Raisin' the roof in CdA

When Coeur d'Alene's Lake City Playhouse production of Almost, Maine — which was supposed to be Idaho's entrant for the AACT regional competition in Richland, Wash., next month — had to withdraw in favor of installing a new roof ... well, I guess they weren't kidding. (photo by George Green)

*Almost, Maine* photos

by John Cariani

at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene, tonight through March 6

snuggled-in-the-cold couple: 

Troy Anast as Pete, Jordan Loe as Ginette (from the Prologue, Interlogue and Epilogue)

pillow-throwing couple:

Andy Leferink as Lendell, Liberty Harris as Gayle (from "Getting It Back," the fourth and final full scene in Act One)

"Things To Be Afraid Of" couple:

Janelle Frisque as Marvalyn, Aaron Baldwin as Steve (from Act 1, scene 3, "This Hurts")

*Of Mice and Men* review

Sitting cross-legged on the ground like a little boy, he rocks back and forth, self-comforting. With his lips trembling, he tugs on the legs of his filthy denim overalls. Fluttering fingers wipe nervous sweat off his forehead. When he’s worried — and he’s usually worried, because he doesn’t understand half of what people say — he jerks his head spasmodically and averts his eyes.
With his masterful characterization of a mentally impaired man, David Gigler’s performance as Lennie Small in Lake City’s *Of Mice and Men* sets the tone for a production of a script that exerts a primal pull on viewers’ emotions.

Sure, it’s been filmed three times, and you read it in high school. But Steinbeck’s morality tale of migrant workers during the Depression shouldn’t just be checked off as a been-there, done-that classic.
Steinbeck’s characters act generously, form unlikely friendships, envision a better future. Sometimes they’re cruel, of course, and nobody ever has any money. But when the kind-hearted ones have their little victories, we smile the way Lennie does when his traveling companion George tells him bedtime stories.

George Green has played his namesake before, and as with Gigler’s Lennie, it shows in his attention to detail. Portraying the father-figure for this big lunk of a man-child, Green catches both the tenderness and the resentment: He’s glad to care for Lennie but wishes he could stake out on his own. When he can’t supply any ketchup for Lennie’s canned beans, Green’s smiles are clouded with guilt. Later on, when it looks, momentarily, as if George might actually be able to purchase the little farm of their dreams, Green paces around and grimace-grins: He’s happy-anxious in the way people are when their desires crowd in too close.

In the opening scenes, director Dan Heggem lets the tension linger (in low-key lighting of his own design) while Green and Gigler complete their characters with well-observed gestures. But the deliberate pace doesn’t serve the second act’s flurry of incidents. And while Chris LeBlanc provides sage counsel as the foreman, several supporting actors lack conviction. At least the social-outcast theme is carried forward by Norm McBride, who bestows dignity on an old ranch hand, and David Casteal, who lends his resonant voice to a crippled, embittered laborer.
When it comes to tramps like George and Lennie, the world doesn’t care enough even to treat them unfairly — it just happens. After seeking a better future for themselves, they fail. But watching performances as good as Gigler’s and Green’s instills a little hope, at least, that somewhere, somebody like us deserves a little happiness.

*Of Mice and Men* • Thurs-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm, through Jan. 30 • $17; $15, students and military; $13, seniors; $9, children • Lake City Playhouse • 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene • lakecityplayhouse.org • (208) 667-1323

*The Elephant Man* opens at Lake City

The Elephant Man of Victorian London was Joseph Merrick (though his caretaker, Dr. Treves, called him "John"). He suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis and Proteus Syndrome, which caused bone deformities, an unusually large skull, and warty growths scattered over his body.

The movie of 30 years ago tries to show you all that, literally. During the play, however, you're left to imagine those deformities for yourself.
Merrick used to end his letters with a poem about how he wished he'd been better made, but that a man's mind and soul are better measures of his value than his physical appearance.

