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?

SEA CHANGE

Heads up, Shakespeare fans! Our own Santa Cruz Shakespeare has announced its lineup for this year's summer festival season — and since it revolves around two of my favorite Shakespeare plays, I could not be more excited!

As in recent summers past, the season opener will be a non-Shakespearean offering, in this case A Flea In Her Ear, the classic French farce by Georges Feydeau, from the turn of the last century. This story of marital mistrust, miscommunication, mistaken identities and reconciliation gets a spanking new adaptation by David Ives (whose adaptation of Moliere's The Liar, back in 2015, was one of the funniest productions in the company's history).

Next up will be Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's lively comedy of romantic complications when a young woman shipwrecked on a foreign shore disguises herself as a young man to seek employment. Full of swift banter, unrequited passion, even a little swordplay, it's an adroit comedy of love, gender, and identity that never goes out of style.

Cut-out poster, Pratt Institute, 2012

But I may be most excited about The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play, and the grand finale of his career, a gorgeous feast of magic and redemption. Duke Prospero, the sorcerer, is usurped by his conniving brother and exiled with his daughter to an uncharted island. With help of his spirit familiars, he causes a shipwreck that delivers his enemies into his power for a day of retribution, romance, and — ultimately — reconciliation.

The Tempest is categorized as a romance (what we might call in modern parlance magic realism), depending on magic, spells, and sorcery to advance the plot. With its scheming royals, drunken clowns, young lovers, antic, otherworldly spirits, disappearing banquets, and exuberant pageantry (as well as its undercurrent of slavery vs. freedom), its effects can be as subtle or spectacular as the playmakers can dream up. 

One previous production of the play (in the company's former incarnation as Shakespeare Santa Cruz) used Balinese shadow puppets and masks to convey the magical elements. In another, director Danny Scheie riffed on Gilligan's Island, with uneven results, but also included a magnificent Ariel, Prospero's chief magical minion, soaring above the action on a trapeze.

The Tempest a la Balinese

A more recent production, set in the Art Noveau era, emphasized the story's humanism, the burgeoning cult of Nature, and the merging of spiritualism with the supernatural.

This will be the company's fourth production of The Tempest, and its first-ever helmed by Artistic Director Mike Ryan, making his debut in the director's chair. I can't wait! Especially since my next novel (under construction as we speak) imagines the further adventures of Prospero's daughter!

The recurring themes of shipwreck and redemption in this year's playlist prompts Ryan to adopt Sea Change as this season's unofficial title. As he explains it, “All of our 2020 plays center around someone (or someones) who are shipwrecked, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally, and sometimes in both ways. These stories ask questions about how we find our way past disaster, impotence, and emotional stagnancy to find fertile ground in renewed joy, love, and hope.”

Finding our way past disaster through love and hope could not be more timely, in our current cultural climate. But, here, I'll let Mike tell you all about it himself!

Meanwhile — full steam ahead!

WEDDED BLITZ

Joys, pitfalls of marriage explored in Actors' Theatre's splendid Company

The new Actors' Theatre production of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company, advertises itself with the symbol for Wi-Fi superimposed over an image of the New York City skyline, under one of the song lyrics from the show: "You haven't got one good reason to be alone."

This adds an extra thematic dimension to Sondheim's story of a 35-year-old bachelor harassed by his married friends to take the plunge into the joys of matrimony — and all the baggage that comes with it.

Originally produced in 1970, the show is cleverly updated to the digital age by director Andrew Ceglio, who ponders the very notion of connection — like, with another actual person — in this selfie era, when every private experience is recorded, Instagrammed and Shared.

That's the subtext, with characters whipping out their phones at every turn to snap pics of each other or play back their messages, while life marches on around them. But Ceglio and his crew also score points the old-fashioned way in this splendid production, with a strong cast of singing actors, and a minimalist, almost non-existent set (by MarNae Taylor), that gives them all plenty of room to move, sing, and kick up their heels — even at the famously tiny Center Stage.

Runaway Bride — Melissa Harrison steals the show

Bobby Marchessault provides a solid center as bachelor Robert, who may or may not be learning from his friends' mistakes. Lori Rivera delivers a thunderous rendition of the martini-soaked power ballad, "The Ladies Who Lunch."

