Crazy For You is a 1992 update of the 1930 Gershwin musical Girl Crazy. In the desert town of Dead Rock, Polly Baker is the proprietor of a has-been theater that's about to be repossessed by the bank. Bobby Childs is the New York bank owner's henpecked son, sent to Dead Rock to close the deal. When Bobby's background comes between his and Polly's budding romance, can his devious plan win back both the theater and the girl?

It's a lighthearted and funny story that the Mac-Haydn Theatre of upstate New York has smartly headlined with Colin Pritchard and Emily Thompson as Bobby and Polly. These two alumni of the theater's 2007 season, where they played Singin' in the Rain's Cosmo Brown and Lina Lamont, have been reunited for this one show. Each brings a natural enthusiasm for the stage and each other. Mr. Pritchard is as ebullient as ever, sweating as he performs his usual madcap antics involving a variety of props, costumes, and spontaneous dances. Ms. Thompson has a magnificent voice that, after being submerged in her previous performance as Lina Lamont, is finally unleashed to marvelous effect. With each star complementing the other's strengths, they are so obviously happy together.

Crazy For You is clever enough to give the rest of the performers their moments in the spotlight, resulting in a well-rounded cast of characters. Joe Bettles' Lank Hawkins is an excellent foil for his more quick-witted company, resulting in some memorable one-liners. Ben Jacoby is the eccentric diva of a director who is humbled when he realizes his infatuation for Tess (Tara Tagliaferro) has become a potential love lost. And assistant director Karla Shook doubles as the irate Irene Roth, a shrew of a fiancee who is not so manipulative as to be unlikeable.

But the scenes that have the audience holding its breath are the ones that employ the entire company. When you first see the Mac-Haydn's performance space, you might think it a constraint for being so small — but director and choreographer Tralen Doler sees it as an opportunity. Every cowboy and showgirl that can squeeze into Dead Rock collaborates for show-stopping numbers, especially at the end of each act. Environmental props, from lassos to pickaxes, are expertly handled to maneuver the stage and the dancers into unique configurations and routines. All the numbers, be they group or solo, are sung with the right amount of joy, as in "I Got Rhythm" and "Slap That Bass", or longing, as in "Embraceable You" and "Someone to Watch Over Me".

A note about the Mac-Haydn: the audience is seated around three-quarters of the round stage, and though the actors do their best to play to each audience member, the most consistent view is found in the seats along the aisle between sections 3 and 4.

The Mac-Haydn has never let me down, nor has the duo of Ms. Thompson and Mr. Pritchard; after seeing them be underutilized in the chorus of this spring's production of 42nd Street, it's a pleasure to have them back where they belong, center stage. As I had the opportunity to tell Mr. Pritchard after the show: "I can't see you two together and not give you a standing ovation." There are theatrical performances edgier or more daring than Crazy For You, but few will make you feel as happy on a Saturday night. Who could ask for anything more? If you can, catch this show in its remaining weekend, or its leading lady starring in her next show, opening in September. (Mr. Pritchard's next show is TBD)

[All images courtesy Mac-Haydn Theatre.]

Scientific American's Science Talk podcast recently attended a presentation by five surviving scientists who were assigned to Los Alamos. Their musings are more anecdotal than introspective, which disappointed me, as I would've preferred the historical gathering be used to preserve insights of greater import. But not being a history buff, I may've overlooked earlier opportunities these figures had to expound on such matters.

A less direct but more dramatic interpretation of their works has recently been performed as the opera Doctor Atomic. Not a lighthearted musical, this production is a serious and fully sung artistic rendition of the month leading up to July 15th, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was detonated in what was known as the Trinity test. The full three-and-a-half-hour performance has concluded its run at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is currently playing at the London Coliseum through March 20th. A filmed recording of the live production aired on PBS in December and will likely be available on home video before too long. Here's a trailer:

Taken as a dramatic narrative, I'm surprised by how good a fit this story is to this medium. As the Scientific American host put it, "… this moment in history is really so suitable for an opera because it's almost… Wagnerian in this intent… These people are trying to work together to create this doomsday weapon. It's almost like a fictional story." I hope the opera does these men justice, and I look forward to seeing and judging it for myself. In the meantime, the only related DVD release thus far is Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic. Check it out, as well as the aforementioned podcast, which also interviews Patricia Steiner, a mezzo-soprano with the Metropolitan Opera Chorus who performed in the domestic production.