The play about him by Bernard Pomerance, which won the Tony for Best Play in 1979, opens at Lake City Playhouse tonight. (Pomerance, now 70, lives in New Mexico.)

Directed by Marina Kalani. Lake City artistic director George Green plays Dr. Frederick Treves, the Victorian-era London physician who examines and cares for Merrick (Christopher Lamb). Bill Caisely plays the head of the hospital, Sean Cahill plays the freak-show manager who exploits Merrick, and Anne Lillian Mitchell plays the famous actress who becomes Merrick's first female friend. Seven other actors complete the cast of 12.

Opening tonight and running Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm and Sun at 2 pm. Top ticket price is $17. Call (208) 667-1323.

*Evita* review

at Lake City Playhouse through Oct. 10
(long version; for print on Sept. 23 in The Inlander, this'll have to be cut in half)

They’re the moments when you hold your breath.

They’re the big solo dramatic songs in musical theater: “The Impossible Dream,” “Bring Him Home,” “Send in the Clowns,” “Rose’s Turn.” Everybody knows the tune, everybody’s hoping for good but fearing they’ll get less, and no one’s really expecting tonight’s performance to live up to any ideals.

Singing the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, Alyssa Day appears early on as the young, dark-haired social climber. Day briefly sings “Don’t cry for me,” but director Abbey Crawford had turned it into a trio with two other women, and it didn’t have the big build-up that the set-piece aria gets early in Act Two. (Everybody knows the big moment arrives soon after intermission.)
So the political-rally scene finally arrives, and Day comes out in her glittering white princess dress, and she holds hands with her husband, Juan Peron, and a dozen people in the crowd are clamoring for her, and she ascends her little rostrum, and she sings the opening two warm-up verses (“I had to let it happen, I had to change“), but those are just for building up the suspense, and then she hits the chorus (imploring the people not to cry for her, when you know that she wants them to cry for her), and she hit it solid, she really knocked it out of the park — she spread her arms wide and created moments of vocal beauty, and you could feel the relief and the happiness in the audience, that whatever shortcomings this production might have (and it has them, how could it not?), the ticket-buyers could go home feeling that “Well, they got that right, they got Evita’s big highlight-reel sequence right.”
It was a stirring, lyrical moment, full of Evita’s admirable/flawed character (her sincere desire to help the common people, her sincere desire to glorify herself), and Day sang it with full-throated expression, and it was simply lovely.

And then a remarkable thing happened.
The chorus had been chanting Evita’s name, but now they were humming along. Day, though, remained facing forward, facing the audience, as if we were the shirtless ones, Evita’s beloved descamisados. And several playgoers seated near me started humming along — even the husband who’d been dragged along by his wife, he was humming along too.
A fleeting moment of interactivity turned us into political reformers — and it made Day’s appeal as Evita all the more alluring.

But let’s not get carried away here. This is still a community-theater production of Evita. The big emotional crescendos sometimes sound tinny (and lacking in fullness) when performed by just two keyboards, guitar and drums. Dance steps were often predictable, hesitant, over-crowded. In the narrator role of Che Guevara, Todd Kehne lacks vocal power. Almost nobody onstage looks even vaguely Hispanic. Long stretches of Act Two lean too much on politics and not enough on melody. Both the stage direction and the musical direction opt for a deliberate pace. (An artistic choice, or just the performers’ tentativeness?)

