Category: Theatre

Time Traveler – ELEMENTS THEATER COLLECTIVE STAGES VIRGINIA WOOLF’S ‘ORLANDO’ AS A POP-UP

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The "Orlando" cast, clockwise from left, Stephanie Farnum, Rob Grayson, Erika Leachman, Morgan Altenhoff and Tess Plant-Thomas
The “Orlando” cast, clockwise from left, Stephanie Farnum, Rob Grayson, Erika Leachman, Morgan Altenhoff and Tess Plant-Thomas

When Virginia Woolf published her gender-bending, time-traveling novel “Orlando” in 1928, her contemporaries initially put it down as frivolous, a distraction from the more serious work she was writing. And so it seemed doomed for decades to not be considered alongside novels like “To the Lighthouse.” That is until Sally Potter’s 1992 film version with Tilda Swinton revealed the story to be much more than fluff. “Orlando,” in a sparkling new adaptation by playwright Sarah Ruhl, continues the ascension of this work, and it closes Elements Theater Collective’s current season, starting tonight and playing in pop-up in several locations.

“This season our theme has been gender and sexuality,” says director Mary Plant-Thomas, who is marking this production as her last before she moves to San Francisco. “So it was a very explicit choice … But I also see that the play shares other core ideas with our plays, like time travel. I think that’s less a choice and more that we really value choosing new works that are also accessible.”

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Pretty Poison: SBCC opens season with ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’

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From left, Leslie Ann Story, Christopher Lee Shortand Linda MacNeal in The Theatre Group at SBCC's production of "Arsenic and Old Lace"
From left, Leslie Ann Story, Christopher Lee Shortand Linda MacNeal in The Theatre
Group at SBCC’s production of “Arsenic and Old Lace”

When writer Joseph Kesselring first imagined the story of “Arsenic and Old Lace” he saw it more as a Gothic tale, based on a notorious case of the time where the owner of a boarding house poisoned guests to get their pensions. But, rumor has it, Broadway producers Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse convinced Kesselring to make it a comedy and so he did. The play is now a classic, community theaters everywhere still putting on productions, including SBCC’s Theater Group, who premiere the comedy this coming Wednesday.

In the play, the Brewster family is largely composed of homicidal maniacs except for the youngest, drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Jay Carlander), who comes home to marry the girl he loves, fend off police, and wonder how he’s related to everybody else. The heads of the house are two spinster aunts who murder lonely old men with elderberry wine laced with arsenic, helped by Mortimer’s brother (Christopher Lee Short) who is under the delusion he is Theodore Roosevelt and helps dig the graves for their victims. There’s a murderous older brother, too (John Bridle) who is living with a botched plastic surgery job to hide from the police.

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The red and the black: Ensemble’s Mark Rothko bio-play has weighty questions on its mind

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Matt Gottlieb play abstract-expressionist painter Mark Rothko and Shaun Anthony his put-upon young assistant in the dramatic new play at The New Vic, "Red." John Logan's play won six Tony Awards in 2010
Matt Gottlieb play abstract-expressionist painter Mark Rothko and Shaun Anthony his put-upon young assistant in the dramatic new play at The New Vic, “Red.” John Logan’s play won six Tony Awards in 2010

“What do you see?”

That’s the first line of John Logan’s intense two-person play “Red” that just opened at The New Vic as part of Ensemble Theatre’s current season. The man asking the question is abstract painter Mark Rothko, and although he’s asking it of the man who has turned up to be his new assistant as they stand in front of one of his paintings, he’s asking it of himself. And, no surprise, he’s asking us, too, in a play that dives energetically into questions of art, history, integrity, money, and creativity. In real life, Rothko was very secretive, with very little footage or interviews available. This biographical play brings the prickly painter to life.

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Layers Upon Layers: ENSEMBLE THEATRE’S ‘RED’ BRINGS ABSTRACT PAINTER MARK ROTHKO TO PRICKLY LIFE

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Matt Gottlieb, left, as Rothko and Shaun Anthony as his assistant. Ken, in "Red"
Matt Gottlieb, left, as Rothko and Shaun Anthony as his assistant. Ken, in “Red”

Director Brian Schnipper is telling us about abstract artist Mark Rothko, the subject of his upcoming play at Ensemble Theatre, “Red.”

“With Rothko’s murals, there’s so many layers and he used very thin paint. You can see the top layer and the second layer and maybe the third, but beyond that— and Rothko said he sometime painted 26 layers. Even art historians say you can’t tell where certain paints start. They can’t understand his techniques. Sometimes he’d burn the canvas with turpentine, they know that, but as to the layers, they don’t know how.”

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At Long Last Love – BILL WAXMAN’S NEW PLAY RIFFS ON LOVE IN THE GOLDEN YEARS

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The cast of "The Coot Elimination Committee" includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim heard that phrase and right then and there Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith.
The cast of “The Coot Elimination Committee” includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith.

Writer and director Bill Waxman was visiting his wife’s stepmother and significant other in a retirement community in Palm Springs. That’s where he heard about a committee that had been established to rid their environs of a disruptive duck-like bird: The Coot Elimination Committee.