I experience few of those challenges in my own avocation as a stage actor. Most of my work is in musicals like Brigadoon, or comedies such as Run For Your Wife!. But a good actor is a diverse one, and I try to reflect that in a portfolio that includes other media as well. I've worked on the silver screen before, but only as an extra, a role that's easy to miss. Recently, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to star in a commercial.

Davis Advertising of Worcester, Mass., recently wanted to create a short video for digital distribution in online and media press kits. They sent out some emails, which eventually circulated to a friend with whom I'd been in the chorus of the musical Camelot five years ago. When he saw that they were looking for a "clean-cut, Richie Cunningham type", he immediately thought of me — proving it's not who you know, but who knows you. A few emails with the advertising company and an agreement to shave my beard later, and I had the part.

Working with just two men behind the camera and only one in front of it proved a much more enjoyable experience than being a film extra. We were able to shoot multiple takes, change angles, and improve and improvise rapidly. I've been told that I am a good physical actor (think Donald O'Connor in Singin' in the Rain), and the format of this commercial suited that strength; I had all my lines down in no time flat! An hour of shooting and we were done — and a month later, the following commercial was unveiled:

(For those curious, the stock footage comes from the PSA "Are You Ready for Marriage?". Hat tip to Kahm!)

Thanks again to Jeff at Davis Advertising and Clyde from Sterling Community Theater for this, my first-ever commercial. It was a great experience and a new one to put on my theatrical résumé. I look forward to doing more such work!

All these shows were produced by local community theaters, which offered stunning quality for a vastly more affordable price than Broadway charges. And with Broadway stagehands currently on strike, leaving Broadway dark, community theater is the only alternative for many of us who would otherwise be making an expensive holiday trek to the big city. Fortunately, it is an abundant and enjoyable alternative, with a full dissertation of the reasons why after the jump.

Community theater was a mainstream attraction until the inventions of film and television allowed masses of people to share common experiences across time and space. Nowadays, potential audiences sequester themselves at home with a DVD, equating big budgets and big names with quality (Titanic), despite repeated examples to the contrary (Catwoman).

Fortunately, some film fans are beginning to poke their heads out of their darkened home theaters and see the light. "Within the last few years, there has been a definite resurgence, state-wide in community theater," says Kevin Baldwin, professor of theater at Anna Maria College and artistic director of K&K Productions, a community theater group. And with live theater having spawned many mass-consumer successes, such as The Producers, Phantom of the Opera, and Chicago, community theater is enjoying the free publicity and the interest of an audience curious in these shows' roots. (The accessibility of the Internet as a medium of publicity hasn't hurt, either.)

Almost universally, theatergoers who invest their entertainment dollars in community theater are receiving a unique and more personable experience. They know their money is not going to a conglomerate that associates with fast food chains, or to a company that counts its gross income in the millions. They don't need to donate thousands to feel a sense of ownership. The faces of community theater are not those of businessmen, but of your neighbors.

It's that sense of community that makes the first half of "community theater" more than just a restrictive adjective. Every person who associates with community theater does so not as a labor not of profit, but of love. The actors associate with their audience not to seek praise or to sell autographs, but because they are not above that audience. A lead in one show may be a chorus member, usher, or audience member of another a month later. They act not for the fame or fortune or scale that Hollywood and Broadway offer; they act for the sheer joy of the experience, for the chance to entertain their peers, and for the opportunity to expand their horizons.

