Brilliant Winter Kick-off at Broadway Rose

Malia Tippets, Jared Mack, Joe Theissen, Tim Blough, Sarah Maines, 
Jade Tate, Jackson Wells, and Jeffrey Childs. Photo by Sam Ortega

By Tina Arth

I love the holiday season, but the avalanche of shows around the beginning of December can be a bit overwhelming. Broadway Rose, not surprisingly, hit just the right note by opening A 1940’s Radio Christmas Carol Thanksgiving weekend, at least a week ahead of the rest of the crowd. More importantly, from a pack of five in recent years, theirs is the most charming, touching, and musically thrilling (some of the harmonies gave me chills!) take on the “Radio Christmas Carol” genre I’ve seen – with no sacrifice in the quality of the comedy. The collaboration between director Dan Murphy and musical director Jeffrey Childs creates a seamless flow between the show’s musical, dramatic, and comic elements – with some unexpected twists that keep the audience on its toes.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1943, and the Feddington Players are more than a little cranky about their move from NYC to a hole-in-the-wall studio in Newark, NJ for their rendition of A Christmas Carol. The plumbing is loud, the signal weak, and the electrical system temperamental. Starring in the title role of Scrooge is veteran actor (but radio newbie) William St. Claire, who is not thrilled with the current trajectory of his career and has a woefully inadequate understanding of the different demands of radio (e.g., no need for costumes, much less costume changes!). Adding to the general malaise, the rest of the cast learns before his arrival that St. Claire has lost a son in the skies above WWII France.  However, the show must go on, and even when St. Claire’s heart-wrenching on-air breakdown drives it off the rails the rest of the cast’s “can-do” attitude brings it to a hilarious (but very bizarre) conclusion. Without giving too much away, let us just say that it’s the only time I’ve seen Tiny Tim and the Lindbergh Baby in such close proximity…

Tim Blough (as St. Claire) is an experienced and deft actor whose resonant voice and dignified affect stand in stark contrast to the frequently wacky performances of his cast mates. Much of the show’s emotional content comes from his gradual evolution from Scrooge to grieving father, done so smoothly that I really didn’t know what was happening until he neared his personal climax. The rest of the cast members offer multidimensional portraits of ordinary people (well, ordinary show people) carrying on in the midst of the grim realities of war. Jade Tate is hilarious as Sally Simpson, the living embodiment of Rosie the Riveter, and her lightning-fast transitions playing all of Bob Cratchit’s daughters are a wonder to behold. With little more than a few lines in Hebrew, Jared Mack uses his character, Cholly Butts, to gently remind us that Jews, even in America, have a special connection to the tragic events in Europe. I was impressed but confused by the skillful musical direction from “Toots Navarre” – until I read the program at intermission and realized that real-life musical director Jeffrey Childs, one of the best of the best of the local music men, had stepped downstage to let the audience watch him work his magic.

The 18 musical numbers are a nice mix of classic carols and new songs written for the show –delivered with a sly confession that the WOV Radio Network can’t pay royalties, so they have to rely on new material and songs in the public domain. Malia Tippets’ lively “That Cute Little Elf” starts the show with comic flare, and Sarah Maines’ haunting “Quiet Night” closes the show on a somber note that brings home the reality of war, especially poignant with the lovely monologue by Foley artist Buzz Crenshaw (William Shindler). The lush ensemble arrangements allow the entire cast to shine, and Mack’s lead on “All Through the Night” gave me goose bumps.

Robert Vaughan’s detailed scenic design and Sarah Marguier’s authentic costuming give the show period authenticity, immediately transporting the audience back 76 years and immersing us in the spirit of a tragic but hopeful era – so very different from our own in superficial ways, and so completely alike in the things that matter.

This show will sell out quickly (many performances are already full) – get your tickets asap for what may turn out to be the best show of the season!

A 1940’s Radio Christmas Carol is playing at Broadway Rose’s New Stage, 12850 SW Grant Avenue, Tigard through Sunday, December 23d.