But Melissa Harrison steals the show as a bride-to-be getting spectacularly cold feet on he wedding day, tearing into Sondheim's complicated comic tongue-twister, "(I Am Not) Getting Married Today," with hilarious brio.
(Read more in this week’s Good Times)

WINTER IN SUMMER

Santa Cruz Shakespeare takes a chance with its third repertoire production of the summer, The Winter’s Tale.

It may be one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works, but the SCS production values are typically impeccable, the players act up a storm, and costumes by Ulises Alcala segue from the glamorous ’40s into the early ’60s over the play’s 16-year time span.

(Further proof that the ’60s are all the rage this summer, from Beehive to Yesterday. And, yes, it’s weird when your childhood inspires nostalgia for the distant past!)

But it’s easy to see why The Winter’s Tale is sometimes considered one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays.” Written late in his career, it’s neither comedy nor tragedy, exactly, dabbling in a kind of tentative magic realism that will only reach full bloom in the fantastical enchantments of his masterful final play, The Tempest.

The main problem in the more somber first act is the raging suspicion of King Leontes (Ian Michael Peakes) of Sicilia that his pregnant wife, Hermione (Karen Peakes) has been unfaithful with his best friend, King Polixenes (Lindsay Smiling), visiting from his kingdom of Bohemia.

Even though Hermione is innocent, Leontes is at full boil from almost he very first scene — it’s as if the entire plot of Othello has already happened offstage, plunging us into the conflict with no backstory whatsoever.

And this time there’s no malignant Iago pouring poison into the king’s ear for political gain. Leontes’ delusion of his wife’s infidelity is entirely self-inflicted. The seething, choking fury of Peakes’ Leontes is electrifying, but the audience remains flummoxed.

Chavez Ravine smolders with outrage as court lady, Paulina, the only one with the backbone to stand up to the king’s madness.

Fortunately, the action shifts to Bohemia for the more lighthearted Act II, where the SCS production unleashes its secret weapon: Allen Gilmore.

As the rogue, Autolycus, peddler, thief and mischief-maker, Gilmore comes onstage lustily singing the vintage honky-tonk ditty, “Snatch And Grab It,” in addition to the introductory song that Shakespeare actually wrote for him. The parallel songs mesh deliciously in Gilmore’s adroitly funky delivery.

In Bohemia, we find the comic banter of a humble Shepherd (the always-reliable TommyGomez) and his wide-eyed son, Clown (Adrian Zamora). We also get the romance of winsome foundling, Perdita (Allie Pratt), raised by the shepherds, and stalwart young Florizel (an appealing Uche Elueze), the son of Polixenes.

A gentle fantasy element comes into play as the play’s two halves are resolved in the name of love and redemption.

Director Raelle Myrick-Hodges makes inventive use of the character, Time. Traditionally, the character functions as a chorus at the beginning of Act II to explain the passage of 16 years.

But here, as personified by Patty Gallagher in full Elizabethan dress, she flits in and out of the action throughout the play, in (mostly) silent observation — except at the very end of Act I.

When the action revolves around a newborn infant in a basket, Gallagher is onstage to provide the most impressive range of cooing, crying, gurgling baby noises you will ever hear outside of an actual baby!

(The Winter's Tale plays through September 1 at the Audrey Stanley Grove in Delaveage Park.)

WISH FULFILLMENT

Don't believe in fairy tales? You may change your mind when you see Into The Woods, the second production of the summer season at Cabrillo Stage.

While the show itself takes a somewhat sardonic view of the flip side of "happily ever after," and cautions us to be careful what we wish for, the Cabrillo production is so teeming with the magic of live theater, it'll make a believer out of anyone.

The blockbuster musical from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine is a fairy tale mashup that examines the tropes of the genre — true love, quests of honor, virtue rewarded — before and after the tales' traditional happily-ever-after conclusions.

It's a gift of a show, but also a challenge, from Sondheim's fiendishly clever and intricate (but often tongue-twisting) lyrics to creating the necessary magical mood by means of stagecraft alone. Fortunately, director and choreographer Janie Scott and her intrepid team are up to the task in this beautifully sung, wonderfully atmospheric production.

"Once upon a time . . . ." intones the onstage Narrator to start things off. Andrew Ceglio is a formidable presence throughout in the role, observing the action with cool aplomb — until he's sucked into it much later. (He also plays the Mysterious Man running loose in the woods with unhinged glee.)