Do not mistake the lack of stars for lack of talent. While your ticket may not get you to see Robin Williams or Ben Affleck, such fame as is theirs is derived from being well-known. A theatergoer, once initiated to the community theater scene, will quickly grow to recognize the names and faces of the people responsible for each production. The talents of local actors such as Doug Ingalls, David Ludt, and Mark Patrick become easily recognizable and soon draw audience members familiar with them.

Naysayers who claim if these actors were good enough, they'd be on film or Broadway, are overlooking many variables. Celebrities are created by a variety of factors beyond talent, among them physicality and, to a large degree, luck: Sarah Michelle Gellar's career was launched when she was four years old by being in a Burger King at the same time as a talent scout. Such big-name actors must balance their passion for the art with the need for work to maintain their lifestyle. Local actors pursue community theater as an avocation and experience no financial dilution; their only payment is a job well done, which makes them that more vested in providing you with that experience.

These actors perform each production live, untiringly reinventing themselves and their characters each night. With a live performance, every night is guaranteed to be unique as the actors introduce an ad-lib, experience a moment of inspiration, or interact with the audience. Some shows capitalize on this variability; take Clue, which, like the board game, has hundreds of different endings.

Live performances also mean live stunts and special effects. Industrial Light and Magic won't contribute their lasers to a community theater production, but neither will a computer stand in for a stuntman. When actor Charles Ross performs all three of George Lucas' original Star Wars films in one hour, by himself, you know he's not getting second chances or extra takes. It's a single, unedited cut — which makes it all the more awe-inspiring.

Live performances are also ephemeral by nature: there is no rolling camera preserving the event for future fundraising through sales and rentals. The limited occasion and context in which to see a theatrical production creates a more meaningful opportunity for social networking. Everyone knows that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father (sorry — spoiler warnings expire after thirty years). But finding someone who has seen Arsenic and Old Lace creates a rarer and more intimate bond. If it is the same production, similar memories can be swapped; if a different production — something impossible with Hollywood copyrights — comparisons and contrasts can be drawn. This network can be established more comfortably than in movie or Broadway theaters, which hold hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and which evacuate the theater of its clientele as quickly as needed to fill it with a fresh batch. A community theater is smaller, usually with only one production per day. Such a comfortable atmosphere encourages audience members to turn to each other and share comments and critiques. Psychologists have proven that the ability for groups to integrate diminishes beyond 150 people. The seating capacity of Calliope Productions, a typical community theater: 150. Coincidence?

The limited run of every show makes each show more precious, but without necessarily translating to restricted choices. The opening of Showcase Cinemas North may've closed their other branches in Webster Square and White City, but no such competition has driven community theater out of business. To the contrary: within a half-hour's drive from Worcester exist more than a dozen community theaters. Aggregate web sites like NETheater411.com are as effective at listing all local shows and times as film sites like MovieFone.com. Too many productions occur simultaneously for any one person to absorb them all. What a wonderful dilemma!

All this local benefit is made possible at an affordable ticket price. Movie ticket prices range from $8 to $16, depending on the theater; for Broadway, the scale is $32 to several hundred, varying within each theater merely by seat. Most community theaters do not stratify their audience members, instead favoring a first-come, first-served basis. To get a front-row seat on opening night and meet the actors afterward, if not priceless, would certainly cost more than what community theaters ask.

Hollywood and Broadway are integral venues in a trinity of performance media. It's time we acknowledge — and benefit from — the curtain that's still up on their progenitor.

Gladwell, Malcom. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Back Bay Books, 2002.

The Mac-Haydn Theatre of Chatham, NY, performs summer stock shows in theater-in-the-round format. The stage is octagonal, with the north side featuring stairs ascending to backstage, and aisles for audience and cast use to the east, west, and south. I was seated in the front row in a seat along the south aisle, giving me a direct view of this classic story of lucky star-crossed lovers at a studio about to break into talkies.

