Lust in the dust: Gerald Haston and Eric Thompson star in Sonoma County Repertory Theatre’s outdoor production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s randy comedy of romantic misadventure, opening Aug. 18 in Sebastopol.

Sonoma County Rep airs out Shakespeare

By Daedalus Howell

IT’S NOT uncommon to hear drunks caterwauling in the park–but it’s far rarer that their bawdy antics receive applause. Sonoma County Repertory Theatre hopes it’ll happen come Aug. 18, when Shakespeare’s paunchy merrymaker Sir John Falstaff and his brood begin a bender in Sebastopol’s Ives Park as part of the company’s outdoor production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

SCR’s annual “Shakespeare in the Air” programming (later performances will be held in Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa) is now in its eighth year and firmly fixed in the firmament of local theater tradition.

“Every year, people talk to me on the street and ask which Shakespeare we’re doing,” says SCR artistic and executive director Jim DePriest. “They talk to all their neighbors and friends and get all their kids to come out.”

Of all of Shakespeare’s creations, Falstaff is the most aligned with the Freudian concept of the id. The rotund rogue is completely motivated by his appetites–or at least those that originate in his stomach and below. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff gets an eyeful of two comely wives of Windsor and schemes to seduce both of them. He is unaware, however, that the women share not only confidences, but also the identical love letters he has sent both of them. In retaliation, the ladies set about teaching Falstaff a lesson.

DePriest, who directs the play, credits the informal, rustic setting and the natural ambiance of the park (grass, trees, and limited plumbing) with supplementing the Shakespearean experience.

“Performing Shakespeare’s plays in parks is certainly nothing new, but what I think makes it so great is that having them outside just gives the play more of a festival feeling, especially when you’re serving food and wine,” he says, adding that theatergoers are encouraged to bring a picnic dinner or purchase one from the smorgasbord of catered suppers available at the evening shows.

Though DePriest has had success staging Shakespeare indoors, he enjoys the freedom outdoor productions afford both the theater artists and the audience–a fact that’s appreciated by theater companies around the North Bay .

Other Offerings Around the North Bay

“It’s a totally different feeling than being within the restrictions of those walls and rigid seating. Out at Ives Park, the audience can put out a blanket or a folding chair and spread their food out,” DePriest says. “It’s also different in terms of just basic ‘stage pictures,’ because if you have somebody turn upstage or even give a profile, their voice just goes off up into the timbers.”

DePriest also appreciates the “natural” setting the park lends to the outdoor shows and leaves much of the art direction of the productions to the civic planners and preservationists of yore.

“Some of the park’s trees have been there for probably a hundred years and are 70 and 80 feet tall,” he says. “They add a natural background to the stage that you can’t duplicate inside a theater. It’s just magical.”

Another bit of theatrical magic occurs with the physical transformation of veteran Sonoma County actor Gerald Haston into the mountainous, pleasure-seeking Falstaff. Seventy pounds of padding and one pair of lamb-chop whiskers later, Haston’s Falstaff looks something like a debauched Neil Young on a fare-thee-well tour.

“We’ve got him as big as the lobby of one of our theaters. At one point he has deer antlers on his head–it looks very funny,” says DePriest, who has a soft spot for the period evoked by Shakespeare’s comedy. “I like the period in which the play is written–you’ve got all the brightly colored costumes and actors coming up through the audience who could just reach out and grab somebody’s wine if they want to, they’re so close.”

THOUGH they’re too young to legally commandeer one’s cabernet, many younger actors are included in the production’s cast. Many of these folks were homegrown in the SCR’s in-house Young Actors Conservatory before graduating to the stage.

“We are very pleased to be able to cast students, current and alumni, when we have a role that is age- appropriate in one of our productions,” says artistic director Diane Bailey. She adds that on Sept. 3 at 4:30 p.m. an hourlong selection of scenes from Shakespeare’s oeuvre will be performed by some of the company’s young thespians, preceding one of the Courthouse Square engagements of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

“Because these students need to be able to act with professional actors, they receive specific coaching from the conservatory director, especially vocal training to meet the needs of performing outdoors,” says Bailey.

The Young Actors Conservatory’s present director, Steven David Martin, comes armed with 10 years of experience performing, directing, and teaching Shakespeare with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He has tailored this year’s conservatory curriculum to performing the Bard’s works.

“We’ve had great success with casting our most talented young actors in our Shakespeare productions because of our talented and dedicated conservatory directors, Jennifer King and Steven David Martin,” says Bailey. “The invaluable learning experience for our young actors is one they will carry with them their entire life and career.”

IN THE PAST, SCR has fielded calls from theatergoers concerned about the safety of attending a play performed in the urban jungle of a burgeoning metropolis like Santa Rosa–especially after sunset. Though bemused by such concerns, DePriest simply assures them that “Shakespeare in the Air” is relatively hazard-free entertainment.

