Review: HUMBUG, A DOLL HOUSE, AND THE NINA VARIATIONS at Center Stage Theater

Lit Moon Theatre: Reunion and Repertory

Springing straight from its production of The Glass Menagerie, Lit Moon Theatre now brings three additional productions to Center Stage: First, Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol, is retold as Humbug. Then, on January 4th, Lit Moon offers its visually arresting and emotionally captivating production of A Doll House. The next day, 38 actors from Lit Moon's over 25-year history will join together for a brand-new production of The Nina Variations by Steven Dietz.

It's one of Lit Moon artistic goals to keep a stable of plays in repertory, which can be deftly realized in a new production. Keeping a play in a company's repertory allows for a deep examination of a play through repeated stagings. It's a style of production that only a tightly-held and stable company of players can achieve. Humbug, for example, began in 2007 at artistic director John Blondell's family table and has evolved over eleven years in each production, gathering scenic and interpretive layers. Lit Moon's use of repertory allows a work to be profoundly altered in a re-staging or left closer to the aesthetic of its most recent performance, depending on the choices of the actors and Blondell as the director.

A Doll House's recent staging brought a contemporary sensibility to the interplay between a husband and wife as their marriage comes to a crisis. Audiences who did not catch Lit Moon's recent staging of it with Paige Tautz as Nora Helmer and Matt Tavanini as her husband, Torvald, may see it on January 4th at Center Stage. And those who have seen it can watch it for the changes that may have taken place during its recent run in Eastern Europe.

For the special reunion production on January 5th, John Blondell invited all the company's former actors and most were able to make the journey to Santa Barbara. Some are coming from as far as Honolulu to rehearse and perform with Lit Moon once again.

The selected play for the reunion, The Nina Variations, provides a unique vehicle to showcase 38 actors. The play consists of reimaginings of a scene from Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, in which the actress Nina meets with her spurned lover, Treplev, for the last time. Blondell characterizes the original scene as one of "love and loss," potent enough for a deep examination.

This weekend, Lit Moon offers more seasonal fare with Humbug. Actress Nina Sallinen plays Ebenezer Scrooge while four other actors play all of the other characters (as John Blondell says, he likes to give actors "a lot to do" in a production). This story, adapted collaboratively by Blondell and the actors who worked to shape it, employs Charles Dickens' words supported by original music by Jim Conolly.

I can think of no better company with which to end and begin the year than 38 actors and these three plays. For auld lang syne, indeed.

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