It's A Wonderful Life- Shameless Self-Promotion

So I'm not just a costumer--I actually didn't start costuming until college (although I started dabbling in makeup a few years before)--up until then I was an actor. I've seen the life of an L.A. actor and while it's not for me, I do still enjoy acting from time to time, and I am lucky enough to have found a theatre company that values both my skills equally.

So right now I'm having a lot of fun rehearsing a one-night-only production of It's A Wonderful Life. We're doing it as a fundraiser for the theatre company, and I'm playing Mary Bailey! The production is a staged radio play, set in the 1940's, so it's set as if the audience is attending a live taping of a radio broadcast (like if you went to see a taping of Prairie Home Companion).

The cast is a really fun group, and everyone is doing a great job. One of my favorite things is working with my co-star, Jim, as George Bailey. It's A Wonderful Life is his favorite movie ever, and I don't think we've gone through a single rehearsal without him getting choked up at the end. I just love that he's so moved by the show, it's really sweet!

Ok, first off, some press for the show; if you're in the L.A. area, swing by:

Also, every day I read the theatre pages in the New York Times, LA Times, and Boston Globe online. The other day I noticed in that The Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island is doing the same production. However, the Boston Globe's critic had some issues with it.

For one thing, she wasn't that thrilled with the choice not to have the actor playing George Bailey sound like Jimmy Stewart. "Stewart’s demi-quaver, with its hint of lingering adolescence, perfectly suits George’s rocky path to full maturity. You can’t say the same for Sullivan’s burgher-like delivery: He sounds not only quite settled, but decidedly urban".

I honestly think our George Bailey made the strongest choice, to quote Jim, "everyone has a Jimmy Stewart impression, and they all suck. Including mine". So he channels Stewart rather than impersonating him. The quaver is mostly intact, but the character is entirely Jim's. Actually, I sometimes feel a bit inadequate performing opposite him; he knows the character back-to-front, and I'd only seen the film maybe twice, so I was a little worried our performances wouldn't be consistent. But I've gotten more comfortable with the character since then, and we're very much on the same page about how we want to play each scene.

The Globe reviewer's other issue seemed to be with radio theatre as a concept--"From the outset, though, I was perplexed as to our — the audience’s — role as witness: Are we meant to close our eyes and imagine the scenes as remembered? Or perhaps marvel at the Foley sound effects and the array of gadgets employed to produce them?" Well, the foley is part of the fun of watching radio theatre, as is seeing a group of 8 actors play the roles of 30 or more--you should see one of our actors go back and forth between old man Potter and Uncle Billy in the same scene! And there is still interaction between the performers, we're not just standing there at the microphones. Although the conceit is of recording a radio show, the fact is we're only performing for a live audience, so we have to be interesting to look at.

So maybe radio theatre isn't for everyone (like that critic), but I think we have a good solution for people who don't know whether to look or just listen--we're performing at a restaurant. It makes a good fit for a "dinner and a show" kind of evening--you don't feel like you can't take your eyes off the stage to look at your plate, but the show is more than just background noise.

So I'm ridiculously excited about doing the show tomorrow night--we're actually the only company in Los Angeles that will be performing it this winter, although funnily enough a director who's a friend of the company is mounting it in Pennsylvania. So I think it'll be a great night out for those who come see it here in L.A., and hopefully if it does well, we'll do more shows next year.

Atta boy, Clarence!

Probably The Best Thing I Ever Saw- Christmas Edition

I grew up in a small suburb to the Northwest of Boston, and every couple of years around Christmas there would be a trip to see a holiday show. The North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly was very close by, so we would often go see their production of A Christmas Carol.

I always loved this production. The North Shore Music Theatre is a theater in the round, so you would think that sets would have to be very minimal, but they managed to do so much by flying in set elements from the overhead grid, or with changes to the stage lifts and revolve (I swear that stage does something different every time I go there, between revolving and sliding platforms, lifts, stairs, etc) and of course strong lighting and costuming.

There's a couple of things that I think really work about the production: the excellent use of music, including both traditional Christmas carols, and incidental music written for the show. The entrance of the jovial Ghost of Christmas Present (on stilts) singing "The Boar's Head Carol" is always a huge thrill.

Josh Tower as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Photo by Paul Lyden
Although recently they've gone in the direction of the traditional looming, robed figure, the Ghost of Christmas Future used to appear as an ominous version of Young Scrooge, with a creepy slow-motion walk.

Christmas future from the 2007 Production:



Jeff Edgerton as The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Photo by Paul Lyden.

Their Jacob Marley was also super creepy/cool:

Tom Staggs as Jacob Marley. Photo by Paul Lyden

One of the interesting things about seeing this show multiple times over the years was experiencing the changes they made. For example, Marley used to emerge from a trap door in the floor of the stage, surrounded by creepy green light and smoke. Then I saw it again years later, and the trap door opened up and the smoke poured out--and he flew in screaming from the rafters! It was a well-crafted bit of misdirection which absolutely scared the hell out of me.

