opposed to a soap opera series of unfortunate events? It’s in the language, as it enables the expression of a passion that pushes Romeo and Juliet beyond the bounds of their world.

 By the standards of local Shakepeare productions, this one is reasonably successful. Missing are some fascinating complications and meaningful themes in the text, but today’s fashion is to concentrate on making the story contemporary, either with modern contrivances, or—as I’m guessing is the intent in this production—by making the teenagers contemporary. That’s a valid and potentially entertaining strategy. The flaw for me was too much of the language swallowed in breathless cell-phone-speak. I suppose for some, however, this could be its appeal.

 Romeo and Juliet plays at NCRT Thursdays through Saturdays until Feb. 20, with Sunday matinees on Feb. 7 and Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day.

For about a year Jeff DeMark has been experimenting with adding more music to his story-telling evenings. Last Saturday at the Arcata Playhouse, the balance was about half-and-half music to talk, with musicians Paul DeMark (brother), Jesse DeMark (son), Damon Brooks, Ross Rowley, Jackie Dandeneau and Jim Silva. It all might be headed towards the North Coast Home Companion, but when the stories and the songs illuminate each other (from radio hits to songs his mother loved), we’re reminded how music adheres to memory, carrying the feeling into the present.

 Redwood Curtain officially announced that productions begin in April in its new home on First Street in Old Town, Eureka.

 Coming Up: Quake: A Closet Love Story, a musical by Tyler Olson has its world premiere at the Arcata Playhouse this weekend (Feb. 5-7)—check listings for times, or the Playhouse at 822-1575. HSU’s The Marriage of Bette and Boo presents two benefit productions in the Van Duzer Theatre on Tuesday (Feb. 9) and Thursday (Feb. 11) at 7:30, to help send this production to the regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Reno.

This North Coast Weekend

Starting tonight, North Coast Repertory Theatre presents Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. On Saturday night, Jeff DeMark performs with the musical ensemble La Patinas at the Arcata Playhouse. The performance features special guests, as well as Jeff's brother Paul and his son Jesse. I don't know if his web site is new, but it's new to me. More info is there.

Friday night the latest edition of Chicago's fabled Second City comedy improv group appears in the Van Duzer at HSU via CenterArts. Beginning Friday at Redbud Theatre (Camp Kimtu, Willow Creek) is a philosophical two-hander called The Harry and Sam Dialogues.

In local theatre news, Redwood Curtain announced they've finally found a new home, at 220 First Street in Old Town, Eureka. A season of four plays begins there in April. Congratulations to Clint and Peggy!

From There to Here

A few items from elsewhere that have some relevance to North Coast theatre...

In the December American Theatre magazine, there's an article on how race and racial issues are reflected on Broadway, in a number of current or recent plays that reflect racial realities or comment on the subject. A number of plays are discussed, though not including the one seen here recently on PBS, as filmed by Spike Lee: Passing Strange. This was the best new musical, and among the best new plays of any kind, that I've seen in years.

North Coast theatre is notoriously white, as are its audiences, in an overwhelmingly white area. I've seen some of this change but not consistently. Last year's HSU production of Jagun Fly, a play about African Americans by John ADEkoje, a young up and coming black playwright who began writing at HSU, suggested that there are enough black actors around to stage such a play. The audiences were more racially mixed than usual. But all of this didn't seem to cause much excitement locally.

As these things are measured, the North Coast was unusual for its largest "minority" being Native American. The Native relationship to theatre is complicated, but we've had some successes--especially Salmon Is Everything at HSU a few years ago, which had more local tribal members on stage than anything I've seen here, in a work they (and non-Native cast members, etc.) created together. The largest minority today is probably Latino, and very little theatre here has reflected those cultures or that experience.

Also in December's American Theatre was a play by a young Korean American playwright, Lloyd Suh, called American Hwangap. Maybe a little limited in its ambitions, this was a fun play to read, and probably better than a lot of contemporary plays we do see here. But we're unlikely to see this one hereabouts. We probably don't have the actors, for one thing.