Against a gorgeous, eerie, cleverly functional forest backdrop from scenic designer Skip Epperson, the principal characters are introduced.

Young Jack (played with eager innocence by Jackson Brivic) lives with his exasperated mother (Alice Christine Hughes) and his best friend, their cow, Milky White.

(Okay, it's a guy in a cow suit, but Isai Centeno brings humor and a touch of genuine pathos to the pantomime role.) They wish they weren't so poor they have to sell the cow.

Cinderella (Ashley Rae Little) rakes ashes out of the grate for her mean, social-climbing stepmother (Melanie Olivia Camras) and vain, twittery step-sisters (the fractious comedy duet of Kassandra Escamilla and Ryann Liljenstolpe) and wishes she could go to the Prince's festival.

Little captures Cinderella's feisty fortitude, and possesses perhaps the loveliest, most ethereal voice in a cast of strong singers.

The hard-working village Baker (Ian Leonard) and the loyal Baker's Wife (Melissa Harrison) wish more than anything for a child. But they can't produce one, because the Witch next door (Kristen Hermosillo) once visited a curse on the Baker's long-gone father.

This salt-of-the-earth couple grounds the more fantastical elements in the show, with Harrison an especially strong presence in what may be the most demanding and pivotal role.

But the curse may be lifted if they obtain for the conniving Witch some magical objects, which quest sets the rest of the plot in motion. Into their orbit skips gluttonous, reckless Red (a very funny Brittney Mignano) with her basket of goodies for Granny. Rapunzel (Amy Young) is imprisoned in her tower by the doting Witch, who longs to be her surrogate mother.

The Prince who discovers her (Michael Stahl), and the smitten Prince who doggedly pursues Cinderella after the festival (David Jackson) turn out to be brothers, equally fickle in their romantic attachments. ("I was raised to be charming, not sincere," explains Cinderella's Prince.)

The Princes' ironic duet, "Agony," is a highlight of the show.

So is the dueling wordplay of Cinderella's Prince and the Baker's Wife in "Any Moment," deep in the woods.

Jackson is also great fun as the slinky wolf with designs on Red.

Maria Crush's costumes are storybook-perfect. Kyle Grant's lighting design is effective throughout, from the way the treetops overhanging the stage are lit to create depth, to the sudden blackout inside Granny's cottage when things get too gruesome.

Scott has imaginative staging solutions for tricky elements, like the arrival of a Giant (well, part of her), or a carriage full of revelers, complete with prancing horse.

When it's time for Cinderella to ride off with her Prince, they glide offstage together on an ornate carousel pony.

Scott conjures a winsome, witty production out of this tale of bittersweet enchantment. It's everything an audience could wish for.

Just for fun, I thought I'd post this image I found this on the Cabrillo Stage Instagram account. It's a photo of the working 3-D model for Epperson's set design. Pretty cool, huh? Just add color and volume to grow it into a stage full of theatre magic!

AUSTEN POWERS

Shakespeare meets Austen in Santa Cruz Shakespeare buoyant season opener, Pride And Prejudice


The 2019 Santa Cruz Shakespeare season arrived this week with bells on — literally. The bell-ringing motif (as in for whom the bell tolls) recurs throughout the season-opening production of Pride and Prejudice, in which a man and woman who should be perfectly matched find their twin aversions to marriage and each other challenged when the bells of attraction begin to toll for them.

Astute playgoers will notice that Pride and Prejudice was not actually written by Will Shakespeare. But contemporary playwright Kate Hamill's 2017 stage adaptation of the beloved Jane Austen novel is the perfect vehicle for launching the company's summer season on a note of crowd-pleasing goodwill — everybody knows the story, there's none of that pesky Elizabethan dialogue to contend with, and a mood of buoyant fun persists throughout.

Three Sisters: Pullins, Peakes, and Pratt

In Hamill's version, there are only four Bennett sisters, only three of them anatomically correct. (The show's running gag has the eight-person cast scurrying around to cover all 14 roles, whether or not  the genders match up — which fits right in with the SCS commitment to non-traditional casting.)