But this is a blog about my relationship with theatre. And this went from being a show I enjoyed to a show I loved my senior year of high school. I'd been working really hard all fall (no senioritis for me), and had finished applying to colleges and had just been through a really frustrating round of auditions for university drama programs. I was feeling burnt-out and discouraged.

And then my mom won a pair of tickets to A Christmas Carol at a church auction as a surprise for me! I was looking forward to seeing the show, but I really couldn't anticipate the feelings it would stir inside me. We had excellent seats (although there are few bad seats in that house), so I could easily see the actors' expressions, and the detail on the costumes. The show was completely transporting, and I remember this very clearly: it was almost the end of the first act, and Young Scrooge's fiance Belle was tearfully breaking up with him, and I thought to myself:

 "Oh, yes. This is why I want to do this".

Probably the Worst Show I Ever Saw- Christmas Edition

Merry December, people! The Holidays are fast upon us, and as I'm furiously knitting Christmas gifts for friends and family (nothing makes up for a lack of money like working really, really hard on something), I'd like to take the month to reflect on Christmas shows.

Christmas shows are the cash cow for many a theatre company, and often rightly so. Few things get you in the holiday spirit like dressing up in a pretty red or green velvet dress, and going out to see a heartwarming, well-known family tale, preferably full of opulence and seasonal music.

I hope to pay tribute to all my favorites over the course of the month, but I thought it might be appropriate to start with a hilarious low point and move up from there.

The year before last, one of my roommates found cheap tickets to see a star-studded production of A Christmas Carol playing a the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. It was their opening night--a soft opening, I believe, but definitely not a preview--and Christopher Lloyd would be playing Scrooge, and John Goodman as the Ghost of Christmas Past, including others. Actually, two well known celebrities who were supposed to have roles dropped out a few weeks before production, but we didn't think much of it at the time.

So, Kodak Theater, right? Big fancy venue, hosts awards shows, so this should be a pretty opulent production. So I was surprised to find, when the curtain rose, that the set was rather...small. Actually the whole show just seemed under-produced. There wasn't much music or dancing, the costumes were bland, and the special effects never went beyond some smoke covering spirits as they snuck in and out of Scrooge's bedroom set.

But other than a slightly disappointing set and some sluggish direction, we didn't anticipate the horror to come until the first set change, from Scrooge's office to his home. Scrooge is supposed to go to open the door, see the face of Jacob Marley in the knocker, and be terrified, but then enter the house.

Well, something went wrong in the set change, and when he reached the door, it was dangling open. There was evidently some bit of pre-recorded narration that was supposed to be playing, so instead Mr. Lloyd stood there for a moment, then walked around the back of the house, and with his microphone still live, said to whoever was back there: "Uhh, the door was open!"

So they changed to the set inside Scrooge's apartments, which took a ridiculously long time, with still no narration playing, so nothing at all happened until smoke started billowing out of the fireplace, and the actor playing Marley crawled out.

The horror continued from there--set changes were sloppy (we noticed white sneakers on several crew members), and the audience was left for several long intervals staring at the scrim of the streets of London, while listening to the narration, which was apparently cribbed from a John Geilgud radio play for the BBC, and not intended for the stage.

Things got really bad in the second act--after an intermission during which we could hear power tools being used on the stage--mostly thanks to that damned scrim. It kept coming and going at the wrong times, at one point even cutting part of the cast off from each other. Christmas Carol enthusiasts will know the scene...Scrooge points out two small children, Ignorance and Want, clinging to Christmas Past's robes. Except that the scrim cut them off from the ghost, so all they could do was stand behind it and paw feebly at the air.

Their was even a point at which the scrim flew in about half-way, paused for a second, and then flew back out!

By this point, the actors were completely fed up. And I have to give them total props, they were real troupers, and gave the best possible performances despite the circumstances. At the end, when Scrooge had returned home, the narration and scrim were about to take over the stage again, so Mr. Lloyd abandoned the stage altogether and hopped into the audience to distribute plastic prop coins and greet people in the aisles (much to everyone's amusement).

A few weeks after the press (and user reviews) finished ripping into the show, we were issued an apology from the production, and an offer to come back and see the show again. I chose to decline, because even if the show was no longer a complete train wreck, it still probably wasn't a very good production, and I've seen several amazing productions, and have high standards. And shouldn't I have high standards? It's an all-star cast at the Kodak Theater. This should've been amazing!

It looks like most of the fault lies with the director/producer/adapter--according to his bio (or like thereof; it read more like a director's note), he didn't appear to have any actual experience.

The next year, I was looking on Playbill's website and saw a headline that said "All-Star Production of A Christmas Carol Cancelled in Chicago". I scrolled to the bottom of the article--yup. Same guy.