On the positive side, Abbey Crawford directs inventively, with scenes sometimes divided in thirds and developing rapidly; with surprise entrances; and with boisterous crowd scenes (despite limited numbers).
As Evita’s first boyfriend-tool, Agustin Magaldi, Dan McKeever adds hip-shimmies and exaggerated modulations to “On This Night of a Thousand Stars,” making the character’s celebrity-appeal more persuasive (and amusing) than in most productions. When he needs to, McKeever can project impressively.
Kehne pulls off the cynicism of Che’s narrator role with a sarcastic, hands-in-pockets stroll and convincing anger in his shouted cries of revolutionary defiance, and he effectively leads a harmonizing male trio during the dismissal of Peron’s earlier mistress, “Another Suitcase, Another Hall.” The crowd energy for the first-act finale, “A New Argentina,” was strong.
Kent Kimball, full of stentorian solemnity as Juan Peron, knows how to enact a song’s nuances, as when he stands on the balcony of the Casa Rosada and pretends to be a general who’s pretending to have populist sentiments (“our great nation is awakening”).
Both Perons flirt politically (and otherwise, and well) in “Charity Concert” (“I’d be surprisingly good for you”).
In addition to her singing (which during Act One, truth be told, got screechy and indistinct in the higher register), Day’s acting is effective. When Evita rises to power, for example, Day is visibly more confident and flirtier. During Eva’s final decline, it wasn’t just a quick makeup job that made Day seem visibly ill and weakened.
Jamie Russell’s costumes — Evita’s gowns, the gaggle of high-society women all in black, Magaldi’s sequined vest — created illusions of grandeur on (what was presumably) a limited budget.

All in all, Lake City’s new regime change under Generalissimo George Green (its new executive artistic director) has taken on an ambitious production and largely succeeded with it. Day, in particular, excels in the title role. Not only does she sing beautifully, but she’s also convincing as a social climber and social reformer who wants to leave Argentina a better place.
Similarly, under Green’s leadership, Lake City has made strides. The place just feels different — new signs, new paint, new lots of things, and a new feeling throughout. If the playhouse can achieve this much positive change in just the few months since Green took over, then the rest of its 50th season is likely on an upward trajectory.
Maybe then even more folks will fill the seats — and when the big moments come, maybe they’ll hold their breath.

Evita has scheduled the revolution for Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through Oct. 10 at Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene. Tickets: $19; $17, veterans and students; $15, seniors; $10, student rush; $9, children. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

[ photo by Young Kwak for The Pacific Northwest Inlander: Alyssa Day as Eva Peron and Kent Kimball as Juan Peron in Evita, directed by Abbey Crawford at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Sept.-Oct. 2010]

*Evita* photos

Sept. 17-Oct. 10 at CdA's Lake City Playhouse

Thurs-Sat at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm

Tickets: $19 (top)

For more info, see the Aug. 13 post on this blog and p. 30 of tomorrow's Fall Arts Preview in The Inlander. 

with Alyssa Day as Eva Peron, Kent Kimball as Juan Peron, and Todd Kehne as Che Guevara; directed by Abbey Crawford

Lake City's season preview

On Sunday, Aug. 22, at 7:30 pm — and for just $10 — you can witness preliminary versions of songs from upcoming musicals at Lake City Playhouse like Evita, A Taffeta Christmas and Urinetown, along with snippets from an intended children's show, Honk!, and from a planned in-concert presentation of Kander and Ebb's revue And the World Goes 'Round. It's a benefit, with proceeds going to Lake City's renovation project.

The theater is at 1320 E. Garden Ave. in Coeur d'Alene. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

*Evita* cast list

The Lake City Playhouse season opens in just over a month with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita.

Thursdays-Sundays from Sept. 17 through Oct. 10; specifically ...
Sept. 17-19, 23-26, 30; Oct. 1-3 and 7-10

directed by Abbey Crawford, with musical direction by Carolyn Jess and choreography by Jennifer Shell; Jay Anders will be production manager

with Alyssa Day as Eva Duarte de Peron (1919-52), Todd Kehne as Che Guevara (the narrator; 1928-67), Danile McKeever as Agustin Magaldi (Eva's first lover), Katrina Heath as Peron's Mistress, and Kent Kimball as Juan Peron (1895-1974)