The eldest, prettiest, and most compliant sister is Jane (Karen Peakes). Lizzy (the excellent Allie Pratt), the surrogate for author Austen's more trenchant social commentary, is the clever observer who pokes fun at human folly, especially the matrimonial maneuverings of the girls' dizzy mother, Mrs. Bennett (Carol Halstead), who is determined to pair up her daughters with suitably wealthy husbands. While Mama relentlessly herds her daughters into the paths of incoming bachelors, Lizzy declares that matrimony is a game she doesn't want to win.

Lizzy's ally in common sense is her patient, irascible father, Mr. Bennett (the always wonderful Allen Gilmore), who tries to steer clear of his wife's schemes. Gilmore also manages a neat about-face as Charlotte, Lizzy's cheerfully gossipy, yet practical-minded best friend.

Gilmore, Pratt and Smiling: No social butterflies

Lydia, the youngest and most wayward sister, is played with bratty exuberance by Madison Pulllins, who switches gears later to play imperious dowager Lady Catherine de Bourgh. (With Peakes hilariously incomprehensible as her veiled spinster daughter.)

As the bookish sister, Mary, who's not so integral to the plot, Landon Hawkins isn't asked to do much but look surly and elicit cries (or shrieks) of alarm every time anyone else in the cast turns to face him. But he's perfectly cast as the male ingenue, fresh-faced Mr. Bingley, who comes courting Jane.

With his tremendous presence and noble bearing, Lindsay Smiling is terrific in the pivotal role of Mr. Darcy, Bingley's friend. A serious, honorable man with absolutely no gift for small talk or silliness, we can see his discomfort whenever he's beset by social butterflies — like the Bennett females — which Lizzy mistakes for arrogance.

Ian Merrill Peakes: Deliciously gauche and creaky

Of course, they're a perfect match for each other in wit and ironic temperament, if only they could figure it out. Smiling makes the war between Darcy's head and heart so palpable, and Pratt's Lizzy is so wryly caustic beneath her chipper demeanor that we wish playwright Hamill had written an extra scene or two for just the two of them, prowling around each other in their lively, eccentric mating dance.

The show's most tireless chameleon is Ian Merrill Peakes, who plays Mr. Bingley's snobbish, tippling sister, as well as the dashing officer and scoundrel, Wickham. But it's in his supporting role as the deliciously gauche and creaky pastor, Mr. Collins, that Peakes steals the show, with his twisted, laborious gait and riotously funny vocal inflections.

Director Paul Mullins, who made such a frantic, hilarious, knockabout farce out of The 39 Steps a couple of seasons ago, works in a more subtle hue here, although the laughs are set up and delivered with the same precision. Dipu Gupta's uncluttered set grouping vintage chairs around a piano, with a suggestion of Doric columns, and B. Modern's simple yet versatile gowns and tweedy gentlemen's outfits beautifully evoke Austen's late-Georgian era.

(Pride And Prejudice plays in repertory with upcoming Santa Cruz Shakespeare productions of A Comedy Of Errors and The Winter's Tale through August 31 in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park.)

HIVE MIND

Women of '60s rock celebrated in Cabrillo Stage's Beehive

The '60s are having a moment right now, at least, the music of the '60. Besides the just-opened, Beatles-themed movie Yesterday  and the ironic use of some choice '60s anthems on the soundtrack of The Last Black Man In San Francisco, along comes the Cabrillo Stage season opener, Beehive.

Subtitled "The 60s Musical," the name suggests an homage to the girl groups of that era, which is certainly a major part of the show, especially in its first half. But Beehive also aspires to celebrate a diverse slate of women rockers, from Connie Francis to the Supremes to Aretha to Janis Joplin.

The show was created in 1985 by Larry Gallagher as a nightclub revue, which explains why it's a bit short on book. When the performers talk onstage, it's usually in brief snippets of narration setting up the context in which the playlist unspools.

More than 30 tunes are performed with gusto by the six-woman cast: Kiana Hamzehi, Jennifer Taylor Daniels, Lindsey Chester, Jessica Pierini, Sadie Rose, and Catarina Contini.

Lindsey Chester delivers a knockout set of Janis Joplin tunes

Director Gary John La Rosa also did the choreography — from demure girl-group syncopation to the butt-shaking gymnastics of Tina Turner. Skip Epperson's single, functional set consists of vinyl-inspired discs in all colors hanging down from the rafters, and a large, round record-shaped portal draped in shiny fringe through which the performers enter and exit.

