PRINCE OF TIDES

Picaresque Pericles a seaworthy adventure

Santa Cruz Shakespeare takes a big chance with its third offering of the season, Pericles. A lesser known Shakespeare play without the marquee value of, say, A Midsummer Night's Dream, its hyperactive storyline also makes it a challenge to stage. Fortunately, director Charles Pasternak has a savvy enough grasp of stagecraft to keep the unruly plot on track, while showcasing its best moments of comedy and poignant revelation.

Casting the always interesting Paige Lindsey White as protagonist Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is another intriguing choice. The character is not re-imagined as female (like Helen Mirren as "Prospera," in the 2010 movie of The Tempest). Rather, White's Pericles is a universal Everyperson, responding to the extremes of the plot with the kind of humanity and spirit we can all relate to.

 

And extreme they are. Prince Pericles sails to the neighboring kingdom of Antiochus (Corey Jones) to woo his daughter (Allie Pratt). But when he discovers they are having an incestuous relationship, Pericles flees, pursued by an assassin. His odyssey next takes him to the famine-ravage kingdom of Cleon (also Jones) a Dionyza (Desiree Rogers), where he delivers life-saving food, before he is shipwrecked in a storm at sea.

 

Pericles washes ashore in the kingdom of genial King Simonides (Jones yet again), who is holding a jousting tournament to win the hand of his daughter, Thaisa (charmingly eager innocent Lily Kops). Pericles is victorious over five other knights and weds Thaisa. Later, the pregnant Thaisa gives birth to a daughter during another storm at sea, but seemingly dies in childbirth. 

 

White and Kops: romantic intrigue

 Pericles takes the infant daughter he names Marina back to Cleon and Dionyza to raise, then returns to the sea to grieve. The second half of the story concerns Marina, now a young woman (also Pratt), captured by pirates and sold into a brothel, where she confounds the madame (a now brash, belligerent Kops) by talking all of her potential clients out of ravishing her.

 

Because so much of this storyline happens offstage, presented as hearsay, including juicy stuff like jousting and piracy, it's sometimes difficult for the audience to become fully engaged in the complicated story. But when scenes are pared down to a few characters whose motives we clearly understand, it all works beautifully, thanks to its extremely versatile and energetic cast.

 

Jones' regal bearing as all three very different kings is impressive throughout, but he has the most fun as the expansive Simonides, covertly matchmaking for Pericles and Thaisa. Jones, White and Kops shine in a skillfully directed, very funny pas de trois as the wily king tries reverse psychology, pretending to forbid a match between Pericles and Thaisa that he's secretly determined to arrange.

 

M L Roberts excels as a furtive assassin, a philosophical fisherman, and a  good-hearted servant at the bawdy house who helps spirit Marina away. Rogers' noble, compassionate queen, Dionyza, convincingly descends into murderous jealousy. Jono Eiland is engaging as both a studious alchemist who revives Thaisa, and a would-be assassin with a moral compass. Mike Ryan lends humor and gravity as both Hellicanus, Pericles' trusted advisor, and the rowdy Pander, who runs the brothel. 

 

 Highlight of the show is a terrific centerpiece number when the knights vying for Thasia's hand perform a percussive dance of male machismo in the style of a Maori tribal ritual. (Big kudos to Choreographer Izzy Pedego.) And after all their exhausting adventures, Pericles' final reunion with his lost wife and daughter concludes the tale on a grace note of reconciliation and redemption, in which White, in particular, is profoundly touching.

 

The George Wilkins listed as a collaborator on the play was a London pamphleteer who wrote a prose version of the medieval poem by John Gower that inspired Shakespeare. It's thought that Wilkins contributed to the first two acts of the play, which may explain why the first couple of exposition scenes are a little hard to get into. At the court of Antiochus, from the actors' body language, and the word "incest" repeatedly flung about, we get what's going on, but the untrained ear (okay, mine), can't discern whatever verbal clue it is that alerts Pericles to the situation and sends him fleeing for his life.

 

 Shakespeare wrote Gower into the play as an onstage narrator, explaining the action. But Pasternak dispenses with Gower, handing the narration duties over to the ensemble, filling in the busy plot so the audience can keep up. 

 

They make excellent use of the smart set by Michael Schweikardt and Bennet Seymour, prowling around the catwalks and revolving staircases, which variously become palaces, seashores, tournament fields, and storm-wracked ships at sea. Erin Reed Carter's vivid costumes are most impressive in the gemstone-colored royal finery, and the quilted, samurai-like robes of the jousters.

 

Pericles may not be Shakespeare's best-remembered play, but Pasternak and company make it a memorable theatrical event.