Ensemble: Liberty Harris, Anne Mitchell, Gianinna Damiano, Melissa Gren, Mary Wherley, Emily Nichols, Amy Schoedel, Ariel Cansino, Kate Johnson, R. Scott Clemons, Ross Mumford, Alex Winther, Dan Heggem, Steve Kane, Michael Perry, Josh Cooper

Children's Choir: Autumn Plucker, Mason Crawford-Heim, Sadie Russell, Julia Lovell, Amelia Crawford-Heim, Isaac Crawford-Heim and Janessa Riordan

It's been 34 years since the album, 31 years since the Rice/Webber musical premiered on Broadway, and 14 years since the Madonna/Antonio Banderas movie.
Best of Broadway Spokane produced the show at the Opera House in Feb. 2005.

Bobo has long thought that the range of musical styles in Evita — classical, salsa, rock, etc. — is justified and not a weakness. I always look forward to Magaldi's "Night of a Thousand Stars," and Peron playing musical chairs in "The Art of the Possible," and of course "Don't Cry...." One of the joys of re-watching some musicals involves rediscovering the good stuff that you missed the first couple of times you heard it.

Big musical, though, on a cramped stage — it'll be interesting to see how the first show under new artistic director George Green shapes up.

Tickets: $19; $17, military and students; $15, seniors; $9, kids. Call (208) 667-1323.

*Jekyll & Hyde* continues through May 23; *The Crucible* on May 7

at Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene
(Check out their new Website.)

In Jared Helm's production, Mike Hynes plays both halves of the title role.
The Frank Wildhorn (music) and Leslie Bricusse (lyrics) musical ran on Broadway from April 1997 to January 2001.

**

Lake City also has a fund-raiser this Friday night, May 7, at 7:30 pm at the Harding Family Center in CdA: Arthur Miller's The Crucible, in a staged reading directed by Rebecca McNeill
Tickets: $7
Call (208) 667-1323

Lake City Playhouse announces 2010-11 season

Sept 1 -Oct 10
Evita
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Oct 28-Nov 14
The Elephant Man
by Bernard Pomerance

Dec 2-19
A Taffetas Christmas
by Rick Lewis

Jan 13-30, 2011
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck

Feb 17-March 6, 2011
Almost, Maine
by John Cariani








March 24-April 3, 2011
Dearly Departed
by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones

April 21-May 8, 2011
The Miracle Worker
by William Gibson

May 26-June 19, 2011
Urinetown
Music by Mark Hollmann
Lyrics by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis
Book by Greg Kotis

[ photo: John Cariani, who is from Presque Isle, Maine, where Bobo was once offered an English professor job; from BangorMetro.com; you may recognize Cariani as the over-eager forensics guy from Law & Order, or possibly from Numb3rs ]

Discuss the future of Lake City Playhouse

Sunday, April 18, from 3-5:30 pm

1320 E. Garden Ave. in CdA

an open discussion with Lake City's new executive artistic director, George Green

All volunteers, staff, directors, performers and musicians are welcome.

Get to know George, share concerns, ask questions.

If you're interested in directing for Lake City next season, submit your resume by Sunday, April 25.  Green already has board approval for all (or most) of the upcoming season, so what's on offer and what will be expected are things he'll be able to clarify.

Call (208) 667-1323 or (509) 218-6282, or write george@lakecityplayhouse.org

Review of *Amadeus*

at Lake City Playhouse through Sunday (April 1-3 at 7:30 pm)

Few local productions have been more deserving of a bigger budget than Amadeus. With a powerful performance by Damon Abdallah as Antonio Salieri (the accomplished composer who is nonetheless outshone by Mozart’s brilliance) and several features that distinguish it from what you think you know (from the 1984 movie) about the script, director Jhon Goodwin’s production accomplishes much with minimal resources.

Barren set. The Vienna court nobles, not in powdered wigs and silks, but running around in shirts and ties like so many middle managers or insurance salesmen. Mozart’s wife, Salieri’s prize pupil, and the two Venticelli (here played by two women) displaying cleavage in corsets atop long skirts – plenty of sex appeal, but a contemporary look instead of 18th-century elegance.

