If the audience’s reaction to the first performance of the Lompoc Civic Theatre’s (LCT) current production is any indication, there’s something special about the volunteer theater group’s take on Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones’ musical I Do! I Do! Volunteer actors Lea Schultz and David Gaertig gave such life to subjects of the show, married couple Agnes and Michael respectively, that the opening night performance closed with a standing ovation, explained LCT director Patricia Roby.
“It went swimmingly, it was just beautiful,” she said. “Our cast of two, they just slipped right into their roles; they were funny at all the right places, emotional at all the right places. The crowd loved it, and they couldn’t be happier.”
I Do! I Do! is a musical that follows the life of a married couple from their wedding night all the way into their golden years. The Lompoc Civic is producing the play thanks to a special arrangement with Music Theatre International, which owns the license for the play updated from its original 1966, Tony Award-winning script.
The LCT dinner theater production—which opened April 25 and plays every other Saturday through the first week of June—is the first musical the group has attempted in a number of years. Musical director and pianist William Koseluk accompanies Schultz and Gaertig, who perform almost 20 songs throughout the show.
“I grew up in musical theatre, but this was the biggest challenge I have had; it’s a lot to pull off,” Schultz said.
Schultz is a stay-at-home mom who was invited to join the theater group by Gaertig, a friend of her husband, Schultz explained. The production was a step out of both performers’ comfort zones, as neither had performed a lead role in a musical.
The two were also backstage hands in LCT’s last production of I’ll Be Back Before Midnight, Gaertig explained, and being involved in that production chopped a couple of weeks off valuable rehearsal time for the current play, which really increased the pressure once the two began reading and singing the lines with directors.
“The sheer amount of small space that we had to learn everything, not just the lines, but the music, the dancing, actual songs you need to learn, and all of this has to come together in a free flowing show,” he said. “There have been a lot of things we’ve had to overcome.”
Tirelessly working to get the songs learned, lines memorized, and then add stage movement paid off, allowing the two to revel in the joys and sorrows of the characters. Real life bleeds into the story, explained Schultz, who enjoyed portraying something like an argument with humor and music, pulling from her own marriage for inspiration.
“I guess that’s how I make it more real for myself, is I picture myself in my real life, and think: ‘What would I do if my husband did this?’” she said. “Or when their kids grow up—I have two kids, and my oldest is almost 13, and it’s like, everyday we get closer and closer to them moving out one day, and it’s kind of scary and sad.”
I Do! I Do! doesn’t depict a cookie-cutter marriage, but a couple with real, relatable problems that are sometimes funny and sometimes poignant or painful. It provides characters of depth for Schultz and Gaertig to explore in the intimate setting of a dinner theater at Lompoc’s Village Country Club, explained director Roby, who watched and guided the two actors as they found their characters.
“One night it just clicked, and all of the sudden they were Michael and Agnes,” she said. “As a director, you are always waiting for that moment and thinking, ‘Is it coming? Is it coming?’ And then, pop, there it is, and it just makes your heart warm up.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is waiting for his cold heart to melt. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 23-30, 2015.
