Clowns at Playhouse
Playing around is serious business, especially when the players are new millennium vaudeville clowns like Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford. Their gently comic, existentially poignant show, titled “all wear bowlers,” continues through Sept. 3 in the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre at La Jolla Playhouse (www.lajollaplayhouse.com or 858.550-1010).
Lyford received his master’s degree from University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2001. In an interview, he said he almost failed his first-year acting class because he was in the library watching Laurel and Hardy films.
Readers may remember him in UCSD department of theater productions as the dandy in Carlo Gozzi’s “A Country Affair” or as Skinhead Boy in Naomi Iizuka’s “Polaroid Stories.” He also portrayed the foppish King in La Jolla Playhouse’s “Sheridan.”
As Wyatt in “all wear bowlers,” Lyford exudes the kind of fey innocence and appeal personified by Stan Laurel.
Sobelle’s character, Earnest, is the more self-assured of the two. He calls Wyatt “stupid,” but in truth is as dependent upon his friend as Wyatt is on him.
Truth and sincerity lie just beneath exterior bravado and resignation, when the two clowns, mere celluloid after all, tumble from their Beckettian film landscape onto the Potiker Stage, where they are aghast to find an audience.
At one point they take theater seats, watching the audience, puzzled at the lack of meaningful action. “What’s going on?” one mutters to the other. “Avant-garde,” is the reply.
To give away more than that would be to undermine readers’ pleasure in the endearing work, which is at times guffaw-funny and then, when you’re least expecting it, rips one’s heart out.
It will mean what it means to each who sees it. Bring a pure heart, a funny bone and a sense of wonder.
Michael Friedman wrote the enchanting music for the film score. Michael Glass is the filmmaker. Aleksandra Wolska stages the falling in and out of the film with nanosecond precision.
Faces, hands and bodies wreak the rest of the magic, with assists from scenic designer Ed Haynes, costume designer Tara Webb, lighting designer Randy “Iglue” Glickman and sound designer James Sugg.
Bacharach in North County
Through Aug. 20 only, fans of Burt Bacharach and Hal David may enjoy a virtual glut of their music at North Coast Repertory Theatre (www.northcoastrep.org or [858] 481-1055).
It’s a saucy revue conceived by San Diego-bred and fled comic Kathy Najimy and composer Steve Gunderson, who did the musical arrangements.
San Diego vocal goddess Melinda Gilb, who created the musical “Suds” with Gunderson and Bryan Scott, is in the vocal ensemble, along with Gunderson, extraordinary belter Jenn Grinels and newcomer Tiffany Jane, a veteran of the Old Globe’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
The best number in the revue is Gunderson’s plain and simple rendition of “Alfie.” Why? Because it’s not fraught with other tunes and the staging is simple. Late in the show, it’s one of the show’s few resting places, poignant and sincere.
Enjoyment depends upon your Bacharach and David fandom and possibly your appreciation of good pop vocalism.
All the singers are excellent, Marty Burnett’s geometric set is slick, and M. Scott Grabau’s lighting and sound designs work.
Sadly, the costumes are unflattering even to Gilb, who designed them.
Backed up by a live ensemble of Fred Ubaldo on bass, Tom Versen on percussion and Bill Doyle ” who should not be allowed to sing ” on keyboards, the piece includes such pop classics as “A House Is Not a Home,” “Close to You,” “The Look of Love” and “Promises Promises.”
If that’s not enough Bacharach for you, the man himself performs with San Diego Symphony SummerPops (www.sandiegosymphony.com or [619] 235.0804) at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 20.