A six-piece combo appears on a balcony upstage, led by Musical Director Jon Nordgren. The effect is like a giant, sparkly juke box with live performers providing your hit parade — no quarters necessary.

At times, the costumes and wigs don’t correctly match the era of the song being performed. (The opening number references girl groups of the early ’60s, but the women are dressed in Swinging London outfits from mid-decade.)  

But all these performers can sing up a storm. Should you feel compelled to join in (and believe me, you will), audience participation is strongly encouraged!
(Read more)

Photos by Jana Marcus

MIGHTY APHRODITE

Isn't there enough hate in the world today?

Santa Cruz Shakespeare strikes back this season with a 2018 program entirely devoted to love and all its complications — romantic, comic, and carnal.


Taking centerstage in this season-long homage to Aphrodite is the enduring combination of youthful roistering and tragic romance that is Romeo and Juliet.


The second Shakespearean production is Love's Labour's Lost, the comic misadventures of four young scholars foolishly trying to live without love — until four beauteous young women invade their studies.

Venus In Fur, by contemporary playwright David Ives (The Liar), is a sly debate on sex and sexism between a touchy director and a provocative young actress coming late to an audition.

This year's Fringe production is a play based on Dorothy Parker's droll prose piece, Men I Am Not Married To, adapted and directed by Kayla Minton Kaufman.

Celebrating its fifth season as an independent company, and its third year in the Audrey Stanley Grove at Delaveaga Park, the SCS presents its 2018 season from July 10 through September 2.

SCS Member discount tickets go on pre-sale next week, starting May 1st, at noon, available online or by calling 831 460-6399. (Tues-Fri 12 noon - 5 pm.) Have your member code number handy to get a $5 discount. (Look for your member code number on your membership thank-you card receipt.) Tickets go on sale to the general public starting May 15.

Meanwhile, there's still time to join the SCS team and become a member, or renew your current membership, and get your discount!

July is just around the corner. I'll see you in the Grove!

(That's Romeo and Juliet, by Bulgarian illustrator Svetlin Vassilev. Watercolor, 2003. See more of his gorgeous work here!)

GROWTH SPURT

Loss, redemption, maturity fuel family healing in witty Coming of Age

Patrons of the Jewel Theatre Company may fondly recall its production of a play by Santa Cruz author Kate Hawley back in 2015. That excellent play, Complications From A Fall, is a kind of companion piece to Hawley' newest work, Coming Of Age, "a serious comedy" now having its world premiere at JTC.

Both plays deal with the theme of aging parents and their effect on the lives of their middle-aged children.

Hawley is particularly incisive in exploring the radical idea that parents may have once had —or continue to have — separate, and interesting lives outside the box into which their children have always confined them.

Coming Of Age is less overtly comic than its predecessor, although it still has plenty of witty dialogue. Protagonist, Ian (the entertaining Mike Ryan), author of literary novels, drops in to the family home in upstate New York to visit his father, John (J. Michael Flynn), an acclaimed university professor, now retired, and recently widowed.

They've been setting up this visit for weeks, but John is surprised to see him, and doesn't seem too eager to have his son stick around. Ian finds out why with the arrival of Deirdre (Martha Brigham). Once a bedazzled student of John's, nearly 40 years younger than he is, Deirdre has become a fixture in the household.

As discreet as she is in person, her presence chips new fissures into the already tense father-son relationship.

Flynn, Brigham, Ryan: Menage a trois

Director Paul Whitworth keeps the action unobtrusively fluid — especially in the dynamic second half when Hawley's focus becomes sharper; all of the characters get a chance to express their own feelings and motivations in Hawley's simple, eloquent dialogue.

Flynn's portrait of John as a cranky oldster betrayed by time is tempered by flashes of the magnificent lion he must have once been.

And, as usual with JTC, tech work is first-class, especially Kent Dorsey's outstanding Craftsman-style set. You will want to live here!
(Read more)

DECONSTRUCTED DICKENS

Jeff Garrett: Scrooge defiant

Condensed Carol delivers holiday spirit in lively, solo Scrooge

No matter how many versions of A Christmas Carol you've seen — and I've seen plenty —the new Jewel Theatre Company production, Scrooge: The Haunting of Ebenezer, is something completely different.

It's adapted and performed as a one-man-show by Jeff Garrett, in which the dauntless Garrett enacts 31 characters out of the beloved Charles Dickens classic.