 

Pericles plays in repertory at the Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park through August 30.

Photos by Kevin Lohman and Shmuel Thaler

SMILES of a SUMMER NIGHT

White, Ryan and assorted fairies: bright spirits

 Magical Santa Cruz Shakespeare double header all an audience could wish for

 

Looking for something to brighten your spirits? (And who isn't, these days?)

 

Fortunately, you need look no further than DeLaveaga Park, where Santa Cruz Shakespeare launched its 2025 Summer Season over the weekend with a pair of boisterous new productions: A Midsummer Night's Dream, perhaps the most popular, accessible, and funniest of Shakespeare comedies, and the vibrant musical fairytale mashup, Into The Woods, featuring the elegantly witty songs of Stephen Sondheim.

 

Beautifully staged under the towering trees of the Audrey Stanley Grove, this year's plays are presented under the theme No One Is Alone (the title of one of Sondheim's pivotal songs). Which, in the case of these first two productions, emphasizes the power of community, and the elliptical, mostly (but not always) comic consequences within that community and ourselves when we make foolish choices, mostly (but not always) in pursuit of love.

 

Bright spirits abound — literally — in director Paul Mullins' exuberant Midsummer, where the impending nuptials of lord, Theseus (Corey Jones), and Hippolyta (Charlotte Boyce Munson), whose Amazon tribe he has just conquered, play off against a rift in the spirit world between Oberon (ML Rogers) and Titania (Paige Lindsey White), King and Queen of the Fairies. The tentative rapprochement between the mortal bride and groom-to-be contrasts with the scheming erotic gamesmanship of the lustily feuding fairy spouses.

 

Rossi, Pratt, Sagay and Kops: issues

Meanwhile, two sets of young mortal lovers are having their own issues. Hermia (Allie Pratt), pledged to marry Demetrius (Elliot Sagay), her father's choice, has instead fallen in love with Lysander (Nick Rossi). But Demetrius still pursues her, even though Helena (Lily Kops), a young woman he has dallied with, is now in love with him. Threatened with death or a nunnery if she doesn't wed Demetrius, Hermia flees into the woods with Lysander the night before the royal wedding, pursued by Demetrius, who is pursued by Helena.

 

There, they unwittingly become the playthings of Oberon and Titania, and their  fairy conspirators. The fairy king directs his antic henchman, Puck (Justin Joung), to apply a love potion to sort out the young lovers into correct pairs while they sleep, but Puck messes up, so that both youths are now fierce rivals for Helena, while Hermia is abandoned.

 

Further complicating things is a troupe of local craftsmen in the woods to rehearse a play to perform at the wedding the next day. Driven by more enthusiasm than skill, they provide more fodder for Oberon's spat with his queen; the sleeping Titania is charmed into falling passionately in love with the first creature she sees, upon waking — which turns out to be genial, bombastic amateur player Nick Bottom (played with relish by Mike Ryan), now sporting the head of a donkey, via Puck's mischievous magic.

 

Roberts, Joung and White: panache

Pratt's feisty, determined Hermia plays in counterpoint to Kops' forlorn Helena, whose bewilderment at suddenly finding herself pursued by both swains ramps up to a cleansing dose of outrage that she's being being mocked. Joung is wonderful as the acrobatic trickster, Puck, in his headdress of red flames, manipulating a glowing, moon-like orb to illuminate the fairy revels. Jono Eiland steals every scene he's in as amateur player Francis Flute, disappointed at first to be cast in the female role of Thisbe, who nevertheless throws himself into it with hilarious comic abandon. B. Modern's savvy costumes range from the mortal's sensible neutrals to the vibrant gemstone colors of the forest fairies, and special kudos to Lighting Designer Marcella Barbeau for bathing the scene in lush royal purple every time Puck administers his love potion.

 

You couldn't ask for more brio and panache from a fairy king and queen than the Oberon of ML Roberts (so boisterous a couple of years back as Petruchio in The Taming Of the Shrew), and the Titania of Paige Lindsey White, (astonishing as Polonius in last year's Hamlet, combining a sitcom busybody with tragically fatal hubris in a role generally written off as an inconsequential bumbler). 

 

But it's unusual for the actors playing the fairy monarchs to not be double-cast as the mortal monarchs, as well. Jones and Munson are perfectly fine as Theseus and Hippolyta, but it's almost as if their characters are operating outside of the action, almost superfluous, whereas, when the parts are double-cast, the King and Queen of Faery, and their mortal counterparts are like alter-egos of each other, completing the circle of love, passion, power and foolishness that drives the action.

 

Still, it's a minor point in a lively, entertaining show.