A Mighty Inherit the Wind Blows at Lakewood

Ian Goodrich, Olivia Weiss, Jim Vadala, and Allen Nause.
Photo by Triumph Photography.

By Tina Arth

November 6, 2018 – what better day to reflect on a play that explores a time when American history was roiled by the 6-way collision of science, fundamentalist religion, education, politics, law, and the press? Lakewood Theatre Company’s production of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s brilliant Inherit the Wind, first produced in 1955 as a direct reaction to the McCarthy hearings, propels us back to a time and place that, until recently, we thought we had left behind.

The play tells the semi-fictional story of Bertram Cates, a teacher in Hillsboro, Tennessee who is on trial for the crime of teaching evolutionary theory to his students.  While it is based on actual historic events (1925’s famous Scopes trial, in Dayton Tennessee) the names have been changed and the story modified to more explicitly make its point about the McCarthy era’s relentless attempts to suppress free speech, thought, and a free press.  Appearing for the defense and prosecution are well-known lawyers Henry Drummond (based on Clarence Darrow) and Matthew Harrison Brady (based on William Jennings Bryan), brought in to raise the trial to national attention as one of a handful of cases labeled a “trial of the century.” The drama is heightened by the presence of Cates’ girlfriend, fellow teacher Rachel Brown, whose father Jeremiah Brown is the heartlessly stern reverend of the local fundamentalist church. The trial ends with a Pyrrhic victory for Bryan – Cates is convicted, but in the process Darrow demolishes Brady’s arguments and sets the stage to move the debate to a national audience on appeal, while Rachel rejects her father’s blindly rigid faith and chooses to align her self squarely in the Cates camp.

The leading lawyers provide dream roles for serious actors, and director Antonio Sonera could not have chosen better than Allen Nause (Drummond) and Todd Van Voris (Brady) to fill these giant shoes. The contrast between Nause’s restrained, fiercely sardonic expression of agnosticism and the crowd-pleasing, bombastic histrionics of Van Voris’ creationist rants drives the story to its inevitable conclusion. Nause uses comic timing as a weapon to disembowel his adversary’s biblical literalism, and Van Voris smoothly injects into his absolute certainty a few moments of thinly veiled doubt when confronted with Reverend Brown’s unconscionably harsh brand of Christianity.

Another key battle in the show is between Rachel and her father. While David Sikking’s take on Reverend Brown could have been even fierier, Olivia Weiss’ approach as Rachel is heartbreaking, and vividly illustrates the cruelty of her father’s harsh world-view. The ensemble, especially when singing (there are a surprising number of hymns interspersed throughout the show), augments the picture by demonstrating Brown’s almost hypnotic power over many in the crowd. While the leads demand most of the audience’s attention, it is fascinating to watch the reactions of individual ensemble members at key moments as they respond to Brown, Brady, and Drummond’s arguments with varying degrees of blind faith and cautious hints of dissent.

John Gerth’s scenic design is really quite stunning. The use of rear projection for the town of Hillsboro, with a rustic foreground that can serve as a jail, town square, or courtroom by just shifting a few pieces of furniture, easily enables the audience to follow shifts in locale without time lost to extensive set changes – the most complex shift, erecting bleachers for the jury, happily happens at intermission.

While it would be unduly naïve to think that conflicts between religious faith and scientific logic will ever find a completely happy middle ground, it is still shocking in 2018 to see how little progress has been made in some large segments of American society. As Drummond says, with eerily prophetic accuracy, “You don’t suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?” For this reason alone, Inherit the Wind has earned its iconic place in theater – but Sonera’s staging of the show at Lakewood is rife with fine performances, humor, and subtle touches that make it fine theater independent of the message.

Inherit the Wind is playing at the Lake Oswego’s Lakewood Center for the Arts through Sunday, December 9^th.