“It was like a gift,” Mr. Waxman says. “I heard that phrase and right then and there I thought, this is a play. I came home and sat down and about a month later I had the play. It rolled right out.”

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ON STAGE: Tales of Transformation – ENSEMBLE THEATRE’S NEW PRODUCTION REVISITS OVID’S CLASSIC MYTHS

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For viewers in the front rows for Ensemble Theatre Company’s latest production, you might just get wet while watching “Metamorphoses.” But don’t worry, director Jonathan Fox has the audience covered … literally, with rain ponchos. It’s can’t be helped when a great part of the stage will be a wading pool, built per stage instructions included in Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of Ovid’s classic tales of myth and transformation.

“It think the audience getting wet is part of the experience,” says Mr. Fox. “It’s the kind of piece that doesn’t work if you’re watching on video. You need to be surrounded by people.”
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Pop-Up Underworld – ELEMENTS THEATRE RETURNS WITH THE DARK FANTASY ‘KING OF SHADOWS’

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Courtesy photo
Courtesy photo

When both founding members of Elements Theatre Collective respectively left Goleta and Santa Barbara to follow their graduate careers on the East Coast, there was a brief moment — at least among their fans — when the pop-up theater looked set to dissipate.

But not so. The always-evolving company returns this weekend with “King of Shadows,” under the direction of Kate Bergstrom, who currently teaches theater at Laguna Blanca Middle School.

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The Funny Farm – SPEAKING OF STORIES’ LATEST IS JUST FOR LAUGHS

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From left,Tom Hinshawwill read David Rakoff's"ln New England Everyone Calls You Dave," executive director Maggie Mixsell and Robert Lesser, who will read Paul Rudnick's"Good Enough to Eat
From left,Tom Hinshawwill read David Rakoff’s”ln New England Everyone Calls You Dave,” executive director Maggie Mixsell and Robert Lesser, who will read Paul Rudnick’s”Good Enough to Eat

Speaking of Stories kicks off 2014, and its 20th season, with “Nothing but Laughs,” its annual show of humorous tales. Maybe it’s a sign that the funniest comedy writers now work in the non-fiction essay format, or maybe it’s just pure coincidence, but the line-up for the two shows this Sunday and Monday at Center Stage Theater is all in the hilarious-but-true tradition.

The line-up for Sunday and Monday feature five Speaking of … regulars, all five of whom are also adept at comedy. Katie Thatcher will read Sloane Crosley’s childhood tale, “The Pony Problem;” Meredith McMinn will read Nora Ephron’s aging-ritual tale, “I Feel Bad About My Neck;” Devin Scott — the youngest of the performers — will read Michael Thomas Ford’s confessional, “The F Word;” Tom Hinshaw will take on David Rakoff’s mountain climbing story, “In New England Everyone Calls You Dave;” and Robert Lesser caps things off with Paul Rudnick’s sugar-holic tale, “Good Enough to Eat.” Executive director, Maggie Mixsell has made sure each performer really matches the personality of the writer. Well, as closely as possible.

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A Wealth of Stage Riches – THEATER IN 2013 WAS ALL ABOUT TRANSITIONS

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In 2013 the Circle Bar B Dinner Theatre presented Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." Circle Bar B Theatre photo
In 2013 the Circle Bar B Dinner Theatre presented Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Circle Bar B Theatre photo

This year’s big story was the end of Ensemble Theater’s run in the cozy Alhecama Theater and its move to the renovated and brand-spankin’-new New Vic, an $11.5 million-dollar adventure that took many years to finally happen and has brought Jonathan Fox’s company to a space on par with the Garvin and Hatlen theaters. With state-of-the-art toys to play with, it’ll be interesting to see what Director Jonathan Fox does with the space. So far, Santa Barbarans have seen the Stephen Sondheim musical, “A Little Night Music” with Stephanie Zimbalist and Piper Laurie, and it was quite lovely.

Their farewell performances at Alhecama were also worth noting: David Ives’ “The Liar” was one of their funniest productions in a long time, witty and silly in measure. “The Year of Magical Thinking,” with Linda Purl stepping in for the recently deceased Bonnie Franklin in the role of Joan Didion, was the kind of one-woman show for which the Alhecama space was perfect. “Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune” was a good revival, although maybe not a necessary one.

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The Powerhouse : THE NEW VIC AND ITS NEW SEASON REDEFINES SANTA BARBARA THEATER

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The exterior of the New Victoria Theatre
The exterior of the New Victoria Theatre

A pool and a splash zone for an upcoming Ensemble Theatre show? Who would have thought? But in the beautiful new space for one of Santa Barbara’s oldest theater companies, anything is possible. Called The New Vic, the $11.5 million remodel of the building on the corner of Victoria and Chapala Streets opened this month, a mixture of state-of-the-art theater construction and a devotion to preserving this former church and its 92-year-old original structure. To find out the tools they’ve use to construct such a beauty, you could check here.

When the mayor cut the ribbon at the opening several Fridays ago, it celebrated the end of a construction process that had its high and low points, as well as a new chapter in Santa Barbara’s performing arts district. Mayor Helene Schneider called it the “jewel in the crown” and with its refurbished, stained glass windows glowing during a performance, the comparison is apt.

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