The payoff in making such a virtue of (financially constrained) necessity was in Eric Paine’s hipster Mozart, a Hollywood producer type in floppy sleeves and jeans, way cooler and more rebellious than his aristocratic Viennese patrons. Here, the contemporary touch worked: at a glance, you could see who’s uptight and who isn’t.

Playwright Peter Shaffer has revised his script repeatedly, pointedly making room in the conclusion for greater historical accuracy (or at least less self-assurance about the circumstances of the Requiem and Mozart’s death at age 35). That, the de-emphasis of spectacle and underscoring of the language here, Paine’s unself-consciousness about the fact of Mozart’s genius, and the energy provided by the Venticelli are all reasons to take in this show (and not assume that you’re good because once, long ago, you saw the movie).

As Salieri’s gossip-mongerers and hangers-on, Marnie Rorholm and Ariel Cansino emphasize seductiveness over energy. The suggestion that poor repressed, conservative, married Salieri has beautiful admirers sets up his manipulative seduction of Mozart’s wife Constanze (Janelle Frisque, sultry) nicely, but the energy of rapid-fire news-gathering seemed to be missing. The Venticelli, however, allow Shaffer to move the plot along and provide Salieri some allies, so he’s not quite so alone.

Abdallah — at first hunched over as an elderly man in a wheelchair, later the hands-crossed-in-submission schemer at court — delivers one of the best local performances in memory. He achieves great intensity in the Act One-closing sequence, Salieri’s impassioned rejection of any God who would choose vulgar Wolfy instead of dignified Antonio to be the vessel of divine musical brilliance. (“What use is man, if not to teach God a lesson?” – Yikes, I could feel the blasphemy and feared the oncoming thunderbolt.)

Shaffer’s much-reworked plot and some laggard pacing, however, worked against the effect: at two and a half hours, some of Shaffer’s urgings about Salieri as mediocre talent, the resentment of Mozart’s childish behavior, his ravings against God — all seemed over-extended. Goodwin might’ve trimmed here and there — and in the blocking, he sometimes allowed five-person-wide static groupings of actors to impede the onstage progress.

Paine, a talented comedic actor, was engaging the early going, with his high-pitched giggles and calm self-persuasion that yes, I am just about the greatest composer who has ever lived. (You have to admire a guy who commuted weekly, 800 miles roundtrip from Marysville, for the sake of a volunteer acting gig; and he was memorable in Lend Me a Tenor at the Civic in 2002). But the final, tragic sequence seemed beyond Paine’s grasp: the loss of his art and his Constanze still had a kind of bemusement about it, when the script calls for tragedy and despair.

Random notes: Abdallah’s dismissive gesture on “the voice of God in an obscene child” was powerful. Paine looked authentic in plinking away at the “harpsichord.” Paine’s mockery of Italian composing as unimaginative (“tonic and dominant, on and on”) was self-assured. Words like “breeches,” Idomeneo and “seraglio” were mispronounced. Frisque was reluctantly seductive and Abdallah was nervous and awkward — both, just as the script calls for — in their seduction scene. Paine needs more weight in his remorse over the (retold) death of Mozart’s father, Leopold — and more horror and guilt near the play’s end.

Despite flaws, however, Goodwin has presented a meaningful drama that reconceptualizes some of what it means to go on in life, as we all do, knowing that we aren’t the best at what we do. Not even near it. And yet on we trudge.

Salieri, a mediocrity, speaks for and to us. And some of those moments under Bryan Durbin’s light design — Abdallah’s upturned, anguished face; Paine’s quizzical chortling — are moments that will live in your memory. If you get out to CdA this weekend.