 

Into the Woods ensemble: wish lists

The company transitions from the Fairy Court to fairy tales with Into The Woods, the celebrated Broadway musical set in a magical realm where all the tales we remember from childhood play out simultaneously. With a book by James Lapine, and a score of smart, intricate Sondheim songs, the show explores what happens before, during, and after the traditional "Happily Ever After."

 

Directed by Jerry Lee, the show revolves around a humble Baker and his wife who long to have a child. Played by Tyler Nye and Melissa WolfKlain, they provide a foundation of warm humanity for all the fantastical elements to come. In the opening ensemble number, "I Wish," their neighbors also chime in on what they wish for. Gullible innocent Jack (Justin Joung), and his widowed mother (Jordan Best), wish they weren't so poor, and that their elderly cow (Jack calls her his best friend) would give milk.

Tending to the ashes in her rags, Cinderella (Ciarra Stroud) wishes she could go to the prince's festival at the royal castle, while her scheming Stepmother (Lori Schulman), wishes to marry off one of her own harridan daughters to the prince. Little Red (comically plucky Mai Abe) wishes to go visit her granny in the woods, and arrives with an empty basket to fill with the baker's sweets. But their wishes pale next to the desires of "the witch next door" (Charlotte Boyce Munson); turns out she has cursed the baker and his wife to childlessness, but will reverse the curse if they will undertake a perilous journey into the woods.

 

Munson, WolfKlain and Nye: the witch next door

 The stage is set for cross-pollinated tales (Rapunzel, imprisoned in the Witch's tower, the Three Little Pigs, and a giant on the other end of Jack's beanstalk also make guest appearances). Surprise plot twists and much sprightly wordplay ensue on the way to everyone's happy ending — at least, in the first act. As the stories continue in the second half, beyond the traditional "The End," the characters and the audience face the consequences of reckless wishing.

 

Of course, you can't have a scary wood without a big bad wolf, and this production gives us two — one to menace Little Red on her way to Granny's, and a second to harass those pigs. It's traditional that Cinderella's Prince and Red's Wolf are played by the same actor, but one of its biggest delights in this production is the triple-casting of Elliot Sagay and Alex Cook as both wolves, both princes (Cinderella's and Rapunzel's), and Cinderella's ghastly stepsisters! The cleverest of Austin Blake Conlee's excellent costumes are the tight doublets and leather pants the princes wear, that become the stepsisters' finery with the addition of high pompadour wigs, red velvet bustles, and high heels, pared down to lean, black predator silhouettes under cage-like wolf heads, complete with snapping jaws and lolling red tongues.

 

As the princes, the actors also get to deliver one of the funniest songs, "Agony," a dual lament that the women they covet are so unattainable — shortly followed by the "Agony" reprise, in which they lament that, having attained the unattainable, their affections are already straying elsewhere. In another musical highlight, "Any Moment," Sagay, as the sly, insinuating alpha wolf, tries to persuade WolfKlain, the Baker's Wife, to give herself up to the alluring, if transitory, pleasures of the woods.

 

Ensemble: After "Ever After"

 

Milky White, the cow (not exactly a speaking, er, mooing part, but onstage in many scenes) is an emaciated, but stoic creature of cobwebby white ropes, and Cinderella's twittering birds are hand-held by various whistling actors who swoop and flutter them about. But the most impressive special effect comes from Sound Designer Barry G. Funderburg. The giant is never seen, but every bone-rattling step of the giant coming closer through the woods has us looking over our shoulders; we could swear the ground was quaking underfoot.

 

Munson makes a marvelous Witch, in both her crone and glamorous personae. Schulman is both a gleefully imperious Stepmother, and a sharp, no-nonsense Granny. Stroud shines as both gutsy Cinderella and the gentler Rapunzel, and Best's exasperated fretting as Jack's mother contrasts with her serenity, and gorgeous ethereal singing as the ghostly spirit of Cinderella's mother. All of them have lovely singing voices, and the entire company delivers Sondheim's intricate lyrics with clarity and verve.

 

Music, magic, and midsummer madness. Who could wish for more?

PUZZLE ME THIS

 

In the third week of April, 2018, James and I were getting ready for a trip back to the Chicago suburb of his boyhood for his mother's memorial. Far-flung family members were coming in from Sweden, the Virgin Islands, Wisconsin and California, for what was going to be an epic family reunion. We'd been saving the New York Times crossword puzzles out of the Sentinel for about a week, in preparation for the flight; James was eager to see everyone, but he hated being confined in the plane for 4 hours and needed something to do.

