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First Chance Fest 2004
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THEATER ARTICLE

The Chance sets First Chance Fest
Anaheim Bulletin

June 24, 2004

The Chance Theater Repertory Company will hold its second annual play festival, First Chance Fest 2004, focusing on up and coming directors in the Orange County theater scene, giving them a chance to showcase their talents with one-act plays.

The five pieces selected for this year’s festival are the Orange County premiere of Caryl Churchill’s "Far Away," Anthony Minghella’s "Hang Up," Robert Bermel’s translation of Moliere’s "Sganarelle" or "The Imaginary Cuckold," James Christy’s "Creep" and the West Coast premiere of Daniel Kelley’s "The Boy and His Stove: A Failed Dialogue."

Also included in this year’s festival will be two of the winners from Fullerton College’s Director’s Festival.

Presented by The Chance Theater Repertory Company, First Chance Fest 2004 opens July 10 and runs for eight performances through Aug. 1.

There will be two programs, with "Far Away" and "Sganarelle" playing at 4 p.m. Saturdays and "Far Away," "Hang Up," "Creep" and "The Boy and His Stove: A Failed Dialogue" will play at 6 p.m. Sundays.

Each night will also include one of the winners from the Fullerton College Director’s Festival.

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THEATER REVIEW

The second annual installment in a smorgasbord of new offerings
Anne-Margret Bellavoine, Northern Lights

July 12, 2004

Chance Fest II is a winner on variety alone, from French classical farce to disturbing modern pieces, all of them designed to give an opportunity to up and coming directors on the local scene to showcase their talents in one-act plays.

The festival opens with Molière's well known Sganarelle or The Imaginary Cuckold, transposed in the thirties, a real crowd pleaser directed by Dimas Diaz. This highly stylized rhymed piece acted in over the board mime form in an Albert Bermel translation focuses on two couples who mistakenly believe their significant other is cheating on them. Casey Long gives a masterful performance in the title role of middle aged Sganarelle, with Alex Bueno as Lissette and an assorted cast of comic characters who leave the audience with a huge smile on their face.

Home Free! by Lanford Wilson directed by Forrest Robinson explores the suffocating incestuous relationship of a brother and sister in their imaginary infantile world with Jason Evans and Emily Simensen as they attempt to keep reality at bay in spite of ominous signs. The piece won the Fullerton College's Director's Festival.

Caryl Churchill's Far Away directed by Trevor Biship features as the second act on both programs. This Orange County premiere is a disturbing look into the realities of war where the enemy is elusive and all encompassing, with absurd destruction and paranoia as a result. Stephanie Philo is Joan, Rachel Lane her aunt Harper, and Zachary James Oldham young man Todd. The recent waves of world terrorism make this allegorical futuristic piece particularly salient. Harsh and dim lighting paired with surreal music and sounds add to the otherworldliness feel but leave the audience puzzled.

James Christy's Creep is directed by Jeff Hellebrand. Aubrey Saverino is Anne, at a party where she doesn't want to be and where she meets the creep, Bryan Barton's Hoover, who crashed it and is having a great time observing the scene, drawing Anne into his stories. The cell phone you will hear is not from a careless audience member.

Anthony Minghella's Hang Up directed by Heather Howe won The Prix Italia when it premiered in 1988 and is the most intriguing of the selection, opening with a wonderful silent dance featuring Michael Irish and Kristin Norris, followed by two long-distance phone conversations between separated lovers, 'He' James Ross and 'She' Marlene Goudreau. Brit lingo powerfully evokes the large sublet houses with their halls full of bikes and the ubiquitous public coin phone. The couple miscommunicates as their out-of-sync comments uncover hurtful truths and attempt to mask lies.

Faithful to its premise to feature original work which pushes the envelope, the Chance features challenging material in its mini-festival. The show runs with the regular repertory Rodgers and Hammerstein Revue.

