Oakenboard Theatrefest Festival's 2012-2014 Season

Starting off with a bang, Oakenboard Theatrefest has decided to save a lot of money by letting go of the majority of its technical staff. This leaves two people in the shop: the Technical Director and the Assistant Technical Director. Not enough people to build the sets (as originally designed) for the season, which includes the following shows:

ANNIE
A FLEA IN HER EAR
THE MUSIC MAN
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
THE PRODUCERS
THE MOUSETRAP
OKLAHOMA
THE CIDER HOUSE RULES

Yes, there is actually a stage adaptation of The Cider House Rules, and it is superb. I would like very much to direct it. I spoke to The Powers That Be at OTF about directing it, and of course Mitchellson Mitchellson immediately called his friend Plato Silmarillion with a wonderful idea: Plato should direct The Cider House Rules and set it in a post-apocalyptic downtown Los Angeles. I say, "immediately," when I probably mean something more like, "He picked up the phone and started dialing before my words had finished echoing in the shop." We weren't in the shop, we were in his office; maintenance crews had been repairing a leak sometime in 2009 when they found dry rot and removed the ceiling from his office, which is in a loft in the shop. Owing to the peculiar accoustics of the building, every word uttered in Mitchellson Mitchellson's office has been completely audible everywhere in the shop ever since. For the record, maintenance has no record of the leak repair request, the dry rot or the ceiling; they did such an excellent job of removing it that now they question whether it was ever there to begin with.

Fortunately or un-, depending on the situation, Mitchellson Mitchellson frequently forgets that he has no ceiling and in closed-door meetings with colleagues or friends or both, he is in the habit of making grand pronouncements about this or that member of the company, the crew, the staff or the Administration. "Oh, that hag -- she looks like the Crypt Keeper was caught masturbating in hell," is the most recent mystifying cloud of bombast to come floating down from his aerie. I don't understand it any more than I understand his decision to give Cider House to Plato. But that's what Mitchellson Mitchellson does: he hires his friends. In the case of Plato, Mitchellson Mitchellson hires a friend who then hires his own friends and the show turns out to be not-very-good. But Mitchellson Mitchellson goes on hiring Plato and just can't seem to figure out why a) few people flock to Plato's auditions and, b) the shows don't make any money.

The simple fact is that in this day and age, nobody except recent SF State grads will go to a play set in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Walking Dead on TV may herald the beginning of the end of America's current obsession with road sagas (though frankly I love them and can't get enough), and why should anyone pay good money to sit through two boring hours of what they could see done better in the comfort of their own homes? Once family and friends have seen one performance, I predict near-empty houses except for matinees -- which will empty during intermission when Plato's gratuitous rape scene upsets the blue hairs.

Plato always puts a rape scene in his shows. He's notorious for a production of A Christmas Carol in which he insisted on playing Marley's ghost. He told everyone they must come see his show, that he was "ripping the pants off of" Charles Dickens (?) and that his interpretation of Jacob Marley was "a revelatory tour de force." Revelatory indeed: when Marley's ghost appeared, it was Plato leaping onstage from down left in a deerstalker cloak, wearing a rather accurate and expensive rotting-face mummy mask, shouting his lines into a wireless handheld microphone. Because the mummy wrappings covered his mouth, and because the sound designer had followed Plato's instructions to the letter, the audience was treated to something that sounded like this:

MARLEY

EEMMMMEEENEEEMMMOHHHH SSCHOOOOOOOOOOOOSHJ!

SCROOGE

... Marley, can that be you -- ?

MARLEY

MMMMOOOOOHHHH MOOOHHH FOOO MOOOOHHHH HOOOHHMMM FOOOHHM FWWOOOM FWOM MMMMMEEEEEEEE!!!!!

At which point, Plato as Marley's ghost "raped" Ebeneezer Scrooge. I have to use a lot of quotes around words when describing Plato's "work" because none of it ever seems to fulfill his unfortunate predictions. His oversize deerstalker cloak shielded anything he did to hapless old Scrooge, and the whole thing looked as though Jacob Marley had become, in the afterlife, a remarkably enthusiastic mummified Chiropractor.

Honestly, I wish you could have seen it (stoned), because I don't know if I could couldn't make it any clearer if I were to strap you down (drunk) to watch the bootleg Plato insisted I take -- all furtive and sly like I Spy -- because "they" were trying to "shut [him] down" because of his "dangerous vision." The only dangerous vision I had seen was the clear fact that he was wearing neither glasses nor contacts in the performance I attended, and he stumbled, legally blind, into the middle of young Ebeneezer's love duet with, what's her name, Elizabeth? Doesn't matter, I think Plato changed her name to Brittney. Anyway, he literally opened a door and walked onstage, peering about at the bright lights, confused, then tripped on a bench and tackled Brittney, who, I forgot to mention, spoke with an incredibly thick and inaccurate Cockney dialect. Plato has some inner ear issues, and as he was still wearing his ghoul makeup, several children in the audience began screaming when the zombie man got the nice princess lady. While Marley's accosting of Scrooge had just been weird and mildly discomfiting, this thing with Brittney was somewhat more disturbing. It appeared that Plato could not get up, and every time he tried to, he did so by latching onto Brittney's bodice and attempting to hoist himself to his feet. Brittney, I should have mentioned earlier, had been costumed in something left over from Oakenboard's Jeckyll and Hyde of 2001: a bodice two sizes too large that made her look ripe for disembowelment in Whitechapel. Pulling just a little too hard on said bodice, Plato dislodged the water-filled condoms Brittney was using to fill out what the bodice left wanting. The condoms began to slide out the the bottom of the bodice, in the front, looking for all the world as though this inappropriately Sherlockian zombie was in fact pulling out her innards. Until they burst, splattering Plato and the actors with water. And the bodice fell open. Regretful dads had to carry inconsolable kids to the car, ticket refunds were refused utterly and Plato made a very snarky apology to the audience at the end of the show.

He also redoubled his efforts as Marley's ghost and screamed so loud in the role that he won a Shelley for Best Supporting Actor that year. Plato is also on the Shelley Committee.

I'll share more as I hear it.

Until then, O Thousands of Worshipful Readers