Dearly Departed – More Giggles Than Grief…

Lonnie Duran, Krista Gardner, and Jeff Ekdahl

By Tina Arth

Losing the clan’s paterfamilias is generally regarded as something to mourn, but as Mask & Mirror Community Theatre’s current production of David Bottrell and Jessie Jones’ Dearly Departed illustrates, “it ain’t necessarily so.” The show fits neatly into the mold of southern comedy often seen in community theater productions, and generally included once per season at Mask & Mirror. True to type, it’s loaded with eccentric characters, big hair, down-home accents, and sit-com like one-liners – but this one is a bit more fun, and much funnier, because it’s edgier and less overtly stereotypical than others from the genre that I’ve seen.  Kudos to director Rick Hoover for setting some limits on his cast, averting the kind over-the-top cheap performances that so often dilute a script’s inherent wit.

The story begins with the sudden demise of Bud Turpin, the seriously red-necked patriarch of a rural southern clan – wife Raynelle, sons Ray Bud and Junior, daughter Delightful, Bud’s sister Marguerite, and nephew Royce. From Bud’s demise through his burial, we watch the family and an unusually eclectic array friends and relations as they expose the universal bonds of love, community, family ties and humor of this dysfunctional horde. Raynelle quickly makes it clear to the preacher that she wants no whitewashed eulogy for a man she can only describe as “mean and surly” (in fact, that’s what she wants on his tombstone). The sons are at each others’ throats, Delightful is an obsessive eater – add in financial problems, adultery, miscarriages, sloth, and real Bible Belt fundamentalism – clearly, the story could go very dark, but the authors have chosen to offer a much lighter vision.

Pat Romans plays Raynelle with honesty and directness that belies any stereotypes about born again Christians – audiences are just not expecting that level of casual contempt from the newly-bereaved, but Romans makes it clear that we’ll have to look elsewhere for hypocrisy (or even a modicum of tact). The mantle of ostentatious grief falls on the shoulders of Francine Raften, a control freak who delivers a classic Bible-thumping dose of rigid morality. Two very solid performances come from Lonnie Duran and Kira Smolev (Ray Bud and Lucille), who create a believable, hard-working, sensible couple that contrasts neatly with the hapless Junior (Jeff Ekdahl) and his wife Suzanne (Shannon Coffin), a shallow harridan with anger issues and a penchant for Dairy Queen who redeems herself at the end with a lovely funeral hymn.

Krista Gardner is a hoot as Delightful – like Mr. Goldstone in Gypsy, she has almost no lines but eats continuously (corn dogs are a particular favorite). Gardner’s magically swift hands manage to snatch food from other cast members with lightning speed, and she is hilariously deadpan throughout. Ted Schroeder’s “Royce” could be found in any family – Schroeder plays aimless and shiftless to perfection, with a nearly unbreachable emotional wall to protect him from Marguerite’s maternal manipulation. We don’t see much of John Knowles as the Reverend Hooker – he spends much of his biggest scene offstage, dealing with intestinal issues – but when he appears he definitely steals the show.

The sets are minimal, which is a real blessing in a show with so many scene changes in Act I, and the costuming absolutely appropriate to the time, diversity of the characters, and place (wherever that might be – we are told only that we are below the Mason-Dixon line). The brief role of Bud Turpin is filled with a different local personality for each performance, which adds a little more fun to the evening.

While Dearly Departed is being performed in a church and is generally family-friendly, there are a few situations that might not be appropriate for younger children (assuming they are old enough to figure out what’s going on) or people with particularly delicate sensibilities. However, that leaves a lot of folks who will really enjoy an evening with the Turpins!

Mask & Mirror’s Dearly Departed runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm through November 18^th at “The Stage” at Calvin Church, 10445 SW Canterbury Lane, Tigard, 97224.

Evil Dead: The Musical – TITG’s Love Note to the Season

Kate Barrett, Nick Serrone, and Stevo Clay

By Tina Arth

Other theaters offer boring options like front row seating, balcony seating, aisle seating – but for Halloween 2018, Theatre in the Grove offers the chillingly unorthodox options of splash zone and splatter zone seating. Thanks to director Zachary Centers and the Forest Grove troupe’s current production of Evil Dead: The Musical, audiences can get a few hours of  “mature audiences only” respite from trick-or-treaters, Disney princesses, and all the rest of Big Candy’s assault on our official spooky season. The show is definitely not great art, but it is definitely great fun for adults who love over-the-top farce and refuse to completely grow up – think Rocky Horror on steroids, or Little Shop of Horrors on crack.