Voices from groups previously unheard infuse a lot of the energy in new plays these days. But according to a recent study by the Play Development Fund, new playwrights of any description are having a tough time getting produced, even in non-profit theatres. "Many of the playwrights see the nation’s major nonprofit theater companies as impediments to their work, favoring plays that have few characters to save money on actors’ salaries, for instance, or that have themes appealing to large audiences," according to a New York Times article on the study. “We heard from artistic directors who admitted that they’re all going after the same 10 playwrights to produce their work, which is largely about getting prestige in their field,” said Todd London, the chief author of the study..." The story quotes a few others talking about the "cynicism and mistrust" between playwrights and theatres.

This is not real new news, reflected in discontent over "development hell" and the shrinking and distorting of the O'Neill's new plays program, for example. But it does suggest that the kind of considerations that governed Broadway, and led to Off, and then Off-Off, as well as regional theatres, has spread throughout the theatre world.

Here on the North Coast, there is little or no support for new plays. What little there was a decade ago is mostly gone, except for work by students and folks who have their own theatres. The new model seems to be collaborative development by small theatres in different locations, such as the new musical coming to the Arcata Playhouse in a few weeks. Some new work is going to find a way to be born. Still, I'm sure we're missing voices it might be entertaining and enlightening to hear.

Revival

How do you make an old play new again? Moving the era of a Shakespeare play, especially closer to our own time, has become a strategy so common that it now seems reflexive, as predictable as the movement of a knee tapped with a hammer. Following the screen success of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of a few years ago featured teens in prep school uniforms carrying cell phones. But such elements depend on surprise and especially wit, as well as relevance, and their effects wear off quickly. Some work better on screen, but not always even there (Almereyda's postmodern Hamlet with Ethan Hawke was less successful.)

Sometimes, changing the period can be illuminating, but this depends on an original, relevant and brilliantly applied vision. However, there are a couple of other ways to revive older plays and make them more relevant to contemporary audiences.

One way--which is the essential way--is to play it honestly. The most difficult task for actors in Shakespeare and other well-known plays is to convince the audience that the characters are experiencing these events for the first time--that they don't know what happens next. Actors enact emotion, and this is the core of both the performance and the audience response. If the production, and particularly the actors, can make it real, the audience will experience it as new and relevant.

In general, a production that finds the vitality in the play can't help but to make it relevant to the times, because it will engage an audience living in these times. Playwright Terrence McNally spoke recently about the process of creating Ragtime, The Musical (he wrote the script), first produced on Broadway in 1998 and revived there last year, just nine years after the original production closed. He made this perceptive comment (published in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of The Dramatist) about the revival: " Everything will be the same as before but everything will be different, too. That's because we have a different country than when Ragtime [the novel by E.L. Doctorow] was published and Ragtime, The Musical premiered. If Ragtime seems different to you this time around it's not because we've re-written it. It's because this is a society that has re-written itself."

R. I. P. 2009

Among the theatre and film artists we lost in 2009: Natasha Richardson (seen here in A Streetcar Named Desire), Karl Malden (who appeared with Marlon Brando in the original Broadway stage production of "Streetcar"), David Carradine, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Burke, Jennifer Jones, Ron Silver, James Whitmore (pictured here in one of his one-man shows, playing Will Rodgers), Patrick Swayze. Not pictured: actors Wendy Richards, Betsy Blair, Richard Todd, Bea Arthur, Brittany Murphy, Henry Gibson, Gene Barry, Patrick McGoohan, Farah Fawcett, Joseph Wiseman; directors John Hughes, Bud Shulberg and Howard Zieff; writer Larry Gelbart, dancer Merce Cunningham.

Last Old Business

A couple of minor matters as the year ends... A few weeks ago a cast member of Ferndale Rep's production of Oliver! wrote a well-expressed and very respectful letter to the editor published in the NC Journal, lamenting the fact that I did not review that show in that newspaper. Since I didn't see the letter until it was published--as strange as that may sound--I want to respond here to a couple of her points.

"I miss the reviews of a few years ago, when a potential audience member got a little taste of what they could expect," she writes. Unless she is missing the reviews by my predecessors, she may have completely missed my reviews of Ferndale Rep productions I've done this year: Crimes of the Heart (October), Jekyll and Hyde (Aug.), Arsenic and Old Lace (May), The Wild Guys (Feb.), which I believe is 4 out of the last 6 shows there.