 

On the morning before the day we were supposed to leave, James wound up in the ICU at Stanford. Two days later, I had to let him go, and my world turned upside down. Although I have little memory of the details now, I somehow managed to send email dispatches back to the assembled Aschbachers every night. Three days later, the event that brought them all together became a memorial not only for my mother-in-law, but for James as well.

 

Among the many household chores that began to accrue for me in the days and weeks and months and years after I lost him were those crossword puzzles we used to do together over breakfast and lunch every day. My heart wasn't in it for a long time, but because I was trying to keep my life (ie: my routines) as normal as possible, I kept methodically separating out those puzzles to save for later. (Not every day, but Thursdays, because there's always something tricky in the theme or the structure; Fridays, because they have the answers to Thursday; and Sundays, because it's always a big, intricate feast of a puzzle!)

 

It wasn't nearly as much fun to do the puzzles alone; there was no one to impress when I suddenly had an aha! moment, charged eagerly downstairs, and filled in the last couple of squares that solved some obscure clue. Still, I managed to finish one occasionally, over a period of days, not hours. But I could never work enough of them to make much of a dent in the ones I kept obsessively saving, which began to stack up and up, expanding exponentially like the Blob. When one stack got too tall and tottery, I skimmed a few off the top and started another stack somewhere else.

 

Well, you know where this is going. Six years later, I have four stacks of puzzles — mostly pristine, but some partially filled in — taking up real estate in my house, three squirreled away between James' art table and his former office, plus the most recent ones I keep on the dining table. (Where I still complete one, once in awhile.) But with family visiting from overseas next week, I had to face the awful truth — it was time for a purge. 

 

28th Anniversary present from James!

It's not like I'm a hoarder. You don't need GPS, a guide dog, or a machete to navigate around my house. All the stuff acquired in our 40 years together is well organized and tidy, the Virgo in me believing that if everything can be stashed away in some appropriate place (preferably out of sight), then I won't have to deal with it for awhile — if ever. Everything but those stacks of puzzles, which have been migrating from one inappropriate surface to another, defying my attempts to corral them.

 

Well-meaning friends have offered to dump them in the recycle bin for me — problem solved! — yet I find myself strangely unwilling to agree. Over these past few years, I've sent my Art Boy's clothes to Good Will, donated his art books to the Tannery library, and his art supplies to the schools; I rehomed his collection of monster and sci-fi toys to a toy dealer, cleaned out his video closet, and had 4 of his 5 VCRs hauled off to Grey Bears.

 

So why is it so hard to give up the puzzles?

 

On one hand, it ought to be a too-painful reminder of losing him in media res, the last little project he was working on before he was struck down, all those empty little squares unfilled. But maybe that's part of the reason I still cling to them. That first little pile of saved puzzles was like his stake in the future — making the plane ride enjoyable, then the fun family reunion, and whatever adventures would come after. Any time I saw them sitting there where he left them, I felt momentarily transported back to that fateful day. As if the life we might have had, but for one split second of fate, had we packed up those puzzles, caught our flight, and gone off into our future, was still right there, within reach, as if that little pile of puzzles was a portal between the optimistic past, that still felt so immediate, and the unexpected and unpredictable future now unwinding before me.

 

Realistically, I know I'll never be able to access that portal — unless my life turns out to be a Twilight Zone episode, or a Neil Gaiman story. But it's also come to symbolize a turning point in my own identity, a dividing line between my past and present self. Past me, marching fearlessly out into the world with my Sweetie, vs. Present me, physically compromised, if still relatively functional, but emotionally rudderless on my own. Emotionally, I seem to need to keep those puzzles as the last little tangible link to our partnership, in crossword puzzles and everything else, eagerly filling in all of life's little squares together.

DANE OF THRONES

All systems are 'go' in Hamlet, the centerpiece production of this year's Santa Cruz Shakespeare season. The acting is impressive at every level, and the action trots along with clarity, focus and feeling. Director Susan Dalian updates the famous tale of political murder, moral corruption, and generational angst into the post-assassination JFK/Mad Men era, which makes enough sense to complement, not distract from the drama.

To recap: The King of Denmark has died suddenly, and his brother, Claudius, has assumed the king's throne and married the king's wife, Queen Gertrude. The royal son, Prince Hamlet, home from school abroad for his father's funeral, is already shocked by his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle when the ghost of his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by Claudius and demands vengeance. 

Much of the play revolves around Hamlet's soul-searching, as he grapples with grief and rage: must he avenge his father's murder? What happens if he does? Can he live with himself if he does not? Is life worth living at all? Meanwhile, he pretends to be mad, spouting wordplay and foolery, hoping to throw the plotters off-guard and learn the truth about his father's death — and decide what to do about it. 