Canadian author George Reinblatt’s 2003 musical is based on the Evil Dead film series, and offers the broadest of parodies of the whole teen horror bloodbath genre. Five college students – Ash, his sister Cheryl, best friend Scott, Scott’s girlfriend Shelly, and Ash’s girlfriend Linda go off to spend the weekend in an isolated cabin in the woods. With this classic horror set-up, what can go right? While there is plenty of action and dialogue, for the careful reader the song list tells pretty much what to expect, as the cast delivers 21 musical numbers from ”Cabin in the Woods” through “It Won’t Let Us Leave”, “Join Us,” “I’m Not a Killer,” “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” “It’s Time,” and finally “Blew that B**** Away.”  

The toughest role goes to Nick Serrone’s “Ash” who, when not wielding chainsaws and sawed-off shotguns, is a stock boy in aisle 5 of the local S-Mart where he met cashier Linda (Aubrey Slaughter). The role of Ash was originally played by Bruce Campbell, and Serrone definitely captures some of Campbell’s bizarre heroism.  The shamelessly campy “Housewares Employee,” gives Serrone and Slaughter a chance to shine as they deliver the quintessential love anthem, and it is impossible not to compare the infatuated pair to Little Shop’s Audrey and Seymour. From an overall impressive performance, I would pick the life and death battle between Ash and his hand as Serrone’s best scene – his athletic grasp of physical comedy is breathtaking.  Stevo Clay’s “Scott” is convincingly dumb as a box of lust-riddled rocks, yet his limited brainpower sparkles when compared to Jeananne Kelsey’s slutty “Shelley.” Kelsey is a fine dancer, and her choreography for “Do the Necronomicon” really sells Evil Dead’s homage to “The Time Warp.”  Kate Barrett’s mopey “Cheryl” is clearly the intellectual in the group; neither turning her into a zombie nor locking her in the cellar dims her IQ, and Barrett’s physical outbursts, wisecracks, and furious puns provide several of the show’s best moments.

Each of the other three key cast members get at least one great number.  Isabella Steele’s “Annie” completely nails the lead on the exquisitely clumsy “All the Men In My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” and Trevor Winder does a shockingly good job singing and dancing his way through the hen-pecked Ed’s “Bit Part Demon.”  Words cannot express my surprised glee at Travis Schlegel’s “Good Old Reliable Jake” – a good ol’ boy taking country music to dizzying heights of absurdity.

The set, special effects, lighting and sound are essential to express the kitschy wit of the show – director/set designer Centers and his crew pull out all the stops with a vibrating floor, demon-possessed props, severed but still-active limbs, misting and spurting blood, and a host of other high and low-tech touches.  A few blood pack problems and some muffled lines make very little difference, given the utter absurdity of the entire production.

Finally, conductor Cory Sweany and his five-person orchestra are beautifully placed upstairs and upstage, where they do full justice to an eclectic score by Frank Cipolla, Christopher Bond, Melissa Morris and playwright Reinblatt.

The show is clearly not for all audiences, and utterly inappropriate for children, the blood-averse, or people who dislike campy musicals.  However, the rest of the theater-going public should seriously consider spending a few hours at Theatre in the Grove – may I suggest the midnight showing on October 31^st?

Evil Dead: The Musical is playing at Theatre in the Grove, 2028 Pacific Avenue, Forest Grove through November 4th, with performances Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m., and a special midnight Halloween showing on October 31^st.