She described my preview of Oliver! as "a little blurb buried underneath another show's review." It did appear second to a review of the Dell'Arte Christmas show, but the preview was five paragraphs, and the review was seven. It was also featured in the column's subhead, and was the third consecutive mention of the show in my last three columns.

Lastly, I haven't seen any credible evidence that my reviews, positive or negative, have increased or depressed attendance anywhere. Apparently the opening night for Oliver! was sold out, quite a feat for the large Ferndale Rep theatre.

On another matter, my year-end column is in this week's Journal, and online here. Bear with me, but I have to quibble about one editorial change. In an apparent effort to prevent the repetition of the word "simple," it was changed to "basic" in the following paragraph:

If you know anything about baseball, you realize (and probably relish) that it’s a fiendishly complicated game, and playing it well is difficult. But it’s also very simple. As the fictional manager of a minor league team in the classic movie Bull Durham tells his players: “This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.”

In the published version, the second sentence reads: "But it's also very basic." In this context, "basic" and "simple" simply don't mean the same thing. Something can be basic without being simple, for instance.

I realize I don't mention the editorial changes that correct my mistakes or that otherwise improve the piece, so as the year ends I'll acknowledge generally that this happens, and I'm grateful to the editors who make those corrections and improvements. Happy New Year to all.

The Year Not in Reviews 2009

Theatre is hard to do, in the best of times—even without economic hardships affecting box office and production decisions. There are multiple challenges and pitfalls in every show.

 There may be more drama backstage than on—as I’m told occurred at one local theatre this past year: a lead actor’s significant other got so upset by his onstage business with the leading lady that he dropped out of the show perilously close to opening.

 The interactions of producers, designers, directors, actors (and their spouses), limited resources and even more limited time, different agendas (professional, institutional and personal) and the interplay of text (its history, its contemporary expression) and its realization on stage—it’s all a complicated process.

 And yet, from the point of view of the audience, it’s very simple. If you know anything about baseball, you realize (and probably relish) that it’s a fiendishly complicated game, and playing it well is difficult. But it’s also very simple.
As the fictional manager of a minor league team in the classic movie Bull Durham tells his players: “This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.”

 For the theatre audience, there are certain simple and basic expectations: the audience wants to see the play, hear the play, and follow the story of the play. A production’s first job is to make all of that easy.

 It isn’t so easy to accomplish, but I wonder if the focus on these tasks doesn’t get lost sometimes. Several productions this year seemed to take their eye off the ball.

 Scenic design may be dazzling and expressive, and it may carry out some aesthetic related to the play, but does it help or hinder the actors in being seen and heard?

 Directors may create “stage pictures” that keep the eye moving, but does the blocking help or hinder audibility, or focus the relationships of the characters?
I know that I’ve wondered more than once why two characters who are apparently engaged in intimate conversation are doing so by shouting at each other from opposite sides of the stage.

 Theatrical magic may include spectacle, but basically the spell can only be sustained by intelligibility. Part of following the story is knowing who the characters onstage are, and who they are talking about if that character isn’t present. The audience enjoys the engagement of figuring things out, but if it is too much of a struggle, they may just give up.

 This is as true ultimately of experimental work, like the often impressive Inverted Lorca at Dell’Arte this fall, as it is of established conventional plays. While certain moments and flourishes may remain strongest in the memory, sometimes effects take spectators out of the play rather than pulling them in.

 Probably the biggest distraction generally is the agony of scene changes and transitions. These cause such time-consuming technical problems that playwright Sarah Ruhl suggests—only partly in jest—that the traditional stage curtain be revived to separate scenes by rising and falling.

 My concern is the effect on the stage illusion and the audience’s engagement. Is more gained by specific scenery than is lost by watching people move things around every few minutes?

 Effectiveness is partly a game of expectations. Approaching a drama, audiences likely expect only to be engaged by something—the story, characters, subject or setting. A powerful dramatic and emotional experience is a bonus. But audiences approaching a comedy reputed to be funny expect to laugh, and if they don’t, the show has not done its job.

 Of the last four comedies I’ve seen, only one—the Dell’Arte Christmas show—was consistently funny. The other three had funny scripts and reputedly funny prior productions. But problems of intelligibility and pace—or maybe the apparent decision to concentrate on other aspects of the play-- cut the comedy.

