As a general rule, I don't like three-show weekends.
While some might think that having the chance to go out and see a show every night is a
great luxury, by Sunday, I'm tired and I just would like to enjoy the "day of
rest" and not have to go to yet another show.
However, some 3-show weekends are better than others and
when all three shows are plays I know I enjoy, it's not all that bad.
The weekend started at the Winters Community Theater's
production of Miracle on 34th Street. Winters may be my favorite little
theater. It is "community" and "amateur" in its purest form.
You won't find any superlative actors here, but you'll find some solid performances
and everyone having a great time and doing their best because they love what they are
doing. Also, at Christmas time, they choose shows that can easily incorporate a lot
of little kids and invariably there is one, usually the littlest one, who steals the show,
this production no exception.
They perform in a community center, like a high school
auditorium. The chairs are folding chairs, which are uncomfortable. I don't
know what the set-up for regular nights is, but on opening night, chairs are set around
big tables and everyone gets a dessert (usually cheesecake) and either champagne or punch
before the show. For Christmas themed plays, you usually have the choice of
cheesecake or pumpkin pie.
"Miracle on 34th St." is my favorite Christmas
movie, so it was fun to see it on the stage and yes, there was a little kid who stole the
show. I don't know how old she was--maybe 5? But she was just so excited to be
on stage, and very earnest about doing everything she was suppsed to. You couldn't
take your eyes off of her.
It was quite a different experience going to the Saturday
Show, Mistakes were Made at Capital Stage in Sacramento. If Winters is my
favorite little community theater, Capital Stage is my favorite professional theater.
I also review the Broadway Series in Sacramento, touring Broadway shows, but
Capital Stage is the Little Theater that Could.
They were founded in 1999 and at the time performed on the
riverboat Delta King. I didn't review a production until 2005, when a colleague
recommended that I review Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol, the Dickens classic as
seen through the eyes of Scrooge's deceased partner. At that time, I was only
reviewing shows out of Davis if they had some sort of Davis connection, and the
then-production manager, Peter Mohrmann, was a Davis resident. It was a shakey
connection at best, but the show was outstanding and after that first production, I was
allowed to continue reviewing Capital Stage shows.
After many years on the riverboat, they finally built their
own theater in midtown Sacramento, which opened last year.
I can't think of a bad show I have seen there, and I love
the ambience and the people involved. I have done a few feature articles about some
of the upcoming shows, one of which was an interview with actress Katie Rubin, whom I
first interviewed when she was a student at UC Davis. She has gone on to do amazing
things and has also become one of Marta's best friends as well, which is nice.
For several years at Christmas time Capital Stage presented
Every Christmas Story Ever Told, a very funny show that incorporates, well, every
Christmas story and song you've known from your childhood. In the incestuous ways
these show biz things often go, my favorite actor in that show turns out to be someone who
is the cousin of someone in the Lamplighters, and, I learned recently, someone I probably
saw in a production of Song of Norway in San Francisco back in the 1950s, when he
was making his stage debut with his mother, who starred in that production.
This year they decided not to do a Christmas-themed show,
but instead presented Mistakes Were Made, a very funny, and surprisingly poignant
one-man show starring Eric Wheeler (whom I knew from Every Christmas Story Ever Told,
among other shows). I very much enjoyed the show, which featured a puppet fish named
Dolores who was featured prominently in the action.
The final show of the weekend was A Christmas Carol
at Davis Musical Theater Company (DMTC). I think one of the reasons I didn't mind
the three show weekend this time is that DMTC is in our own back yard, so it didn't
involve a schelp a 20-40 minute drive to get to the theater.
I love A Christmas Carol. My first
introduction to it came one Christmas when I was in grammar school and my mother decided
to read it to Karen and me, a chapter a night. I had hoped it would become a family
tradition, but she didn't do it again. I have since seen countless movie, stage and TV
adaptations, including one with Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit and Scrooge McDuck as, of
course, Scrooge, and the version by the Muppets as well.
I was eager to see this version, which had been
done on TV with Kelsey Grammar as Scrooge, but which I had not seen before. I have
to admit to being taken aback and not liking a lot of the incongruous bits at all
(scantily clad Rockettes in Victorian London?) until I got home and looked up previous
productions and realized that this had been a Christmas staple in New York, produced by
Radio City and presented at Madison Square Garden for more than 10 years. Of course
you're going to have Rockettes in Victorian London, then. There were other elements
in this production that I thought might have been poor directorial decisions and a few
voices that should not have had principal roles, but with holly in my heart, I mostly
chose the "if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all" rule I
learned long ago from Thumper in Bambi and did not mention those whose
performance did not live up to par. Fortunately Scrooge, played by our friend Steve
Isaacson, was excellent, as I knew he would be. That goes a long way toward carrying
any version of A Christmas Carol.
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