Ditzy knights seeking a divine supper dish and a not-as-ditzy-as she-looks law student in search of love and respect open on downtown Little Rock stages this weekend.
It’s a pair of musicals that were big hits on Broadway and on tour and have only very recently become available for amateurs.
The most recent national tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot ended in April, and The Weekend Theater’s production, one of the first by a nonprofessional company, opens at 8 p.m. Friday at the theater, West Seventh and Chester streets.
Meanwhile, Community Theatre of Little Rock is opening what is apparently Arkansas’ first non-professional production of Legally Blonde: The Musical, also on Friday, at 7:30 p.m. at The Public Theatre, 616 Center St., Little Rock.
SPAMALOT
Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle “lovingly ripped off” the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail and other Monty Python movies and TV shows to create Spamalot. He also wrote the music and the lyrics with John Du Prez.
The Broadway production, which premiered in 2005, won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
King Arthur (Josh Sigal) and his faithful steed Patsy (David Weatherly) are on a quest for the vessel Jesus used at the Last Supper; along the way, he picks up various Knights of the Round Table - Sir Bedevere (Frank Butler), Sir Lancelot (Drew Ellis), Sir Robin (Michael Goodbar) and Sir Galahad (Jeremiah Herman).
They encounter off-the wall characters, including the Lady of the Lake (Erin Murphy Martinez), Not-Dead Fred (Brian Chambers), Tim the Enchanter (Byron Taylor), French taunters, dancing divas, a killer rabbit and the Knights who say “Ni!” and demand a tribute of shrubbery. The ensemble includes Trent Blankenship, Allison Burks, Logan Duck, Augusta Fitzgerald, Madison Hannahs, Shelby Kirby, Emily McDow, Bobbi Monroe, Jimmy Walker and Noah Whitney.
The last national tour of the show closed in mid-April (just a couple of weeks after a two-day run at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Music Hall) and the production rights became available shortly thereafter.
“We didn’t even know that,” says director John Haman. “We just knew, hey, it’s available. It’s something that was in the hopper - ‘John wants to do this some day.’
“I had very short notice to put together the show and decide if I wanted to do it, so I spent 24 hours watching stuff on the Internet, and said, yes, I did. Allison [Weekend Theater executive director Allison Pace] called and they said yes.”
Haman, a veteran actor and director, admits it’s a massive undertaking, especially since he has never directed a musical before.
“It’s one of those things that you get rolling with it, and you say, ‘Wow, if I had known what I was in for, maybe I would have done Company or something.’
“It’s my first musical, and it’s huge. It’s 19 people, which isn’t too bad, but it’s a massive amount of dance and huge amount of songs and technical stuff. If you were being rational about it, you wouldn’t pick this as your first musical.
“However, because I put together a really unique team of people who know what they’re doing, we’ve been able to delegate a lot and we’ve been able to get it done as a team and we’re on track.”
That team includes music director Lori Isner and choreographer Moriah Patterson, whom Haman describes as “a secret weapon.”
“I give about 60 percent credit to Moriah as a choreographer, with an amazing work plan and a way to teach quickly. She planned it out between doing two [other] shows, and did an intense dance-a-thon, and we had it all installed by last Saturday [June 29], so now it’s just tweaking.
“We’re having a lot of fun with it. Like anything else, it’s work, and being comedy, it’s extra work. But we’re having a lot of fun in rehearsals. You see people coming out from backstage to watch scenes that they haven’t seen yet.The material is light and funny enough that everybody seems to be having a good time - most of the time.”
After Friday’s 8 p.m. opening, Spamalot runs at 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday through July 28. A few “naughty bits” might make the show inappropriate for children under 10. Tickets are $20, $16 for students and senior citizens 65 and older, available online at weekendtheater.org. For more information only, call (501) 374-3761.
LEGALLY BLONDE
Legally Blonde (music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin, book by Heather Hach) is also based on a movie, or rather movies, by the same title, and its sequel.
Elle Woods (Courtney Speyer) charms her way into Harvard Law School in pursuit of the boyfriend who dumped her, and ends up proving herself to him and the world.
Community Theatre tracked down the rights about mid-May 2012, “prior to opening Hairspray last summer,” says producer Chris Boggs.
Co-director Jerry Woods says this is the first Arkansas-based production of the show.
“The tour didn’t come here,” says Woods, who is co-directing the show with Jo Murry, although it did hit stages in Memphis, where Woods saw it, and Fayetteville in 2009 and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in 2011.
Woods, making his Community Theatre directing debut, is no stranger to the company. When he moved back to Little Rock after about 20 years in St. Louis three years ago, he walked into an audition for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and got a lead role.
Since then he has acted in (seven or eight supporting roles in Hairspray last summer), stage-managed (The Great American Trailer Park Musical and 12 Angry Men) and produced several CTLR shows. “This is kind of the next step,” he says.
In addition to being a lifelong fan of musicals, stage and screen, Woods also has a long-standing familiarity - one might be tempted to say “obsession” - with Legally Blonde, starting with reading the script before the show even reached Broadway.
“One of the producers was Fox Theatricals out of St. Louis,” he says, and a friend who worked there, knowing Woods’ interest in musicals, shunted him the “book.”
“I saw the movie, I saw the show on its national tour,” he says, and he also saw it on MTV, where it aired during its Broadway run. He has also tracked down all the YouTube videos involving the show.
When the Community Theatre board decided last spring to do the show, “I wanted to be involved in any way possible,” he says.
Murry is also the show’s musical director; Woods says he has been handling the dialogue, the staging and the musical numbers that don’t require choreography (the ones that do, he says, have been the responsibility of Brandon Nichols, who is also a member of the company).
There’s a cast of nearly 30, the crew and a four-piece band, “a huge undertaking,” Woods admits. “A straight play doesn’t have the same difficulty.” Staging challenges include having no wings and no fly space at the black box Public Theatre, but the set design he, Murry and the production team finally settled on has two levels, which helps.
The supporting cast: Miki Thompson plays Serena, with Gabi Baltzley as Margot, Sara Adams as Pilar, Adam Smith as Emmett Forrest, Courtney Fose as Paulette Bonafonte, Tom Crone as Professor Callahan and Doug Hammon as Warner Huntington III.
Rachel Hampton, Elizabeth Hoofman, Beth Ross, Kyle Wigginton, Monika Rodgers and Chuck Massey round out the principals; the ensemble includes Grace Allard, Rachel Brown, Georgeann Burbank, Kelley Gillis, Walter Dodd, Charles Friedman, Anthony Gerard, Koty Mansfield, Anthony McBride, Ryan Whitfield and Brandon Nichols.
Shows continue at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 19-20 and 26-27 and 2 p.m. Sunday, July 21 and 28. Regular admission is $16, $14 for military, students and senior citizens 65 and over, free for kids under 6. Bring a pair of gently used running shoes and get $1 off. Pay what you can for the “Pocket Preview” (open to-the-public dress rehearsal) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
Call (501) 410-2283 (ACT3) or visit the website, ctlr-act. org.
Style, Pages 29 on 07/09/2013