 Still, there were several productions this year that did the basic stuff and went beyond it to create fine theatre: among them were North Coast Rep’s Love List, The Goat and The Producers; HLO’s Light on the Piazza, Ferndale Rep’s Crimes of the Heart, Dell’Arte’s revival of Intrigue at Ah-Pah, Redwood Curtain’s Bad Dates, visiting Cornerstone Theatre’s Jason in Eureka.

 And there were intriguing beginnings, like Joan Schirle’s aforementioned Inverted Alba, Dell’Arte’s The Body Remembers, John ADEkoje’s Jagun Fly at HSU, and David Ferney’s The Misunderstood Badger at the Arcata Playhouse, plus several visiting shows at the Playhouse. And again, our own unique Jeff DeMark.

 This is probably more than an area this size that’s this isolated could reasonably expect. On the other hand, every audience reasonably expects an intelligible performance every time, on the way to being entertaining and maybe even enlightening.

 Late News Headlines: The recent production of The Marriage of Bette and Boo is the first HSU show this decade to be selected to compete in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre regional festival. And Redwood Curtain’s long search for a new venue may be over, according to Bob Doran’s reporting. Stay tuned.

A Dickens of a Christmas

Some of the actors who've played Scrooge, from top left: Jim Carrey in the current Disney film, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine (in a Muppet version), George C. Scott, and who can forget Uncle Scrooge McDuck? But in the center is perhaps the most classic film Scrooge, Alaistar Sim in 1951. More on Dickens and this North Coast Christmas in several posts below. Click collage to enlarge.

 What the Dickens is going on around here? North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka is currently staging a relatively faithful version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Dell’Arte is on the road with A Commedia Christmas Carol, while Ferndale Repertory Theatre performs Oliver!--the musical version of Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

All while a “performance capture” version of A Christmas Carol is Disney’s big holiday movie, evidently switching their Yuletide allegiance to Dickens from Lewis Carroll (who, astute theatergoers--and readers of this blog-- may remember, inspired another Christmas coincidence of shows at Dell’Arte and Ferndale in 2007.)

Of course the Dickens story has long been a part of every Christmas season, through innumerable film and TV versions as well as adorable school pageants. Mr. Scrooge and Tiny Tim, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future are almost as familiar as Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In an odd way, Scrooge has even become one of the Great Parts by which actors test their mettle: Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier played it, and more recently George C. Scott and Patrick Stewart. But the Alistair Sim 1951 film portrayal is still considered the gold standard of Scroogery. There have also been numerous animations and musical adaptations, mostly emphasizing its sentimental aspects, and therefore a few satires.

This was not the only Christmas story or scene that Dickens wrote, and some commentators suggest that his work defined many of the elements of what we now call a traditional Christmas. He even helped institutionalize the “white Christmas” expectation, despite the allegation that London gets snow at Christmas only slightly more often than Eureka.

All this may testify to the high quality of this story, while also masking it. A Christmas Carol has the Dickens mix that made his work so popular in its time and enduring afterwards: invisible artistry, rousing entertainment, heightened characters that edge around sentimentality, social conscience, and a story of redemption.

It is perhaps the social message that should resonate strongly in this troubled year . Scrooge’s redemption is through re-balancing his attitudes: accepting joy as well as fear, and expanding the meaning of his life. As the ghost of his regretful business partner tells him, “ Business!...The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

Using Romulus Linney’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol , North Coast Repertory Theatre sticks with the Dickens setting and story. Mercifully however, the actors do not attempt English accents. In the opening scenes of Scrooge in his dour office, one result is to suggest Melville’s 19th century Wall Street, with Scrooge in black as a Puritan capitalist. (Some commentators also suggest direct American connections to Dickens’ original tale, from how Americans celebrated Christmas to the conditions in a Pittsburgh prison Dickens visited.)

But all this is for my adult readers. The show itself is family entertainment. It is a brisk 90 minutes or so, with quick dialogue and a few effects to beguile children in the audience. But it’s the children on stage who infuse the show with vitality. The clear star of the evening is Dorian DeNisi as Tiny Tim, with other children and young actors providing the energy and feeling central to the most affecting scenes. These actors include Kelly Hughes, Alex Sutter, Meghan Walsh, Allyson Boltzen, Gaia DeNisi, Careyanna Adams, Alexandra Gellner and Isak Brayfindley.

