Copious Notes

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Balagula Theatre opens its first official season Sunday, Sept. 13 with ‘B’ for Beckett (A Night of Samuel Beckett’s Plays). It kicks off a lineup of absurdist, exesstentialist theater at Natasha’s Bistro and Bar, including works by Eugene Ionesco and Jean Paul Sartre.

Read more about Balagula and Studio Players’ season opener, Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest here.

And see an Unexpected Guest slide show here.

SummerFest presents Patti Heying’s production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde July 15-19, 2009, in the Arboretum on Alumni Drive. In this version, Jekyll is played by one actor (Bob Singleton) and Hyde is played by four different actors who interact with Jekyll. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Michael Johnathon is pretty hard on his hero in the opening act of Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau.

We find Henry David Thoreau, as played by Adam Luckey, in his cabin at Walden Pond sounding like the years alone have really, really gotten to him. For a man with nothing on his calendar, he’s almost breathless trying to figure out what to do with himself. When he thinks, “music and art are born at sunrise,” he is torn between whether he needs to write that down or play his flute, thereby creating some musical art. He putters, chatting with his wood pile and snap beans until a blessed moment of self awareness: “Dear God, you’re having conversations with peas and finding it intellectual.”

Johnathan doesn’t shy away from the fact that even today, as Thoreau is now considered a literary giant and the forefather of the environmental movement, his personality and journey can seem a little bit odd and sad. But that acknowledgment and a steady refinement of Thoreau’s ideas through Ralph Waldo Emerson and two other visitors to Thoreau’s cabin raise this script well above two acts of hero worship.

Yes, the play can be a little preachy and preoccupied with Thoreau’s need for a woman. But it and the documentary segments that bookend the new video production are informative about Thoreau and particularly the ways in which he foresaw the impact of modern technological progress on the environment. The video was made last fall, with segments filmed at Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., some Lexington woods, and at performances of the Walden play at the Lexington Opera House last fall.

With supporting performances by Eric Johnson, Anthony Haigh and Jessie Rose Pennington, and solid stage direction from Beth Kirchner and video direction by Doug Smart, the film fulfills a popular environmentally-based slogan: Kentucky Proud. The production will be broadcast on KET and WEKU-FM 88.9 locally and be seen around the country this Earth Day week. The script is available for free download at the Walden play site to anyone who wants to perform it, so long as they register their performance. According to Johnathon, more that 7,000 people or groups have already done that. The program is also available on DVD.

Adam Luckey will star in "This Wonderful Life," a one-man version of "This Wonderful Life." Photo by Mark Cornelison | LexGo.

Actors Guild of Lexington has announced a five-show schedule for the 2009-10 season. It’s a lineup that will import a couple of familiar directors and give one of Lexington’s leading actors the stage all to himself at Christmastime.

• Beguiled Again: The Songs of Rodgers and Hart, music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart; music arrangements by Craig D. Ames; conceived by J. Barry Lewis, Lynnette Barkley, and Craig D. Ames — Peggy Taphorn of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., who directed Quilters and My Way for AGL, returns for a program of tunes by the Broadway duo including Blue Moon and My Funny Valentine. Sept. 10-27.
• The Vertical Hour by David Hare — Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter directs this play about the meeting of two people with divergent views of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Broadway production was directed by Sam Mendes and starred Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy. Oct. 15-Nov. 1.
• This Wonderful Life, by Steve Murray, conceived by Mark Setlock — Adam Luckey will star in this one-man show in which he plays all the characters from the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Bob Singleton directs. Dec. 3-20.
  
• The New Century by Paul Rudnick — Bo List returns from Memphis to direct this fast-paced comedy from the writer of I Hate Hamlet. The characters include a wealthy Jewish matron, a flamboyant public access TV host and a Midwestern scrapbooker/competitive cake decorator. Feb. 11-28.
• What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton — AGL associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale directs this risque, door-slamming comedy about a psychiatrist who tries to seduce his secretary. Somehow, Winston Churchill gets involved.  March 25-April 11.

For the coming season, the shows will run for three weekends on a Thursday through Sunday schedule at the Downtown Arts Center. The past several years, the theatre had been going on four-week runs Friday through Sundays.

In a 2004 photo, Tiffiney Kavanaugh, Adam Luckey, Michelle Czepyha and Rubin Thomas rehearse for Actors Guild's production of My Way, led by Peggy Taphorn. Taphorn is now director of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., where Luckey is playing Hamlet.

Two Actors Guild of Lexington productions from past seasons are getting some road work.

AGL artistic director Richard St. Peter and actor Adam Luckey have been in Sanford, N.C., recently to bring St. Peter’s high-tech production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the stage of the Temple Theatre. The production, with Luckey reprising his performance in the title role, opened Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 25. The Temple’s producing director is Peggy Taphorn, who directed Actors Guild’s productions of My Way in 2004 and Quilters in 2005.

Allie Darden in 2007. Herald-Leader photo by Mark Cornelison.

To the north, Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which received its world premier production at Actors Guild in the Spring of 2005, will be read Monday night at the Blackbird Studio Theatre in New York. Heading to Gotham for the reading is Lexington actor Allie Darden, who will be reprising her role as Brooke and Hampton, as Ben. The play is about a group of old high school friends from Virginia who reunite for a weekend at an Atlantic City hotel. One of the friends has been harboring a secret that threatens the group’s friendship. Filling out the reading’s cast will be several Broadway and television actors.