Coming up at Lake City Playhouse:
Jekyll & Hyde (the musical), May 1-2, 6-9, 13-16, 20-23
lakecityplayhouse.org

George Green will lead Lake City Playhouse

Effective today, George Green has been appointed as executive artistic director of Lake City Playhouse in Coeur d'Alene.

The current artistic director at Lake City, Brian Doig, will stay on through June as an artistic consultant to Green (and to help Green, as Doig says, "figure out where the staples are").

Green's already engaged in marketing for CdA's community theater: He has announced that tickets for the final three performances of Amadeus (April 1-3) will be sold on a buy one, get one free basis. Visit lakecityplayhouse.org or call (208) 667-1323.

Cast list: *Amadeus* at Lake City Playhouse

Peter Shaffer's 1979 play premiered on Broadway in 1980 and won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1984.

directed by Jhon Goodwin

Eric Paine as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Damon Abdallah as Antonio Salieri
Janelle Frisque as Constanze Weber
Brian Doig as Joseph II
Old guys in wigs: Lanz Babbitt, Barry McConnell and Jim Duram
Venticelli: Marnie Rorholm, Ariel Cansino, Liberty Harris
Majordomo (Mozart understudy): Cory Williamson
Ensemble: Emily Nichols, Andrew Sorg, Kate Martinson

Performances: March 25-April 4 at Lake City Playhouse

Those who have played Salieri include Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, Frank Langella, and of course F. Murray Abraham.
Actors who have played Mozart include Simon Callow, Tim Curry, Mark Hamill and Tom Hulce.

Check out Alex von Tunzelmann's skeptical view of both the movie and its historical accuracy (in The Guardian for 10/22/09).

*Leader of the Pack* at Lake City Playhouse

from Jan. 14-31
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Sunday matinees at 2 pm
Tickets: $16; $13, seniors and students; $10, children (12 and younger)

Celebrate the swingin' '60s lifestyle of Ellie Greenwich, who wrote doo-wop tunes like the title song and "Chapel of Love," "Da Do Ron Ron," "Be My Baby," "Hanky Panky," "And Then He Kissed Me" and "Do Wah Diddy."

Lake City Playhouse, 1320 E. Garden Ave., CdA
(208) 667-1323 or lcplayhouse@gmail.com

[ photo: The Ronettes (who worked with Greenwich and Phil Spector); from NowPublic ("Crowd-powered media") ]

Brian Doig resigns at Lake City

After the Lake City Playhouse season ends in June, Brian Doig will resign as the theater’s artistic director.

He will be involved with the Lake City board in the selection of his successor.

For personal reasons having to do with his family, Doig will be moving out of the area to another city in the western U.S.

“Actually, the Playhouse is doing well this year,” he says. “I would say we’ve made incremental progress as far as finances go, though we still have a tremendous debt.”

“I’ve gone back over decades of board minutes and financial records,” says Doig, noting that Lake City ‘tends to get into debt and then get bailed out. This is their M.O. They’d cut way back to a barebones staff, and the quality of the productions would drop.”

Lake City was “about $40,000 in debt when I got here” three and a half years ago, says Doig. “We are fiscally a little worse than when I got here,” he says — though some might say debt ballooning to $100,000 (as reported here on Nov. 5) is a lot worse — while adding that that’s due to “increased spending on things that are to our advantage.” He includes on that list such things as marketing, posters, programming, stipends and salaries. “The debt we’ve incurred,” Doig says, “is not because we have not been investing in ourselves.”

In two phone conversations, Doig claimed that over the past year, Lake City has retired somewhere between $5,000 and $12,000 in debt — “and we haven’t incurred any more debt,” he emphasizes. “We’re paying our current payroll, plus we’ve been able to retire some of our debt.”

As an indicator of the theater’s artistic progress, Doig points to what he thinks will be some of the likely casting choices for Jhon Goodwin’s March-April production of Amadeus. “We’ll have good people — people who have performed at the Civic and Interplayers — in that show,” he speculates.