Though I had a perfect sightline, I can't imagine there were any bad seats of a stage so effectively used. Theater-in-the-round is often considered a challenging (and limiting) atmosphere, but the cast took full advantage of the opportunity to play to all sides. Rather than parade across a standard stage like a boring stock ticker, the performers moved laterally and vertically, working with sets that played off these possibilities, and circling each other in impressive dance numbers.

The most astounding interplay of dance and stage was the first act closing with the iconic dance in the rain, which I cannot imagine having been possible in any other theater configuration. In the scene's preceding blackout, the stage's perimeter opened to reveal gutters, and an ominous peal of thunder cued the front row theatergoers to don their supplied raincoats. Before we knew it, a full-fledged rain storm was in effect, with the gutters doubling as puddles for Lockwood to gleefully splash through. He sang, danced, hopped, and swung from the lamppost which to see live was more memorable than anything Gene Kelly had ever impressed upon me.

Though Don Lockwood and Kathy Selden were the stars, Cosmo Brown and Lina Lamont were their equals in enthusiastic performances. Colin Pritchard played Cosmo with a certain manic quality necessary to tolerate the studio shenanigans his character must endure. In most any scene between him and Andrew Chartier as Lockwood, Cosmo came across as the driving force, providing a crazed energy that unfortunately did not match the choreography in his big scene, "Make 'Em Laugh". Though Donald O'Connor's aerobics would not lend themselves to the live stage, the substitutes Pritchard was given fell flat, such as a nose-biting rubber chicken, a valkyrie's helmet and wig, and other props. But he played these scenes with the same athleticism he lent more satisfying tap numbers, such as the comical "Moses", making for an overall excellent performance.

Emily Thompson as Lina Lamont portrayed the dim-witted shrew with gusto and glee. Her shrill voice, flat attempts at sophistication, and utter unawareness made for a completely unsympathetic yet entirely enjoyable villainess. My only lament for Lamont, played by a former Ado Annie, is that she went through this fantastic production in its only non-singing role. But she used her several scenes to play off others, deliver victim-mentality soliloquies, and take a great big custard pie in the face — in Cosmo's own words, a formula for success.

Thompson, Kelly Shook as Kathy Selden, and the rest of the female cast showcased stunning costumes that did not steal the scenes but instead accentuated the performers, whether they were delicious candy cuties or elaborate Elizabethan ladies. The men complemented their counterparts with smart sweater vests and trim tuxedos.

Most of the film's classic tunes were present, from the Romeo-and-Juliet setting of "You Were Meant For Me" to the red-eyed "Good Morning". "All I Do Is Dream Of You" appeared to have been replaced with "You Stepped Out of a Dream". In all, the soloists were smooth and the ensemble blended well.

The one and only time I saw the movie Singin' in the Rain a decade ago prompted me to buy the soundtrack CD, but the story itself left me wondering how the film had garnered such accolades. Perhaps I needed the past ten years to expand my musical vocabulary and create a context for these experiences, as the performance Mac-Haydn gave me this weekend was phenomenal.

[All images courtesy Mac-Haydn Theatre.]

I have a love-hate relationship with the Bard — he almost kept me from graduating from high school — but I find his works more palatable when correlated with my preferred media of musical and film. Engaging in five community theater productions a year, I enjoyed my most recent experience participating in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate — a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. (But I've not seen the more modern, less musical adaptation of his classic tale, that being Ten Things I Hate About You.)

I extended this penchant for connections and adaptations a few years ago, when I took a remedial college course on Shakespeare and his work. The professor offered us a number of topics on which to write our term paper, but none of them were about Hamlet. Having learned the prince's famous monologue from watching Johnny Carson, I noticed three movies take their titles from the soliloquy: To Be or Not to Be; What Dreams May Come; and The Undiscovered Country (Star Trek VI). I focused on one and produced a paper comparing Hamlet to Jack Benny's role in his 1942 comedy (not Mel Brooks' 1983 remake). The paper, entitled "Your Country or Your Life", was fun to write and even more fun to present — with selected clips from the film — at a regional Shakespeare conference.