“It’s interesting–when we were doing Shakespeare in Courthouse Square last summer, I had about 20 calls from people asking, “Is it really safe to come to downtown Santa Rosa at night?’ ” he recalls. “What that tells me is that the public perception of Santa Rosa is much different than the reality. It’s in that transition between a small town and a city.

“The people that called me took exception to people on the street asking them for quarters, or some of the kids over in the park who dress and do their hair differently than the rest of the population,” he continues. “They’re intimidated by that? God, I mean, this is a city! It has city problems and all kinds of people downtown, but, as I tell people, I feel perfectly safe walking downtown at night. It is quite a benign place, I think.”

Theatergoers, beware: Roving merrymakers abound in city parks through August. Be particularly wary of the fat ones wearing antlers.

The Merry Wives of Windsor begins Friday, Aug. 18, with a gala fundraising dinner and performance. Tickets for the fundraiser are $50 and must be purchased in advance. Subsequent performances run through Aug. 27 (except for Monday, Aug. 21, when there is no show) at Ives Park in Sebastopol; audiences should bring lawn chairs or blankets and can bring picnics or purchase boxed dinners for $5 to $8 at the park. The play moves to Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square Sept. 1&-3. Both venues open at 5:30 p.m., with a 7 p.m. curtain. Admission is $15. Tickets are $5 for the Young Shakespeare performance on the square Sept. 3 at 4::30 p.m. All performances free for kids 12 and under. For details, call 544-7278.

From the August 10-16, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Domestic violence: Brooks Ralston (left), Elisabeth Kirby, Melanie Bandera, and Lindsey Andersen discover the downside of family life in Electra.

Dramatically Dull

Well-intentioned ‘Electra’ a muddled mess

By Daedalus Howell

GERMAN philosopher Friedrich Schlegel once wrote, “Good drama must be drastic.” But drastic drama isn’t necessarily good. For instance, witness the newly formed traveling ensemble Staged Hereafter’s stringent redux of Sophocles’ Electra.

Directed by Susannah Woods from an adaptation by her and Helen Kongsgaard, the production, though difficult and awkwardly muddled, has at least two redeeming features–it’s outdoors and it’s free.

Woods’ project is noble. She wants to bring theater to communities around the Bay Area free of charge (a positively heroic notion given the fact that tickets to local shows are often $15 each). She also wants to provide a forum for the surplus of actors willing to trample the footlights. However, uneven casting and laggard pacing mar the ensemble’s debut show.

Electra is a family portrait painted in blood. Understanding the characters’ motivations requires familiarity with King Agamemnon’s rap sheet. He murders the husband of Clytemnestra (Elisabeth Kirby) in front of her, rips her suckling infant from her breast, and commits infanticide, then forcibly weds the bereaved widow and begets three daughters and a son.

Mercifully, this prescription for family happiness occurs only in the program in the form of a prologue.

Alas, Clytemnestra reaches her breaking point and (in lieu of calling social services) enlists her lover, Aegisthus (Brooks Ralston), to kill the despotic king.

Electra (Melanie Bandera), the middle daughter and apparent victim of the aphorism “Father knows best,” proves herself the consummate Daddy’s girl by bearing a grudge against her mother so vitriolic it makes Mommy Dearest read like a greeting card. She sends her kid brother, Orestes (Gabriel Weiss), off to the temples of Apollo, where he spends 10 years plotting to avenge his father’s death.

And this is where Woods’ production begins. What happens? Orestes comes home and kills his mother, proving once and for all that the family that slays together stays together.

As Electra, Bandera proves herself a studied and pensive actress unafraid to explore the emotional range of her character. Of course, that range turns out to have only one note–despair. Bushels full.

Armond Edward Dorsey does a fine turn as Paedagogus, the loyal servant who had hidden the young Orestes for years. Dorsey is captivating during a monologue in which he recounts a bogus story of his charge’s death in a chariot race (Chariots of Liar?). Indeed, one wishes he’d simply relay the remainder of the play in the same competent if blustery manner.

Since Electra is staged outdoors, audiences are encouraged to make themselves comfortable–as one gentleman did at a performance of this production at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross. He lay down on the bench seating and napped.

Bringing classics to the stage free of charge is to be applauded. But in this case, you get what you pay for.

Electra hits the stage on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 4 and 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Pride Mountain Vineyards, 4026 Spring Mountain Road, St. Helena. Free. 415/ 258-1989.

From the August 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Dynamic duo: Lawrence Pech and Wendy van Dyck team up.

Prime Mover

Lawrence Pech Company brings ballet and music to Valley of the Moon Festival

By Paula Harris

LAWRENCE PECH is a fortunate man. The accomplished ballet dancer and choreographer, a Glen Ellen resident whose dance company will this weekend stage the second annual Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts at Sonoma’s Bartholomew Park Winery, has not only thrived in the demanding dance world, but has also successfully conquered devastating health problems.