“I’ve learned quite a bit over the past four years,” Doig says. “And I have developed great respect for [other artistic directors] in our regional theaters. Even though the task [of achieving success at Lake City] may seem daunting, it’s far easier to accomplish now than it was three years ago — if we can manage to keep the place open. But remember: It was scheduled to close four years ago.”

Doig has spoken informally with at least three people about succeeding him, but no one yet has committed to making an application.

Those interested in applying for the Lake City artistic directorship should send a letter of interest via snail-mail, directed to Doig’s attention. The board is evaluating some possible changes to the position’s job description. They hope to have someone in place by July.

[ image: MarshallDesigns.com ]

audition for *Amadeus*

Sunday, Jan. 10, at 5 pm, and Monday-Tuesday, Jan. 11-12, at 6:30 pm
at the Harding Family Center, 411 N. 15th St., CdA

Director Jhon Goodwin seeks 12m, 3f
Cold readings; bring a list of conflicts.
Performances: March 25-April 4

In the court of the Austrian Emperor Josef, Antonio Salieri is the established composer. Enter the greatest musical genius of all time: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Salieri has given himself to God so that he might realize his sole ambition: to be a great composer. Mozart is a foul-mouthed, graceless oaf, but he possesses what Salieri will never have: genius.

Lake City Playhouse
1320 E. Garden Ave., Coeur d’Alene
lcplayhouse@gmail.com
208-667-1323 (call Tues-Thurs 9-3, Fri 9-1)

[ photo from broadwayworld.com: playwright Peter Shaffer in 2008; Amadeus premiered in 1979 and was filmed in 1984 ]

Audition for *High School Musical 2*

Wednesday-Thursday, Dec. 9-10, from 6:30-9 pm

at the Harding Family Center, 411 N. 15th St. in Coeur d'Alene

Bring a resume and list of conflicts; be ready to sing a 16-bar song (no a cappella).

Director Cameron Anderson needs 30 performers, most of them able to appear high school age, along with two adults. 

Troy, Gabriella and the rest of the Wildcats take summer jobs at the Lava Springs Country Club, where Sharpay reigns supreme.

Performances: Feb. 18-March 7

Write LCPlayhouse@gmail.com, visit lakecityplayhouse.org, or call (208) 667-1323 or (509) 294-1479.

*A Little Princess* at Lake City Playhouse, Dec. 3-20

Yes, it has only been three years since the Lake City Playhouse produced A Little Princess — but hey, a feel-good musical at the holidays and during a recession ... and Lake City could use some good box office.

Directed by Laura Little and Emily Bayne
Musical direction by Wanda Condon
Starring Maliah Oliver as Sarah Crewe and Kent Kimball as her father
with Brian Gunn, Liberty Harris, Shirley McDaniel and Emma Beaumont

Thursdays-Saturdays, Dec. 3-5 and Dec. 10-12 and Dec. 17-19, at 7:30 pm
also on Sundays, Dec. 6, 13 and 20, at 2 pm

Tickets: $16; $13, seniors, military and students; $10, kids; $10 for everyone on Thursday nights
Call (208) 667-1323.

The three Friday-night performances are designated as father-daughter date nights.
Please bring a new book to drop off at the Playhouse for the Books for Tots program (part of Toys for Tots).

A Little Princess is based on an 1888 novella and 1904 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), who also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden. Born in Manchester, England, she moved to Knoxville, Tenn., experiencing poverty in both places; she was orphaned by the age of 18 and had to support her siblings by writing.

Director Laura Little is doing a version written by her friend Katie Wilson — originally intended for children's theater, but being performed here for the first time with adults (12 of them, out of 35 altogether in the cast). "The songs have been upgraded," says Little. "We added some harmonies, and took out some of the cheesier scenes that were just put in so a lot of kids could have a lot of lines."
Two of Little's favorite numbers are "Mail" (when Sarah goes to the train station, hoping that Daddy will return, only to hear other soldiers lamenting their homesickness, and how much it means for them to get mail from loved ones) and "My Darling Papa" (sung by Sarah when she finds out that her father has died; she's praying for him to return).