As Hamlet, incoming SCS Artistic Director Charles Pasternak makes a grand, rampaging feast of the part. Roaring in outrage, heartfelt in despair, he can shift in an instant into nimble verbal dancing and witty asides, baiting the pompous and the less intellectually adroit. It's a Herculean, often riveting  performance that never quite loses its grounding in life-sized human emotion. 

Mike Ryan plays the treacherous Claudius with glib, glad-handing duplicity. As Gertrude, Marion Adler seems hopefully pragmatic at first, trying to restore peace to her recently disrupted court, but gradually descends into aching remorse the "crazier" and more reproachful her son becomes. There's more collateral damage in Ophelia, Hamlet's paramour, daughter of the king's counselor, Polonius. Allie Pratt plays her as a fragile, innocent flower child driven genuinely out of her mind by Hamlet's pretended lunacy. 

By far the most arresting supporting character in this production in Polonius, gender-switched from a befuddled, cliche-spouting, out-of-touch doddering father, as the role is usually played, into a socially scheming mother. The remarkable Paige Lindsey White gives us an interfering mother of dynamic, aggressive cluelessness, eager to enforce the romantic and social protocols of her own bygone era, and thus prove worthy to meddle in the schemes of her royal in-laws-to-be. White's Polonius is a vividly entertaining comic figure, right up to the moment she's undone by her own hubris, daring to believe (mistakenly, as it turns out) that she's sly enough to match wits with the pros in ruthless court politics. 

Jono Eiland and Elliot Sagay are pleasantly accommodating as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (not necessarily in that order, although no one is ever quite sure), Hamlet's school friends recruited by Claudius to spy on his antagonistic step-son. Charlotte Munson is effective as Horatio, Hamlet's confidant, and the play's moral and rational center, and the ever exuberant Patty Gallagher pops up as the Player King, head of a troupe of actors hired by Hamlet to stage an incendiary drama about regicide. Raphael Nash Thompson brings his sonorous voice and formidable presence to the vengeful Ghost. 

Austin Blake Conlee's costumes run toward relaxed mens' suits and chic linen dress ensembles in popsicle pastel colors, accompanied by wigmistress Jessica Carter's extravagant mid-60s bouffants. Luke Shepherd's smart, subtle, insinuating sound design enhances the action at every turn. 

This is the fourth production of Hamlet mounted by the company since its original inception as Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 1981. The first production of the play, way back in 1985, starred a young Brit recently imported from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Paul Whitworth, in the title role. 

Incidental characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were played by Danny Scheie and Jack Zerbe, who also got to star in a concurrent production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious existential comedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which played on alternate nights with Hamlet throughout the season. 

This was momentous casting for the company, since both Scheie and then Whitworth would go on to serve tenures as Artistic Director. 

Me, I loved both productions so much, I channeled my inner Al Hirschfield and drew this cartoon, commemorating the season! 

 

Hamlet plays in repertoire through August 31st in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.

INTO THE WOODS

Courtly Cousins: Munson and Takayo

SCS launches season with lively rustic comedy As You Like It

Art imitated life in Santa Cruz this weekend — or was it the other way around?

Santa Cruz Shakespeare launched it's 43rd(!) season under the theme Generations, in honor of former Artistic Director Mike Ryan handing over the festival reins to new Artistic Director Charles Pasternak. Within the same 48 hours, President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, "passing the torch" to Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming November election. As Pasternak writes in his program notes, this season "looks forward to the young inheriting the world."

As always, 400+ years later, Shakespeare's stories are as timely as ever!

The first production in this year's play cycle, Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It, is not about the transfer of political power, but rather the efforts of a younger generation to escape the dysfunctional family values of the past, reinvent themselves, and go boldly into the future.

The story turns on two sets of brothers in conflict. Conniving Duke Frederick has usurped the office of his benevolent brother, Duke Senior, who has fled with his loyal followers into the Forest of Arden, a wild, unspoiled refuge far from the rules and intrigues of the ducal court. Frederick's henchman, Oliver, a firstborn son, has inherited his nobleman father's title and lands, but refuses to provide for his younger brother, Orlando, leaving him to make his own way in the world without station, means, or recourse.

Although Senior is banished, his daughter, Rosalind, still lives at the palace with her beloved cousin, Celia, daughter of Frederick— until he banishes her, too. Disguising herself as a man, Rosalind flees into the forest with Celia, who dresses as a plain country lass. Pretty soon, Orlando also arrives in the forest to escape his murderous brother's wrath, and the stage is set for both a romantic comedy of dueling wits and the low comedy of courtly vs. country manners.

