A nearly-dead body, a missing wife, and a gaggle of colorful party goers help kick off Orcutt Community Theater‘s latest production.
The theater group is bringing Neil Simon’s award-winning Rumors to Orcutt, from Jan. 11 through 20, in what they hope will be another attempt to showcase the strength of local talent and their commitment to live theater. Alan Sutterfield, a board member and contributing crew and cast member with the troupe, said Simon’s 1988 play is a perfect fit for them.
Sutterfield said audiences should expect a lot of energy on stage and a lot of comical misunderstandings as the plot moves forward.
“[Simon is] the laugh-meister of Broadway,” Sutterfield said. “It’s going to be pretty darn funny. It’s madcap, as they say.”
The characters in the play include Officer Pudney (Emily Alvarado), Ernie Cusack (David Bathe), Ken Gorman (Brian Brown), Cookie Cusack (Angi Herrick), Lenny Ganz (Brian Kasicki), Chris Gorman (Melody McCormick), Claire Ganz (Annelisa Rheuben), Cassie Cooper, Officer Welch (Sutterfield), and Glenn Cooper (Cody Westbay). Westbay also directed and did the set design for the play, which features crewmembers Tony Caraveo, Shea Turner, Noelle McGhee-Westbay, and Grace Kitchen.
Simon’s farce tells the story of Charley and Myra Brock, a married couple celebrating their 10-year anniversary. Once their friends start arriving for the party, everything quickly turns to comicial madness. Chris and Ken Gorman arrive to discover Charley, the deputy mayor of New York City, has somehow shot himself in the head (but it’s just a flesh wound; don’t worry) and is unconscious. Meanwhile, wife Myra is nowhere to be found. As the rest of the party trickles in, a few partygoers, helped by police officers, do their best to put the pieces together and help Charley avoid a scandal.
“The original [Broadway] production had some pretty heavy duty people in it,” Sutterfield said. “It had a successful run, with 535 performances.”
The 1988 Broadway production was a huge hit for Simon and featured actresses Christine Baranski (who won a Tony award for her performance as Chris Gorman) and Jessica Walter as Claire Ganz. The Orcutt Community Theater hopes it will be yet another production to move them closer to the goal of finding a permanent venue.
Sutterfield, a theater major in college who has a two-man show playing President Theodore Roosevelt, is in his second season with the community theater group.
“I was looking for a way to contribute,” he said. “I worked backstage for a couple of productions and then when this role of Officer Welch came up, I liked it a lot. It’s a short role but he and his fellow officer come in and wrap up the whole thing. … He’s an island of sanity in a sea of frivolity.”
The group chose the play not just for the allure of Simon’s script, but because the material fit the small scale productions the troupe can navigate with its size, Sutterfield explained. With 10 people in the cast and another 10 or more serving as crew members, he said the characters and setting of Rumors fits the theater perfectly.
“We’re playing in a very small house and a very limited budget,” he said. “We thought it would be a good idea … to draw as many people to our new venue as possible.”
That new venue is Klein Dance Arts, thanks to an Orcutt Community Theater board member, Noelle McGhee-Westbay, who is a children’s theater specialist. She helped secure a rehearsal space at first and then the troupe eventually negotiated an affordable rate to host its productions.
But the ultimate goal for members is to get a permanent theater.
“We still don’t have one,” Sutterfield said. “The KDA space we hope will work out and be long term, but it’s still not our space. We don’t own it. Anybody who knows community theater knows that community could not afford market rate in the rental market.”
The Orcutt Community Theater actor and board member said the plan is to stay active and producing plays as long as it takes until the community responds and helps find a permanent space the group can afford.
Up next this season is a production of The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance in February and March, which the troupe held auditions for on Jan. 2. Sutterfield said he and the other board members, who are largely based in Orcutt, hope local audiences will support the organization as it continues to grow and produce work.
“Finding a permanent home is always going to be a first priority,” he said. “We are skating on thin ice until that happens. We realized that when we took on the challenge. Now it’s just a matter of building our audience … It does work, we just have to prove ourselves.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose has spread some rumors about you. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 3-10, 2019.