Twilight Theater Company Plumbs the Depths of Marat Sade

Jennifer Madison Logan, Greg Prosser, and Randy Patterson.
Photo by Alicia Turvin

By Tina Arth

As we trudge, wary but hopeful, toward the 2018 midterm elections, trust our good friends at Twilight to bring us that ever-popular ray of theatrical sunshine, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, familiarly known as

Marat/ Sade. With its impossibly perky subtext: “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” (or, if you prefer, the less tasteful “vote out the bastards, vote in the sons of bitches”), Director Dorinda Toner’s massive 24-person cast explodes across the stage, bringing playwright Peter Weiss’ dark 1964 play to life in a grim reminder that even the most enlightened and progressive political revolutions rarely yield lasting positive change, especially for the downtrodden.

For those of you who, like me, might not have a clue what to expect when walking into the theater, here’s some basic intel about stuff we learned in school but may have since filed away under “irrelevant”: the French revolution started in 1789, and initially ran through 1799. The French monarchy was replaced with a shaky and thoroughly bloody republic, there was lots of turmoil, and ultimately the revolutionary hero Napoleon Bonaparte (having conveniently sidelined some of his more liberal republican impulses) took the reins in 1799, created The Consulate, and then in 1804 began a 10-year reign as French emperor. Each step in this complex process was justified, at least in part, by the argument that making France a more liberal country that would bring a better life to the oppressed masses (we all remember Marie Antoinette and “let them eat cake,” right?). While they succeeded in abolishing the monarchy, attempts to create an egalitarian, poverty-free society were notably less successful. All of this info is key because Marat/Sade is a play within a play, ostensibly written by the infamous Marquis de Sade (funny how we all remember him, right?) exploring the 1793 assassination of radical republican Jean-Paul Marat. The only other thing you need to know is that the action takes place in the (insane) Asylum at Charenton, circa 1808 while Sade was an inmate – as part of their therapy, the inmates are performing Sade’s play, with the asylum director and other members of the bourgeoisie as their audience. Oh – and resist the urge to sit in the middle of the second row. Unless you are very, very tall, the seat directly behind Coulmier, the asylum director, yields a limited view of center stage, and things happen there!

Twilight newcomer Randy Patterson (the Marquis de Sade) is one of the few actors portraying himself (as opposed to being a character within the play he has written). He gives the role a controlled menace, with just tiny bursts of mania, and the slightly creepy effect is enhanced by his makeup, strong and expressive features, and daunting physical presence – as his “play’s” director he is mostly silent and still, but always worth watching, and when he does speak everyone listens. Patterson plays primarily off two other key characters, Greg Prosser’s Marat and Stan Yeend’s Coulmier. Yeend clearly has fun, and is fun to watch, being quintessentially bourgeois. He’s well-dressed, full of bluster and condescension, leaping to his feet and loudly objecting with lightning speed each time Sade’s play begins to tread on dangerous turf, and quietly comforting his daughter when the action on stage gets a mite too raucous.  Prosser is tougher to read – although he’s playing a paranoid schizophrenic tormented by chronic skin disease playing a bloodthirsty rebel, he spends almost the entire play seated in a large bathtub wearing only a beige diaper (the role is often played fully nude, but I appreciate Toner’s directorial choice to provide minimal cover).  Because of the tub’s placement  (upstage, and not well lit), the audience does not get close enough to Prosser to really feel his performance – and one of the great strengths of Twilight is the immediacy that comes with audience proximity to the stage.

The vocal ensemble is powerful, and does full justice to Lola Toner’s fine original music. Among the resident lunatics, a few are particularly noteworthy for their ability to commit consistently to their roles, even when they are not the center of attention, in particular Chris Murphy, Samuel Alexander Hawkins, and Tony Domingue. Skye McLaren Walton turns in an unforgettable performance as the incredibly libidinous Duperret, and Eva Andrews is stunningly focused, and totally oblivious to Duperret’s constant rape attempts. Props to almost all of the women for gracefully letting it all hang out during the final orgy, with special recognition to Kaitlynn Baugh for confidently providing a moment of tasteful downstage nudity. Jeff Giberson’s Herald is nicely sardonic, but perhaps a bit too glib to mesh cleanly with the rest of the cast – I found myself wondering whether he was actually present in the asylum or simply a one-man Greek chorus.