I can’t predict the responses of children seeing it, but judging from opening night there were some laughs, and nothing that seemed too scary. Directed by Cynthia Brown, with a handsome open set by Daniel L. Lawrence, it seemed theatrically adequate holiday family fare. The featured actors speak their lines audibly, even when their backs are to the audience, and they present the story clearly. Dmitry Tokarsky is an imposing Scrooge who keeps the story moving ahead, but despite some tepid special effects, there is little actual drama in this production, and so not much joy in Scrooge’s second chance.

Among those featured actors is Brian Walker as Bob Cratchit, Evan Needham as Scrooge’s nephew, Bob Service as Marley’s Ghost, Wanda Stamp as Mrs. Crachit, and Savannah McCauley, Deborah Salizzoni and Jennifer Trustem as the other ghosts. Ben Rowe, David Moore and Pam Service round out the cast, which does a lot of doubling that’s sometimes confusing. Katie Pratt designed the lighting, Marcia Hutson the costumes, Cindy Brown the sound.

What did Christmas mean to Charles Dickens? Singing, dancing, feasting, games, good works and, for some reason, ghosts. He wrote at least ten ghost stories involving Christmastime, the most famous being A Christmas Carol.  Given commedia’s attraction to the grotesque, these Christmas ghosts would seem a natural focus for this year’s holiday show from Dell’Arte, A Commedia Christmas Carol. And so they are.

 Directed by Michael Fields, the Dell’Arte players mostly stick to the Dickens story, incorporating actual speeches from the original. But it wouldn’t be Dell’Arte if they didn’t provide comedic and satirical twists.

 Scrooge (played by an energetic Gabriel McKinney) is almost a classic commedia character (the miser) but there’s a daring difference to Tiny Tim (played by Adriana Chavez): he’s no longer a 19th century malnourished and crippled child but afflicted with the 21st century American childhood scourges of obesity and asthma.

Scrooge’s nephew (Brian Kuwabara) and niece (Nicholette Routhier) are sweet and spoiled Yuppies. The contemporary fetish for competitive Christmas displays is mocked, as one man promises to let homeless people sleep in his barn if they paticipate in his Nativity scene, dressed as sheep.

 But it’s the creative characterizations of the ghosts that enliven the classic laughs. Christmas Past (Emily Windler) is a literal-minded dimwit, and Christmas Present (Elizabeth Colon Nelson) is a sexy Latina. Christmas Future (Erin Crites) doesn’t speak in the Dickens story, so naturally she’s a mime in classic Marcel Marceau costume, although with extra equipment she points out.

 There seemed less music than usual, but a nice balance of physical and verbal humor. For me, this was the funniest of the Dell’Arte Christmas shows I’ve seen.

Since the surprise of comedy often depends on established expectations, the familiarity of this story works to its advantage. Though the jokes and tricks were often even older than this tale (even the comically obvious game of charades must have been an ancient bit when the Marx Brothers did something like it), the novelty of seeing them employed by these characters and in the context of this story made them as fresh as they needed to be. The jokes may be repeated beyond the taste of some, perhaps because children love repetition.

 As for true-to-Dickens, a couple of caveats: The best film versions of A Christmas Carol excel at Scrooge’s complete transformation in the end—it’s meant to be as radical as a permanent religious experience, a complete liberation of inner joy and love. The Dell’Arte version is more ironic—they make comedic hay from his reversions to type and struggle to change. That’s probably more realistic and certainly funnier, but it blunts Dickens main move.

But then, Scrooge's transformation is so subversive (ironically because it is so “Christian”) it is often ignored, mostly by being smothered in sentimentality. But in essence it’s a kind of Buddhist enlightenment, a total conversion to compassion and “loving kindness.”

 Neither local production really did justice to one of the scarier scenes, when Christmas Present reveals two children: “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both...but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased...” Those children should be truly deformed and horrifying. Though that’s hard to pull off in a family Christmas show.