Garrett delivers a Herculean solo performance playing all the parts — from Scrooge, Marley's Ghost, Mrs. Fezziwig, Tiny Tim — in a show that's as much a celebration of the acting craft as it is about the Yuletide season.

This is also the first ever holiday show to be mounted by JTC, now in its 13th season, and embarking on its third year in the Colligan Theater at The Tannery. With only nine scheduled performances over a seven-day period, it's a brisk injection of holiday spirit right when we need it the most.

Garrett: Scrooge redeemed

In addition to playing all the characters, Garrett also takes the role of narrator, telling us Dickens' famous Christmas Eve tale in the author's own words.

 (Well, not all of them; Garrett cherry-picks his scenes, characters, and incidents, streamlining and condensing the material into a fleet 80 minutes.)

But this isn't Dickens Lite; the emotional heart of the story is laser-focused throughout.

What I love about the novel is the economy of its storytelling, well-served in this unadorned, yet effective production. It only plays through next Sunday, so catch it quick, before it disappears like the foam off a glass of hot bishop. (Read more)

ON TRACK

David Ledingham as Sky Masterson, & co

JTC inaugurates new Tannery space with spirited Guys and Dolls

The second production in Jewel Theatre Company's eleventh season is more than just an evening of theatre. It's an invitation to come check out the company's spanking new performance space, the Colligan Theater, at the Tannery Arts Center.

Enter the complex from the main parking lot, and the Colligan is the first building to your left (next door to the Radius Art Gallery). With raked seating for 200 patrons above the stage (the incline is gradual, not nosebleed-steep), there are no bad sightlines.

And while the space seems enormous compared to JTC's previous venue, the microscopic Center Stage, it still feels intimate in terms of the viewer's relationship to the performers.

Christopher Reber and Julie James

 To inaugurate this new space, JTC mounts a production of the crowd-pleasing, vintage musical, Guys and Dolls. Originally produced in 1950, but set in the '30s, the show is based on the short stories of Damon Runyon, and populated by his usual cast of lovable Broadway denizens on the outskirts of respectability—gamblers, bookies, and chorus girls.

The JTC production is a bit slow out of the starting gate, but picks up steam in the second lap and gallops to a strong, exuberant finish.

The show features the ever-likable Christopher Reber as Nathan Detroit, David Ledingham as gambler Sky Masterson, Cornelia Burdick Thompson as straight-laced Salvation Army captain Sarah Brown, and JTC Artistic Director Julie James as showgirl Miss Adelaide (having a high old time with her Bronx accent and racy stage numbers like "Take Back Your Mink.")

Diana Torres Koss: Runyon-esque

But the best coup is casting JTC veteran Diana Torres Koss in the male sidekick role of Nicely Nicely. Her Runyon-esque patter, dialect, and attitude are perfect, and she delivers some of the best songs.

The property is a bit dated at times. Viewers may cringe at the comic subplot of Sky getting Sarah drunk to loosen her up (she thinks she's drinking a milkshake). But this is a family show, so he doesn't do anything but beam at her indulgently when she sings her big epiphany song.

Likewise cringe-worthy is the wheezy idea put forth in the ladies' duet ("Marry the Man") that all a woman wants to do is force a makeover on her man the minute he puts a ring on it.

But otherwise this lively production successfully launches JTC's new home.
(Read complete review in this week's Good Times)

AT WORDSPOINT

Onwumere and Smolin: lie coach

If you're one of those slightly benighted folks who think Santa Cruz Shakespeare would be so much fun, except for, you know, all that Shakespeare, then the current SCS production of The Liar is for you.

On the other hand, if you can't get enough of Shakespearean-style wit and wordplay, then The Liar is for you. In fact, if you're breathing, The Liar is for you.

Yes, it's a play you've never heard of, based on a French farce from (eek) 1643. Yes, the entire play is in verse. But this outrageously clever 2010 update by American playwright David Ives uses modern idioms and vernacular throughout (references to Twitter, etc.), to make sure that everyone gets all the jokes.

The farcical plot revolves around Dorante (Brian Smolin), a young man from the provinces on his first day in Paris who's quick to embroider the truth for the sake of expedience. He has no malicious intent; rather, say, he can't be bothered with the boring (or inconvenient) truth when a good lie, ingeniously crafted on the spot, is so much more satisfying.