Marat Sade is not performed often, and it is rank understatement to say that it’s a challenging show to direct, perform, and watch. I suspect that most audience members walk out (as I did) wondering exactly what they have seen. However, it’s worth the trouble – see it, ponder at length, reflect on the currency of the topics in a world that seems no closer to getting it right than the rebellious French of the time. Do not, however, take your kids along, unless they are at least 18!

Twilight Theater Company’s Marat/Sade is playing at the Performing Arts Theater, 7515 N. Brandon Avenue, Portland through October 28th, with performances at 8 P.M. on Fridays–Saturdays, 8 pm, Sundays, 3 pm & Thursday, October 25, at 8 pm.

Bag&Baggage’s Deathtrap Ushers in the Scary Season

Andrew Beck and Lawrence Siulagi
Photo by Casey Campbell Photography

By Tina Arth

It’s that time of year again – trust Hillsboro’s Bag&Baggage to take their Halloween offering well beyond “Boo!” with playwright Ira Levin’s thriller Deathtrap. Levin made his name with three iconic horror novels – Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys From Brazil before hitting the theatrical jackpot in 1978 with the hugely successful Broadway run of Deathtrap. Forty years later, the play still has the power to make its audience gasp and giggle at Levin’s brilliant marriage of wit and terror, and director Scott Palmer doesn’t miss a trick (or treat).

The show is set in the study of a down-on-his-luck playwright, Sidney Bruhl, in Westport, Connecticut.  The walls are covered with fierce looking weapons, many representative of past successful stage thrillers on which Bruhl’s career and fame are based. Now at the end of a long dry spell, he’s living off his wife Myra’s largesse and has been reduced to teaching dramatic writing to a new generation of aspiring playwrights. Bruhl is reading a manuscript sent to him by one of his students, and is dismayed by the utter perfection of the tyro’s script – so much so that he even jokes about killing the student and claiming the script as his own. Myra proposes a less lethal scheme, where Sidney can offer his services as a (completely unnecessary) script doctor/collaborator and then convince the author, Clifford Anderson, that they have actually co-written the play – thus letting him in for a share of the glory, and more importantly, the gold that is sure to follow the play’s publication. From here, the plot takes off on a series of unexpected twists and murderous turns involving Sidney, Myra, Clifford, Porter Milgrim (Sidney’s lawyer), and the mysterious Helga ten Dorp, a Dutch psychic who lives nearby. Levin’s script is frequently hilarious – self aware and self-deprecating – and there is a strong element of play-within-a-play as the plot develops and we are shown repeatedly that all is not what it seems to be.

Lawrence Siulagi’s sly, dour, and cynical Sidney Bruhl is the play’s centerpiece, and perhaps most completely captures Levin’s actual voice. At every turn, Siulagi manages to convince us that his urbane exterior houses at least one part psychopath, which keeps us on the edge of our seats. Morgan Cox as Myra is proper, cold and rigid (physically and morally), and her occasional overtly theatrical leaps into hysteria mirror the audience’s own reactions at startling turns of events. Most interesting to me was watching Andrew Beck as Clifford. In previous shows Beck has often played the knowing sophisticate, so it was really fun to watch him initially play the part of a likeable dumb Kopf, and even more fun watching his eyes as he gradually and subtly telegraphed his evolution into a significantly more knowing and complex character.

Mandana Khoshnevisan’s outré psychic, Helga, provides a solid dose of comic relief, especially in Act II where she goes over the top, but never out of control, and Eric St. Cyr provides a nice contrast in his button-down, cautiously lawyerly take on Porter Milgrim.

Palmer’s production team is flawless – in particular, Jim Ricks-White’s lighting, Tyler Buswell’s mace, sword, hatchet and handcuff filled scenic design, and the fight choreography by Signe Larsen. I have been promised that the unexpected opening night (fake) blood spatter was a one-time event, so there’s no need to avoid front row seating!