Sir Duke: Thompson as genial Duke Senior

Indeed, director Carey Perloff sets the action quite literally on a stage, or rather, the backstage area of a theater, amid stacks of prop boxes, rolling dress forms, and racks of costumes. It's ironic enough to construct a theatrical backstage to stand in for the Forest of Arden in the middle of an actual eucalyptus grove. But Perloff states she was inspired by the play's famous "All the world's a stage" speech to conceive of the forest as a kind of (literal) green room where the characters, like actors, try on various disguises and deceptions, and engage in philosophical and romantic banter while grooming themselves to return to the "real world" of court life.

But this thoughtful concept doesn't feel especially organic to the play, or justify why such a decidedly rustic story seems to be taking place indoors, particularly if one hasn't read Perloff's notes. She might have had more fun pushing the concept further with the actors obviously putting on a show for us as they work through the play's themes, slipping in and out of character and costumes in view of the audience, highlighting the idea that "all the men and women (are) merely players."

That said, the production skips along at a lively pace, buoyed up by its engaging cast. As Orlando, meeting Rosalind for the first time (they fall instantly in love, of course), Elliot Sagay is absolutely priceless in his inability to squeeze out one single word. Charlotte Munson delivers Rosalind's lines with bright, vivid clarity; when they encounter each other later in the forest, and Rosalind, in disguise, coaches Orlando how to woo, she seems amazed and delighted as each witty rejoinder pops into her head.

Forest Foolery: Tagatac, Rose, Gallagher, Sagay

Anna Takayo is fresh and charming as loyal Celia. The irrepressible Patty Gallagher exercises her gifts as both a physical clown and flinger of bawdy wit as the court fool, Touchstone, going native in the country to court lusty shepherdess Audrey (Jomar Tagatac). Paige Lindsey White is quietly compelling as "the melancholy Jacques," whose philosophical observations create a subtext of wistful reflection alongside the comedy.

The diminutive Chelsea Rose makes a big impression as feisty shepherdess Phoebe, who falls for the boy she believes Rosalind is while being pursued by Justin Juong's sweetly hapless shepherd, Silvius. As both rival dukes, the excellent Raphael Nash Thompson switches gears between the clipped, menacing severity of Frederick and the genial effusiveness of Senior. And Pasternak's Oliver, all bristling spite in the early scenes, makes a nifty transition into a reformed, good-hearted mensch by the last act.

Musical composer David Coulter sets Shakespeare's songs to glide in and out of the action, then wallops us with a showstopper of "What shall he have that kill'd the deer?" as an eerily aggressive rhythmic chant. Coulter also appears throughout in a little cubbyhole onstage, providing incidental music and sound effects.

Love, laughs, action and music — as the title suggests, As You Like It has something for everyone!


As You Like It plays in repertoire through September 1st in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.

BUTT IN THE CHAIR

Whenever anyone is fool enough to ask me for writing advice, I'm sure my responses are vague or cryptic at best. But having spent the last many (many) moons finally wrestling my next book into shape, I may have discovered a viable answer.

 

Get your Butt in the Chair.

 

Make time to get your butt in the chair every day. Even if you're only staring at a blank screen, even if your keyboard in encased in cobwebs, chances are, something is cooking in your subconscious — triggered by the mundane physical act of going into work mode. 

 

Ignore your email, social media, or whatever you forgot to take out of the freezer for dinner. This is your work time. Trust your inner writer to rise to the occasion.

 

Granted, it doesn't sound as sexy as the Narrative Curve Graph, or the 9-Box Plot Diagram, or some magic alchemical formula. Or voodoo. But it's an improvement over the Spaghetti Method (throw it on the wall and see if it sticks), which I realize is the way I tend to write my first few drafts.

 

Stephen King assures writers that nobody but you is ever going to read the first draft (nor should they), so you might as well throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, the whole enchilada, the kit and kaboodle, and any other stale cliche or ludicrous idea you can think of to get some semblance of an actual story up onscreen. Most of it will be (mercifully) deleted in the comb-out anyway.

 

You can pop a cork and do a happy dance as soon as you type The End on that first draft, but understand that the real work is just beginning.

 

 

This is no time to be like Mooch, the Cat, chilling out while waiting for inspiration to drop in. You can't stalk it, or bully it into submission, either. Inspiration is a fragile, often fleeting thing. You have to be ready at the keyboard with your doc open, your mouse in play (tinkering over this sentence or that parenthetical note to self, or some random snippet of dialogue), with the scope of the story simmering away in your subconscious, when that tiny idea glimmers briefly to life that's going to Make. It. Work.