 The multiple-character cast members at Dell’Arte are uniformly funny (not yet named are Julie Douglas and Genesee Spridco), and several designed the terrific masks, along with Heidi Rider. Tim Gray did the music and the very effective sound cues, Jerry Lee Wallace the scenic design, Michael Foster the lighting, Lydia Foreman the costumes.

 But what about those ghosts? I'm told that telling ghost stories at Christmas is an English tradition, which presumably predates Dickens. Still, much of how we celebrate the Christmas season--and much of how Dickens felt Christmas should be celebrated--is derived from very ancient festivals of the winter solstice.

  In some Native American traditions, the shortest day of the year signals the promise of spring, as days grow longer and the light returns. Winter is considered a pregnancy. Also in Native traditions, as probably in many others, winter is the time for storytelling. People must be inside more, gathered around the fire, so more inclined to listen to stories.

Spirits are often characters in those stories. Some of the most spiritually and culturally important stories can be told only in the winter. Even in Dickens time, people told stories around the fire in winter, and apparently like other fireside traditions, these included ghost stories. In A Christmas Carol , Dickens brilliantly uses spirits to convey a spiritual message, based on the contemplation of death. The contrast of death and life is especially heightened in the context of the ideals of Christmas: charity and the joys of life.

Scrooge was a rich man who learned nobility and empathy for the poor. Oliver Twist, the hero of just the second novel in Dickens’ long career, was himself a poor boy with a noble heart, with the choice of being worked to death or preying on the rich to survive, before fate and kind-hearted people intervene.

 The 1960s hit musical Oliver! simplifies the story, and despite the extremes of mid-19th century London, capitalizes on colorful characters and the picturesque. Since it emphasizes the heartwarming morality tale as well as colorful Dickensian characters, and especially because it presents children on stage, this family-friendly musical now at Ferndale Repertory Theatre fits into this Dickens of a Christmas season on the North Coast.

 Oliver!, with music, lyrics and book by Lionel Bart, is directed by Tom Phillips, with musical direction by Laura Welch, vocal direction by David Powell and Nanette Voss, and choreography by Linda Maxwell. Scenic design is by Elizabeth Uhazy, lighting by Nick Trotter, sound by Dylan Savage and Ian Shatz. Sammy Humphrey and Jacob Smith alternate as Oliver. The large cast includes Jim Buschman, Sarah Seidt, Denim Ohmit, Janet Waddell, Dave Powell, Lynn Kermin and Dave Fuller. Oliver! plays weekends (including Sunday matinees) at Ferndale Rep until Dec. 20. Beti Trauth reviews it here.

This North Coast Weekend

HSU opens The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher (Sister Mary Ignatius...) Durang, for two weekends beginning Thursday (Dec. 3) in the Gist Hall Theatre. It's directed by Jody Sekas--well-known on the North Coast as scenic designer and consultant for some 80 shows at various local theatres, but this is his first time directing since his student days. There's much more at HSU Stage, but I can't resist quoting once again a little speech that indicates what an antidote this play might be to the usual holiday fare:

Matt, the scholarly son of the unfortunate title couple (and a stand-in for Durang in this obliquely autobiographical play) reads from a mock essay: “Holidays were invented in 1203 by Sir Ethelbert Holiday, a sadistic Englishman. It was Sir Ethelbert’s hope that by setting aside specific days on which to celebrate things...that the population at large would fall into a collective deep depression. Holidays would regulate joy so that anyone who didn’t feel joyful on those days would feel bad. Single people would be sad they were single. Married people would be sad they were married. Everyone would feel disappointment that their lives had fallen so far short of their expectations.”

Beginning Friday (Dec. 4) for two weekends, A Very Playhouse Christmas: A Television Special presents the fabulous Tannenbalm Sisters (Jacqueline Dandeneau, Tinamarie Ivey and Zuzka Sabata) hosting a zany fake Christmas special, with different local guest artists for each performance, including Lynne and Bob Wells, Art Jones, Joan Schirle, Sienna Nelson and the Arcata Interfaith Gospel Choir. It's all at the Arcata Playhouse (see the site.)

Elsewhere in this Dickens of a Christmas on the North Coast, Ferndale Rep continues Oliver!, North Coast Rep continues A Christmas Carol and Dell'Arte takes A Commedia Christmas Carol on the road. I review that one in the Journal this week, and I'm planning to publish the whole novel here.