Pech’s triumphant career was set in motion in 1977 when he received formal training at the American Ballet Theater school on a full scholarship. His good fate continued when ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov invited Pech to join ABT, where Pech danced for several years. He later went on to became principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet.

Eleven years ago, on his 30th birthday, the lithe dancer was diagnosed with lymphoma. The cancerous disease was ravaging his spinal column. “I thought I’d never dance again,” he remembers.

Miraculously, though, Pech beat the debilitating illness and returned to the stage cancer-free. The artist then established his own 12-member troupe, the Lawrence Pech Dance Company. For the past three years, he’s also held the plum job of ballet master for the San Francisco Opera.

” ‘He knew he was really lucky,’ that’s gonna be on my tombstone,” says Pech, 40, with a slight laugh. But then he pauses thoughtfully.

He’s wondering whether some of that luck may be finally running out.

Pech is currently struggling to maintain his 5-year-old San Francisco&-based dance troupe amid financial woes and lack of public support. It’s all taking a toll in various ways. For example, the company recently scrapped the official Lawrence Pech Dance Company website because Pech could no longer afford to keep it up and running.

“It’s so hard having an arts organization,” Pech laments. He explains that his work is 80 percent administration and only 20 percent art. “I’m learning to be a businessman,” he adds, somewhat grudgingly. “But it’s tough finding the dollar.”

The dancer mentions that an eight-month plan to stage the Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts at another, more well-known local winery (which he declines to name publicly) fell through when the winery abruptly pulled out of the sponsorship and a planned $192,000 budget evaporated.

Although Pech claims he can’t get the word out about this year’s festival, since the website is down and he “can’t afford ads,” he is nevertheless optimistic about the show and excited about bringing more dance to the Sonoma County area, which he loves.

“I commute to San Francisco, but I’ve been living in Glen Ellen for three years. It’s my sanctuary,” says the artist. “I grew up in the Denver Rockies, so I’m a real nature boy at heart.”

But while living in Sonoma County, Pech says, he realized something was missing. “I became aware of all the wineries and their special arts events, but I saw there’s no dance up here,” he says. “There’s lots of music, lots of jazz, some Shakespeare–but no dance.”

Pech aims to change all that. He was featured dancer in the Mountain Play’s 1998 production of Hello, Dolly! at Jack London State Park. And the dance company plans to continue staging the Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts, an annual event which features both classical and modern dance and music in an outdoor venue.

This year’s program promises a melange of different music and ballet moves that will take the audience on a chronological journey through dance and music styles.

It opens with Concerto, a ballet for five dancers choreographed by Pech to the music of George Frederick Handel. “This is the most classical of the offerings,” says Pech.

Additional performances will include Pech and co-artistic director Wendy Van Dyck dancing Embraceable You, Ginger Thatcher’s pas de deux set to the music of Ira and George Gershwin as recorded by Etta James, which Pech describes as “smoky and almost ballroomesque.”

Also featured will be the pas de deux from Critters, Pech’s ballet about the rituals and rhythms of the natural world, set to an original score by Bay Area composer Cindy Cox. “This dance is about the mating ritual of the praying mantis,” explains Pech. “It’s quite sinister and very contemporary and fierce–the woman devours the male.”

OTHER FESTIVAL highlights will include opera arias by soprano Estelle Kruger accompanied by pianist Michael Schroeder, a Stephen Sondheim medley by cabaret singer Meg MacKay, and music by the pop-jazz fusion quartet Bogo.

Pech certainly doesn’t balk at taking chances with his work, blending the classical with the contemporary and delighting in the experimental. He wants to change the traditional image of ballet.

“There’s a stigma about ballet,” he explains. “People think they’re going to see a bunch of swans and a hero in white tights, but what we do gets more contemporary. We’re technically adept enough to do Swan Lake if we want to, but we want to introduce something more.”

The introductions don’t stop there. If all goes according to plan and the funding and community support are there, Pech will next year introduce an educational component to the festival. He envisions using the week before the performances to bring in artists and choreographers to teach school students about dance, culminating in a performance.

“We would have morning workshops and afternoon rehearsals, and the students would perform in the festival,” he explains. “It would be great, because dancing isn’t taught in schools. Cheerleading is about as far as it gets. Dancing is such a rich life, but if you aren’t exposed to it early on, you’ll go off and do other things.”

So has Pech seen an increase of dance in Sonoma County recently?

“Not yet,” he replies. “But we’re hoping to turn the tide. I know people want more of the art form up here–but I’m really looking to the community to see what’s possible.”

The Valley of the Moon Festival of the Performing Arts takes place Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 5 and 6, at 7:30 p.m., with a pre-performance reception on Saturday from 6 to 7 p.m. Bartholomew Park Winery, 1000 Vineyard Lane (at the end of Castle Road), Sonoma. Tickets in advance are $30 for adults, $15 for children (12 and under); at the door, $35 for adults, $20 for children. Tickets for the reception, performance, and a chance to meet the performers are $75. For reservations, call 415/392-4400.

From the August 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.