 

But that the idea comes at all is absolutely the product of all those hours your butt has logged in the chair. Even when you're not writing actual prose, it's the busy work you do in the margins, Grasshopper, that empties out space in your brain for the next idea to be born.

BIO SPHERE

Graduation Day, 1974

In celebration of the (ack!) 50th anniversary of my graduation from UCSC, here's what I cobbled together for the online Alumni Reunion Profile pages.

 

As a junior transfer from Southern California, I graduated in 1974 from Porter (then called College V) with a BA in Aesthetic Studies. This coveted document got me a job selling popcorn at the UA Riverfront Cinemas on Front Street, followed by a stint in the textbook room at Bookshop Santa Cruz. 

 

As a lark, I answered an ad in a new 12-page throwaway publication called Good Times for a second string movie reviewer, which I thought would be a fun thing to do until I got a real job. This experiment in gap employment lasted 45 years.

 

I went through two owners, three publishers, at least 17 editors  (I lost count), five changes of venue for our physical offices, and an earthquake. Not to mention some two thousand movies, at the very least, and probably a couple hundred more. In 2017, my reviews started appearing on Rotten Tomatoes. I would still be at it if COVID-19 hadn't eaten my job in 2020. The theaters closed, and even though they've now reopened, people no longer consume movies in the same way; the massive amount of available "content" is too much for a weekly paper to keep up with.

 

In the meantime, I've had three novels published since 2001, with a fourth on the way. It was also my ridiculous good fortune to be married to artist James Aschbacher for 40 years, whose vibrant and playful murals (three of which we painted together) decorate public spaces and elementary schools all over Santa Cruz County.

 

 

My principal workplace for 45 years! 

 

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Although the Aesthetic Studies degree would soon be discontinued in favor of an actual discipline, what it meant to me in practical terms was I got to make up my own DIY major. Having completed all my science requirements at the community college level, I spent my two years at UCSC taking lit classes from Paul Skenazy and John Jordan, art classes from Doug McLellan, and Art History classes from the inimitable Jasper Rose.

 

Rose was so entertaining, my housemate (who wasn't even a student) used to come with me to sit in on his class. He would come swanning into the room trailing his slightly tattered black and scarlet Oxford robes, launch himself across the lectern, and greet us with an expansive, "Hello, duckies!" (My girlfriend and I call each other "Ducky" to this day!)

 

 And although I never studied to be a movie critic (it was strictly on-the-job training), I did take one terrific film course from Tim Hunter on Alfred Hitchcock. In those days of Pass-Fail grading, we could do pretty much whatever we wanted for a final, so I drew a storyboard for an imaginary murder sequence in an imaginary Hitchcock movie. "This is hot!" Hunter scrawled in the margin. Translation: Pass.

 

My favorite UCSC memory? A bunch of us were loitering in the hallway waiting for our lit professor to come open the classroom when Jasper Rose came gliding by and asked what we were up to. Someone said we were waiting for our Victorian Fiction class. To which Rose replied, "Oh, there is nothing more fascinating than Victorian Fiction! Unless, of course, it's Victorian fact!"

 

CLAY SERA SERA

Hey, folks, check out The Colour Room, now streaming on Amazon Prime. It's a drama about the early career of the wonderful Clarice Cliff, a working-class factory girl in the north of England who became one of the most renowned ceramic artists of the Art Deco '30s.

 

Her work is distinctive, not only for the vivid colors on her hand-painted pieces, but the abstract geometrical shapes she pioneered for everyday household items like cups, plates, teapots and creamers.

 

The movie is long on atmosphere — those giant kiln chimneys belching smoke into the sky day and night — and cheerworthy in the way the audacious young Clarice rises above her station painting pottery on an assembly line at the Wilkinson company to become one of the company's top designers. 

 

And while her work confounds most of the stodgy male board members, she perseveres by rallying her fellow "paintresses" to produce her line and market it to an enthusiastic demographic of women. (Not unlike the Girl Power motif of the Barbie movie!)

 

 But beyond that, the movie was nostalgic for me (or possibly triggering), since my first summer job out of high school was painting bisque ware on the line at the funky Metlox Potteries factory in Manhattan Beach. Company designs were stamped on the pieces, which we girls had to paint in, not only in preordained colors, but in a precise number of brush strokes. Mess up, and your work was relegated to the (dreaded) seconds store. 

Not all that creative, except that it prompted me to start drawing a comic strip about my adventures in the working world, which I just dug out to look at for the first time in (ahem) 50 years.

 

In the strip, I called it Hotbox Pottery because it was always sweltering in the workplace in summer, with the kiln roaring away. The paint room was a couple of rooms away, but the bisque grading department, where my mom worked, adjoined the kiln room and was blistering in all seasons; the foreman handed out daily rations of salt tablets to keep the work force up and running.