So I guess my qualm isn't with the material, but with the presentation. Put it in a more popular, easily consumable format, and I'll happily bear witness to the staying power of the Bard. But as originally written? Give me The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) anyday.

The film is creatively framed as a dying Cole Porter viewing his life as a musical, thus explaining his company's proclivity for breaking into song and dance. Though these numbers are subdued — despite Porter's work is laced throughout the film, I would not call it a musical — they are certainly fiction. What of the story is fact, I am unsure. Surely the highlights of the story are true: his time in Europe writing musicals, his success in Hollywood, his painful, later years. The movie, like my theatrical career thus far, begins with Anything Goes and ends with Kiss Me, Kate.

But the focus of the film is not Porter's music, but his relationships. Porter, despite being homosexual (or perhaps bisexual), married Linda Thomas, with the movie playing out their meeting, mutual understanding, marriage, and tribulations. Watching De-Lovely made me think not about Porter, but about the nature of relationships. Can two people be together yet freely love others — what I believe is called "polyamorous"? Do relationships need formal agreements, or delineations of acceptable and unacceptable behavior? Is that which is hidden acceptable, and the flaunted not? De-Lovely is an interesting case study of situations I have also encountered personally.

In Porter's life, though, they seemed a bit dull. The film goes through cycles: Porter writes a show, meets a man, and his wife pulls him away. Like Brokeback Mountain, I just found it stretched out, both in plot and in individual scenes. I can imagine some people crying at the ending, but by the time it arrived, it just didn't hold much significance for me.

Fortunately, the music and acting were great. Kevin Kline — himself a musical actor, having starred in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (a play, if not a role, Mr. Kline and I share) — is neither as emotional or over-the-top as he was in the fantastic Life as a House or hilarious A Fish Called Wanda, but he does play Porter subtley and well. The brilliant smile and questing eyes of Ensign Lefler — that is, Ashley Judd — make for an absolutely captivating female lead.

I suppose this film was tragic, as I expected, but not to the depth I'd heard it delved. Whether or not Kiss Me, Kate was one of Cole Porter's better works, I am looking forward to another op'nin', another show tonight.

I witnessed that gulf this weekend, when I saw a live theater version of the 1973 film The Sting. Having recently seen and enjoyed this classic film starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman as con artists, I was looking forward to seeing a fresh performance.

There were a few variations on the original script that I didn't expect. Some added to the experience, such as the story being framed as the flashback of an older woman. Others detracted, such as the two handkerchiefs Johnny Hooker switched in the opening con being different colors… talk about insulting the audience!

Such changes were minor compared to two shadows cast by the film, though. The play's impact and tension were diminished by my recent memories of the movie; what had originally surprised me was, of course, predictable the second time around. But most noticeable was the absence of Robert Redford and Paul Newman. In that respect, I cannot fault the actors who adopted those icons' roles for a weekend performance. I instead fault whoever conceived the notion that The Sting's script could stand apart from the actors who made it famous. I perhaps also fault myself for being unable to separate the two; surely I do community actors a disservice for holding them up to the standards of Hollywood, and myself the disservice of being unable to appreciate what those actors are offering.

A few years ago, I saw the play Wit performed at Harvard Law School. It was done well, but even given the different medium, it's hard to accept one storyteller's ability as equal or superior to Emma Thompson's. The caveat here is that Wit is a play adapted to film, not vice versa. So perhaps my prejudice is to accept whatever version I saw first as definitive.

Surely the concept of films performed live is not itself flawed. The flood of Hollywood scripts being adapted to Broadway musicals — The Producers, Spamalot, The Princess Bride — suggests that films can make the transition to live theater. But the three plays I listed underwent vast rewriting, expansion, and adaption to become musicals, something they previously were not. The end product was not an old experience in a new setting, but an entirely new experience altogether.

Through no fault of its performers, The Sting was not similarly invigorated, and in transitioning to community theater, sadly lost its prick.