It's a real tear-jerker: They're even gonna sell $1 pack of Kleenex with the Little Princess logo on them, in the lobby.

"Most scenes are realistic," says Little, but there are two fantasy sequences: in one, "Princess Penny," Sarah is telling a story to the other children, and adults come to life behind them and enact the story that Sarah is telling; in the other, Sarah encourages the kids to use their imaginations in "Use Your Mind's Eye."

Little directed the show for children's theater — twice in San Diego, and once three years ago here in CdA. This time, she's training co-director Emily Bayne to take over the reins — the idea is for Lake City to produce the show once every four years, giving little girls a chance to grow up and play the big-girl parts four years later. "Several girls came in [to auditions] with the show memorized" from three years ago, Little says.

Little calls Maliah Oliver (who's only 9 in real life, but playing 11-year-old Sarah Crewe) "a masterwork in the making, a real find."

Kent Kimball's biggest number will be "My Little Girl" (right after Capt. Crewe's wife dies, and he's left graveside holding the infant Sarah).

SPOILER WARNING:

Unlike Hodgson Burnett's books, this musical version (one of several) borrows the sentimental device from the Shirley Temple movie of having Sarah searching through the hospital for Daddy — who has amnesia and only recognizes her because of a lullaby that they had shared.

[photo: from a 1986 British TV version]

Brian Doig on the state of Lake City Playhouse

We got trouble, right here in Lake City. With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for ...
Predicament. Because a predicament is what Lake City Playhouse is in.
"We were $40,000 in the hole when I started," says Brian Doig, who's in his fourth year as artistic director of Coeur d'Alene's community theater.
The deficit climbed to $80 and now $100K. But Doig remains guardedly optimistic, and for a number of reasons: the deficit is leveling out, audiences are growing, profitable musicals are on the way, and the recession isn't likely to get any worse for the financial-sector sponsors that LCP had been depending on in recent seasons.
Average audiences have climbed from 45 to 105 (and even higher, up to around 125, for musicals) in a converted-church of a theater that holds 170.
This year's Christmas show, The Little Princess, "almost sold out when we did it four years ago," says Doig. "And [director] Laura Little is as tireless in her promotional efforts as she is a talented director. It's a wonderful Christmas musical, and we're going to have Kent Kimball [Capt. von Trapp at the Civic two years ago] as the father.
They were selling tissues in the lobby the first time we did it, and I thought, 'Yeah, right....' But dude, you watch this show, you need the tissues."
Doig is philosophical about his theater's outlook. "As bad as things are, people are working hard. We are losing less. Last year, we lost five sponsors, who'd [sponsor] a night of a show for $1,500. But all our sponsors are investment firms, and they all got hit. If we just had those five, we would have made money last year for the first time in 10 years."
Tickets sales only cover about 60 percent to 70 percent of the theater's expenses.

But a guy can dream: Doig envisions, in the long term, the possibility of Lake City finding a location closer to the Sherman Avenue corridor (maybe somewhere around Fourth).
"It may seem dark and dim," Doig says, "but a lot of people are working really hard. And it's starting to respond -- we just need continued support."
"Frankly, for a few years, the product was inconsistent. But we're always trying to be better. At the same time, part of our mission is that we are a community theater -- and that means that we will have actors, sometimes, who are onstage for the first time."
And in an encouraging sign of cooperation among theater-lovers, says Doig, "we're starting to see more people from across the border involved" -- meaning that some prominent names associated with Spokane Civic Theater have offered to help Doig organize a fund-raiser sometime soon for LCP.
"People don't want to see another theater go down," Doig says.
"Right now, we're just focused on getting through this next season, with an eye on making it to our 50th. We're working hard to make sure that our 50th season isn't our last."