The owner's initials were ES (Evan Shaw, who had bought the company from its original founders), so we always referred to him as Ebenezer Scrooge for his miserly policies. But looking back, it wasn't such a bad place to start my working life, earning my own paycheck (such as it was ), and doing my own banking. Except for the heat, painting pottery was more fun than slinging burgers at McDonald's or any kind of retail job where I'd have to confront a cash register.

 

Sadly, nothing I painted is ever likely to turn up on Antiques Roadshow (unlike Clarice Cliff). We never got to paint any of the cool Atomic '50s designs; most of our work was the prosaic Rooster or Fruit Basket patterns. Still, newcomers were allowed to sign and keep their first successfully painted plate, which I still have. And in retrospect, I'm pleased to think I had some connection, however tenuous, to what I realize now was the fabled Mid-Century California art pottery scene. 

 

Who knew?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORD PLAY

 SCS stages smart, witty story of the actors who saved Shakespeare

You couldn't imagine a better production to capture the spirit of this pivotal Santa Cruz Shakespeare season than The Book of Will. Lauren Gunderson's contemporary play about the creation of the First Folio of Shakespeare's texts is all about the power of words — to inspire and excite, to celebrate and educate, to comfort and heal. And it provides the perfect vehicle for outgoing Artistic Director Mike Ryan to hand over the company reins to incoming AD Charles Pasternak, playing the two real-life actors whose persistence, against all odds, preserved Shakespeare's splendid words for all time.

Ryan and Pasternak play John Heminge and Henry Condell, two Elizabethan actors, friends and colleagues of the recently deceased Will, who hatch a scheme to collect and transcribe all the scribbled-down versions of Shakespeare's play texts they can find to produce a single, official volume of his work in print. This is no easy task. Complete playscripts were rare in this era; normally, actors only copied out their own parts to learn, partly to save on time and the expense of materials like parchment and ink, and partly to prevent other companies from stealing a complete script and producing their own versions. Not that it worked very well, as companies who only had a few scenes of a play to work with cheerfully made up the rest.
 

This point is made painfully clear in the very first scene as a young actor from a rival company (Mariana Garzon Toro) energetically murders Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech with some random improvised filler. Heminge and Condell, of the King's Men theatrical troupe, and celebrated actor Richard Burbage (played with bombastic verve by Rex Young) gather in a tavern run by Heminge's daughter, Alice (winsome and spirited Allie Pratt) to bemoan the evident deterioration of Shakespeare's plays in performance some seven years after the author's death. Some ardent players like Burbage have memorized entire plays as written, but their generation is aging out, to be replaced by their less-well-schooled heirs.

It's Condell who first proposes the crack-brained idea of collecting Will's plays into a single volume, in his own authentic words — while people still remember what they are. Heminge, who has also become the troupe's business manager, is more tentative, cost-wise. But the enthusiasm of not only Condell and Alice, but Condell's amiable wife, Elizabeth (Paige Lindsey White) and Heminge's own wry, stout-hearted wife, Rebecca (Amy Kim Waschke) convince him of the urgency of preserving Will's thrilling words.

It all comes home to Heminge in a deeply moving late-inning monologue about the power of words to express the inexpressible and give vent to the otherwise unbearable burden of heartbreak.

The supporting cast is terrific, as usual. Young doubles in the role of the publisher, Jaggard, who's been blithely profiting off  the sale of bastardized version of Shakespeare's plays. Ben Jonson (a suitably flamboyant David Kelly), Shakespeare's friend and rival, makes a guest appearance.

Director Laura Gordon is also an actor (she was Prospero in last season's The Tempest),  and her staging makes the most of all the comedy and dry wit, as well as the more subtle, poignant moments in the plot. And for us grumpy traditionalists who pine to see Shakespeare performed in Elizabethan-style dress once in awhile, B. Modern's costumes evoke the period while retaining an unfussy, lived-in aesthetic.

Believe it or not, this is the 10th anniversary of Santa Cruz Shakespeare (emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of the well-beloved Shakespeare Santa Cruz), and the company's 8th season in the lovely Audrey Stanley Grove up in Delaveaga Park. We have Mike Ryan to thank for shepherding the company through these most tumultuous times to bounce back stronger than ever, even now, when the pandemic and its ongoing aftermath continues to wreak havoc in the arts. With Charles Pasternak at the helm (who acted as co-Artistic Director with Ryan this season, before stepping into the job full time next year), we can expect the festival to continue to build on its impressive past while eagerly embracing the future.

Top photo: Kevin Lohman

Above: R. R. Jones