Copious Notes

Six veteran Lexington musical theater performers team up with director Stephen Currens for Beguiled Again, a musical revue of the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It plays Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at the Downtown Arts Center. We caught up with the cast at a rehearsal Sept. 22. The lights and set weren’t quite together, but we got a good idea what it’s going to look like.

Cameron Perry, left, Laura Blake and Michelle Czepyha rehearse a scene from Actors Guild of Lexington's production of "The Fantasticks" at Lorillard Lofts. Photos by Matt Goins.

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Read our review of The Fantasticks.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post to additional Fantasticks rehearsal photos by Matt Goins.

Julieanne Pogue found inspiration for her new production of The Fantasticks where most people find paint and fertilizer: Lowe’s.

“I’ve done The Fantasticks several times before, and almost always in a traditional production, just on a platform, with drapes,” Pogue said before a Monday night rehearsal of the classic musical. “In thinking about what I wanted to do with it, there were a number of things that appealed to me about doing it on levels.”

Laura Blake, left, Gina Scott-Lynaugh, John Lynaugh and Carmen Geraci rehearse Actors Guild of Lexington's production of "The Fantasticks."

The numerous characters and stories and secrets can make a production on a traditional stage a little daunting because it limits the number of ways a director can present scenes.

“So one day I was driving past Lowe’s, and I saw this playset, and I said, ‘Huh,’” Pogue recalls. “I took photos from all sides, and I said, I want to do The Fantasticks on that. I hadn’t been given directorship of the show, yet. But I said, ‘One day I want to do The Fantasticks on that, because I could see entrances down the slide with the mute, quick into the fray, into the middle of stuff. I could see Luisa swinging. It just kept exciting me, and finally I said, ‘Rick, I have an idea for a show,’” Pogue says, referring to Actors Guild of Lexington’s artistic director, Richard St. Peter.

Now, Pogue sits in the AGL rehearsal studio in Lorillard Lofts off Leestown Road with a big wooden jungle gym that looks like it should be giving a 5-year-old a workout.

But it’s Pogue’s cast that’s climbing all over the theatrical playground, Cameron Perry as Matt talking about how mature he is while standing in the treehouse, Laura Blake as the mute woman swooping into scenes on the slide and Michelle Czepyha as Louisa, slowly swinging with a forlorn look on her face during the song Try to Remember.

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