Early in Act I, Bruhl avers that Clifford’s script is “So good that even a gifted director couldn’t hurt it.” This is abundantly true in the case of the current production, and it makes a perfect way to honor and welcome the scariest season of the year.

Bag&Baggage’s Deathtrap is playing at The Vault, 350 E. Main Street, Hillsboro, through October 31, with 7:30 p.m. performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 2:00 p.m. Sunday matinees, and special pre-Halloween shows at 7:30 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday October 29, 30, and 31.

BCT Presents a Lively School House Rock

Brittain Jackson and Michael Cook

By Tina Arth

Beaverton Civic Theatre’s current production is a blast from the past that rings the bells of nostalgia for a generation of adults who grew up in the seventies and early eighties, and the live version offers an abundance of lively music, dance and song to charm today’s kiddos, too. Director Terri Kuechle her amazingly adaptable six-person cast, and music director Sandy Libonati’s pianist and bassist deliver a fast-paced series of 21 songs drawn from the best-loved numbers from the original School House Rock cartoon shorts first offered as part of ABC’s Saturday morning TV lineup in 1973.

The plot (really just a skeleton on which to hang the individual segments) is this: it’s the night before new schoolteacher Tom is scheduled to begin his first day as an elementary school teacher, and his anxiety makes for sleeplessness, bad dreams, and bizarre (but highly educational) fantasies peopled by three women and two men, all of them representing the various voices in his head. Each segment calls for different costuming (lots of hats and other quick-change garments) and represents a specific topic from elementary education – predominantly math, English grammar, biology, astronomy, and social studies. Tom quickly learns that in order to be effective in the classroom, he’ll have to make learning fun and infuse his messages with music and rhythm to engage his young charges and help them retain the material.

As someone who completely missed the Schoolhouse Rock television phenomenon, I had no idea what to expect, and was for the most part pleasantly surprised. The actors were fully committed to their roles (which cannot have been easy in some of the sillier segments), vocal ensemble harmonies were powerful and clean, there was some fine dancing, the musicians did a fantastic job with the upbeat melodies and were well enough modulated that they did not, in general, drown out the vocals – and vocal leads, while not of operatic quality, hit exactly the right note for the show (“Sufferin’ Till Suffrage” does not require Beverly Sills). My principal concern is that two numbers in the second act (“Great American Melting Pot” and “Elbow Room”) are a bit tone-deaf in light of 21^st century sensibilities – reinforcing a Eurocentric narrative that was ubiquitous throughout my childhood, but that has (one hopes) been supplanted by a broader view of how we got to where we are today. When I queried BCT about this, I found (as I suspected) that they are contractually obligated to adhere to the original script, and thus did not have the option of replacing these numbers with less socio-politically fraught songs. I was, however, delighted to learn that the cast and production team had spent considerable time discussing the issue, and would be specifically addressing it in the audience  “Talk Back” offered after the October 7^th show. For adults simply seeing the show for its nostalgia value it’s no big deal, but I hope that parents and others who see Schoolhouse Rock with children take the time to discuss these numbers.

In a strong (and delightfully uninhibited) cast, I was especially impressed with Brittain Jackson’s dancing, and he totally nailed “Just a Bill” (which seemed to be a particular audience favorite from the old days).  Jordan Morris displayed a comic sensibility sometimes missing from professional geoscientists, and his fast-talking “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla” was a total delight.  Despite some early problems with vocal projection, Jemi Kostiner Mansfield made the most of her fluid body and mobile face and turned in an overall first-rate performance.

Any adult with fond memories of Saturday mornings spent with Schoolhouse Rock will love this show, as will boatloads of young children. With the caveat that the two “problem” numbers be acknowledged and discussed in the appropriate time and place, I can heartily recommend this show to all comers.

Beaverton Civic Theatre’s production of Schoolhouse Rock runs through Saturday, October 13^th at the Beaverton City Library Auditorium, with 7:30 pm shows on Friday and Saturday and 2:00 pm matinees on Sunday.