 

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THEATER REVIEW

One-acts put the focus on the drama
'First Chance Fest 2004' capably unveils area premieres of short works by Anthony Minghella and others.
By Eric Marchese, Special to the Orange County Register

July 26, 2004


As a company originally dedicated to presenting new and obscure works for theater, it took The Chance Theater five seasons to be in a position to organize and present a slate of short plays. Dubbed "First Chance Fest," the event made its debut during the 2003 season.

Like last year, the Anaheim Hills troupe's second festival of one-acts presents two separate slates of plays in alternating performances on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings. The 2004 festival features "Home Free!" by Lanford Wilson, Albert Bermel's translation of the Moliere comedy "Sganarelle" ("The Imaginary Cuckold"), and Orange County premieres of Caryl Churchill's "Far Away," James Christy's "Creep" and "Hang Up" by Anthony Minghella, the director and screenwriter of the films "Cold Mountain" and "The English Patient."

"Far Away" is being featured throughout the festival, grouped with "Sganarelle" and "Home Free!" on Saturdays and "Hang Up" and "Creep" on Sundays. A three-scene opus from 2000, Churchill's work is an allegory on institutional violence and its effects on the lives of everyday people. Directed by Trevor Biship, the Orange County premiere proves a cryptic work as likely to leave viewers baffled as to be debated by them over a cup of coffee.

In Part One of "Far Away," a young girl named Joan (Stephanie Philo) is spending her first night at the home of her Aunt Harper (Rachel Lane). Joan soon confesses to her aunt that she has discovered a bloody secret about her uncle that involves the underground trade of desperate men, women and children.

Churchill keeps things enigmatic, as viewed through a child's eyes, but the clues point to a desert setting and the smuggling of illegal aliens - with Joan's uncle using a metal rod to beat his charges into submission. Part Two is even more puzzling: Now a teenager, Joan gets her first job at a hat-making factory, working alongside Todd (Zachary James Oldham). Just a few years older, he's already an old hand who talks guardedly about the overthrow of institutional violence - but Churchill provides few clues.

Involving all three characters, Part Three isn't so much an extension of the first two scenes as the natural degeneration from a veneer of civilization to all-out war. Most of the scene, antagonistic dialogue between Harper and Todd, is obscure, hinting at worldwide conflict. Once Joan appears, grimy and sunburned, her face a hardened mask, things come into focus: Every nation on Earth is torn by war, with each seeking the use of even the elements of nature - light or noise, for example - as weapons.

Such moments are chilling and sobering. Biship distorts a pretty song like "Beautiful Dreamer," or uses discordant music, to enhance the play's disturbing mood, and creates artful spatial relations between his actors to emphasize the script's sense of disconnect between our perceptions and reality.

Minghella's "Hang Up," which began as a radio play in 1988, details an intimate, late-night phone conversation between lovers (James Ross, Marlene Goudreau) separated by more than just miles. Minghella starts things off unassumingly, only gradually awakening us to the realization that the couple's relationship is at a critical turning point.

Heather Howe's direction captures the script's cynicism about romance, a bitterness that informs even the play's humor. Goudreau shows reserve, then spiky, exasperated indignation and, finally, genuine emotion to Ross' frustration, vulnerability and stoicism. Howe brackets "Hang Up" with a wordless ballet between Michael Irish and Kristin Norris that brilliantly depicts the ebb and flow of romantic couplings in a poetic, nonverbal counterpart to Minghella's story.

Christy's title "Creep" is, like "Hang Up," deliberately ambiguous. At a mindless weekend party with a gal pal, loner Anne (Aubrey Saverino) happens upon a lone guest named Hoover (Bryan Barton). Though she regards him as annoying, his provocative questions and statements shed light on the true source of Anne's irritation: The way her life has stagnated and crept to a halt. The pas-de-deux is well-acted by Saverino and Barton and imbued with artless realism by director Jeff Hellebrand.

Solid drama in the short form is a specialized art, so it's nice to report that with plays and stagings like these, the First Chance Fest is on the right track.


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Freelance writer Eric Marchese has been covering entertainment for the Register since 1984.

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