Or, as Dorante puts it, in one of Ives' slyest lines, "the unimagined life is not worth living!"

Jolene and Cavett, with Smolin: effortlessly fun

 In short order, Dorante hires a manservant, Cliton (Toby Onwumere), unable to speak anything but the truth, falls instantly in love with one of two ladies (but mixes up their names), weasels out of a marriage plot arranged by his father, and fights a hilarious duel of words (which he narrates like an ESPN play-by-play), swords undrawn.

Did I mention the twin serving wenches (one lusty, one pious)? As soon as Dorante boasts to Cliton about his "Memory—keystone of the master liar!" you know he's heading for trouble.

A show that depends so completely on verbal dexterity needs an adroit cast, and SCS has put together an exceptional one. Toby Onwumere gets things off to a rollicking start before the show begins, as Cliton, wandering through the audience with a "Man for Hire" sign, offering to juggle fruit, sing songs or recite for pay. Onwumere is so powerful as the tragic but fierce Macduff in this season's production of Macbeth, it's great to see him shift gears in such a boisterously comic role.

Brian Smolin's Dorante is an utterly charming scapegrace, delighting himself (and us) with his extravagant fabrications, soaring to ever new heights on the addictive helium of his own tall tales. Smolin delivers his lines with clarity, precision, and impish glee, to match the flamboyant grace with which he prowls the stage; he's effortlessly fun in a demanding role.

Smolin and Parret: must be the lusty twin

The ladies, sassy Clarice (Mary Cavett) and quiet, but smoldering Lucrece (Sierra Jolene), keep the action hopping along, putting their suitors through their paces. Darek Riley scores as Alcippe, Clarice's other suitor (and Dorante's dueling/sparring partner in that great, er, wordfight scene). Allen Darby makes a droll impression as his friend, Philiste, and Kurt Meeker is the imposing voice of authority as Dorante's father.

Melina Parret is terrific fun as both twin servants, Isabelle and Sabine. SCS audiences may (or may not) recognize her from her other role this season as Lady Macbeth.

David Mickeklsen's vivid costumes vaguely recall the Musketeer era of the original French play (with a few cartoony/Commedia del'Arte flourishes), and Art Manke's smart direction is frisky, but never so frantic that we can't appreciate the jokes or the splendid performances.

This is probably the funniest play I've seen in the Glen since Danny Scheie's original production of A Comedy of Errors, back in the Stone Age. It's what live theatre is all about, and it only plays four more times through August 29, so get your tickets now.

Why are you still sitting there?

THANE OF THRONES

Dressed to thrill: Parret & Pickering

William Shakespeare might as well have written Macbeth for the Festival Glen at UCSC. Who can resist witches, ghosts, blood and mayhem under the towering redwoods at night, under a canopy of stars?

The new Santa Cruz Shakespeare production of the play could not be any more atmospheric. Director Kirsten Brandt's staging of the durable drama of ambition, murder, and revenge in ancient Scotland comes roaring out of the trees and down the aisles, across Nina Ball's splendid stage and the ramparts above.

Rodolfo Ortega's sweeping, Game Of Thrones-like music soars over all, while the sound and lighting designs of Ortega and Kurt Landisman keeps thunder and lightning rumbling ominously through the trees between scenes. (Although, perhaps not as ominously as the real-life lightning storm that blew over the Glen Thursday night, canceling the last preview performance.)

B. Modern's costumes are a Shakespeare fangirl's dream of kilts, tartans, leather leggings, and velvet medieval gowns worked in gold.

Wohlrabe as Banquo's ghost

The show begins with a bang: the three shrieking witches are hauled down the hill and onto the stage by soldiers, who denounce them with Biblical quotes ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!"), and lock them into horned, cage-like headdresses.

This sets up the conflict between mysterious female energy and male military power when the witches are encountered by the troops of old King Duncan (Kurt Meeker), returning from a victory at the front.

Speaking in riddles, the witches prophesy that Macbeth (Steve Pickering), Thane of Glamis, will be king, and that his comrade-in-arms and fellow thane and general, Banquo, will found a dynasty of kings. Banquo is usually a male role, but in this gender-bending season, the general is a woman.

Greta Wohlrabe looks great in the part, strutting around like Brienne of Tarth, but since Banquo functions as the conscience of the play, the moral force that Macbeth abandons for glory, it's too bad she and Macbeth don't establish a deeper camaraderie from the outset.

Melinda Parret is a bold and effective Lady Macbeth. She starts plotting the minute she hears about the prophecy, calling on the gods and spirits to harden her natural female tendency toward mercy to do away with the old king while he sleeps under her roof, so Macbeth can ascend to the throne. Her murderous plan shocks her husband, at first, but ultimately seals both their dooms.

There are two traits anyone playing Macbeth needs—fire and tragedy. But Pickering seems a little complacent in the role. He never quite musters the intensity of a good man fatally tempted to hazard all for the sake of ambition. As a result, his waffling over his part in the bloody deed doesn't have the weight of a moral crisis, of a man grappling with the destruction of his own soul. He just seems wishy-washy.

However, Toby Onwumere (above) has fire to burn as Macduff, Thane of Fife, onetime ally and ultimate adversary to Macbeth. The production jolts to life whenever he's onstage. Brian Smolin (such a hit in this season's hilarious farce, The Liar), is very funny as the cranky Porter of the castle in the play's one comic scene.

And the witches (Patty Gallagher, Suzanne Sturn, and Mary Cavett, right) are pretty fabulous, draped in rags and flotsam and moondust, their voices amped up with an eerie reverb effect that echoes through the trees.

The entity formerly known as Shakespeare Santa Cruz is playing the last four productions it will ever give in the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen this month. (The word is, the company will relocate to Delaveaga Park for the 2016 season.)

Since this production makes such excellent use of the Glen in all its wild, spooky glory, it serves as a fitting way for fans to bid a fond adieu to this marvelous performance space.

A FOND FAREWELL

Very sad to hear of the passing of Roger Rees, beloved (and inexhaustible) star of the Royal Shakespeare Company's epic 8-hour production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

When Nicholas Nickleby was first broadcast on TV in the States in 1983, Rees' performance gave the whole sprawling enterprise its emotional center. His Nicholas navigated the massive plot with a quicksilver adrenalin-rush of moral courage that seemed to surprise even him.

I'm sure neither my husband nor his will mind me saying I've been in love with him ever since.

Still in the Dickensian mode, he had a featured role in the Georg C. Scott TV version of A Christmas Carol (Rees played nephew Fred), and a TV adaptation of John Fowles' The Ebony Tower. He went on to play recurring roles in Cheers (zillionaire Robin Colcord) and The West Wing (Lord John Marbury).

My poster from the RSC. It's still in my office .

I also enjoyed seeing him pop up in the odd movie over the years—Star 80, Mountains of the Moon, Frida, The Prestige. (Some of the damned odd; who could forget his energetic villainy as the nasty Sheriff of Rottingham in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights?)

But his first love was always the stage. He played many leading Shakespearean roles, from A Comedy of Errors to Hamlet, with the RSC in England. He collaborated with playwright Tom Stoppard in original stage productions of The Real Thing and Hapgood. I raced like the wind down south for the chance to see him live, onstage, when Hapgood played in LA.

But (to my eternal regret) I missed his one-man stage show on playing Shakespeare, What You Will, when it played in San Francisco in 2008. And how I would've loved to see him play the divine Gomez Addams in The Addams Family musical on Broadway in 2011!

PR pic from Rees' solo show What You Will, 2008

More recently, Rees won an off-Broadway Obie in 2011, and was nominated for another Tony in 2012, for co-directing the Peter Pan prequel, Peter and the Starcatcher. (If only I'd gotten a grip and finished Alias Hook when he was still in his Forties, Rees would have been perfect for my James Hook!)

Earlier this year, he opened in the new musical, The Visit, opposite Chita Rivera, but had to withdraw in May for health reasons.

Rees' Nickleby had such a profound effect on me, I started binge-reading Dickens. I plowed through Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend (the best of the lot, with its splendid, propulsive river imagery) before I came up for air. For better or worse, I started seriously writing my own fiction soon after.

By all accounts, Roger Rees was as charming and gracious in real life as he was compelling and entertaining onstage.

Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, Mr. Rees. You will be missed.

Update: I've just read that the lights of Broadway will be dimmed for one minute, at 7:45 pm, July 15, in honor of Roger Rees. A fitting tribute to a gifted player who loved the stage so much!