Rosine Reynolds

River City, Iowa has everything a town needs on July 4, 1912: a grocery store, City Hall, livery stable and modest house with a “Piano Lessons” sign in the window. It also has a train downstage and a 14-piece orchestra out of sight in back, so when the train begins to move, we know we’re not in Iowa anymore. We’re on Mt. Tam.

Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” was a success as soon as it opened on Broadway in 1957, even though it had to compete with “West Side Story” down the street. It won five Tony awards and ran for more than a thousand performances. And the secret to its long success is evident in the opening scene. The combination of songs with setting is superb.

Here’s a train carrying a load of traveling salesmen. The train jounces along the track, smoke billowing from its engine, as the salesmen complain about the handships of their trade in rhythm with the rails: “Whaddaya talk! Whaddaya talk!” and “You gotta know the territory!” Their main complaint is a black sheep salesman known as Harold Hill, whose latest racket is selling uniforms and instruments for an imaginary boys’ band, even though he doesn’t know music, and he doesn’t know the territory. And who is that fellow waving goodbye and getting off in River City?

“The Music Man” contrasts the rascally Hill with the honest and loyal Marian, her deserving family and the rivalries of their town. Hill is outgunned from the start.

This is a love story set to Meredith Willson’s lyrical music and told against Ken Rowland’s lovable-town backdrop. Much is being made of this year’s Mountain Play, as it is director James Dunn’s thirtieth and last. For his finale, this fine director has pulled together a group of seasoned actors from all over the county. Familiar names light up the program: Susan Zelinsky (Marian Paroo,) Stephen Dietz ( Mayor Shinn,) Randy Nazarian (Marcellus Washburn,) Gloria Wood (Mrs. Paroo,) Erika Alstrom (Ethel Toffelmeir,) Sharon Boucher (Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn) and Bob Wilson (Constable Locke.) Robert Moorhead (Harold Hill) has played this part three times in other venues, and even the children are already stage veterans. Brigid O’Brien (Amaryllis) was Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Jeremy Kaplan (Winthrop Paroo) has performed in seven musicals.

The barbershop quartet and the anvil salesman are additional of-the-period entertainment.
There are 61 cast members, 14 orchestra members, a marching band and a horse in this production.

Backstage, Pat Polen has woven Americana into costumes designed in all variations of red, white and blue. Debra Chambliss leads the band, and Rick Wallace has choreographed the dance numbers.

“The Mountain Play Experience” is exactly that. Audiences take most of their day for this event, and some of them do it every year in groups. Just being in the amphitheatre is part of the fun, but so is the remarkable view over the treetops and down to the Pacific. A few stalwarts hike both ways from Mill Valley, most take the bus at least one way, and some drive. Everybody brings water, a hat and comfortable shoes. The play starts at 2 p.m., but playgoers should plan to arrive at least an hour before. Ticket prices vary from $15 to $40 with no admission for children three and under. Reserved seating and group discounts and more information are available at www.MountainPlay.org.

Because of the approaching fire season, this uplifting show will play only June 3, 10 and 16, and will close June 17, Father’s Day.

On opening day, Jim Dunn did not come out for a curtain call, even though there were calls for “Director! Director!” That clamor will continue. After thirty years on the mountain, Mr. Dunn knows the territory.

Ross Valley Players are producing Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana” in tribute to the playwright’s 100th birthday last year. Williams’ last visit to The Barn was in 1979 for “The Glass Menagerie,” his first big success. That play won him a Pulitzer. He was thirty-four then.
Two years later, he came up with “Streetcar Named Desire” and then, when he was forty-four, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and another Pulitzer. “Night of the Iguana” was produced in 1961, when the playwright was fifty. A number of significant changes had happened in his life by then.

By the ‘60s, Tennessee Williams had come to terms with his own homosexuality and had formed a long partnership with Frank Merlo. He had not overcome his alcoholism, however, and had also developed an increasing dependence on prescription drugs. Merlo developed lung cancer and died in 1963. By the end of the decade, Williams’ brother had him hospitalized for his addictions.
“Night of the Iguana,” reaches back to a 1940 trip to Acapulco in which young Williams bonded with another writer who was also in desperate condition. The notes he took then formed the basis of a short story that eventually became the play.

This work isn’t set in the south, but in Mexico, in the fictional Puerto Barrio. All its characters are troubled. The Rev. Lawrence Shannon is trying to restore himself in the church, maintain sobriety and fend off the advances of Maxine, the innkeeper. Increasingly slovenly, Maxine satisfies her lust with her Mexican houseboys and then complains that they lack discipline.

Prim, ladylike Hannah arrives pushing her grandfather’s wheelchair. Her life is devoted to his needs. “Nonno” is a poet, as was Williams, but he’s almost ninety-eight now. They scratch out a bare existence selling Nonno’s poems and Hannah’s sketches of tourists.

Outside the hotel, honking loudly for attention, is a busload of Baptist female tourists, demanding the comfortable accommodation that Shannon, their tour leader, had promised. One of the women, Charlotte, is only sixteen, and she’s already had an affair with Shannon, for which she expects him to marry her. Charlotte’s chaperone, Miss Fellowes (Sandi Rubay) rages continually and vows reprisals. Further, a big storm is brewing, and a captured iguana, which “tastes like Texas chicken,” is scuffling around below.

Even Tennessee Williams cannot resolve this situation satisfactorily. The play’s ending forecasts itself a long way off.

As Lawrence Shannon, Eric Burke is onstage almost all the time and has an exhausting load of script. We want to like Rev. Shannon, but he makes this impossible when he defends his seduction of Charlotte with, “she asked for it.” Maxine (Cat Bish) copes with isolation by being overly upbeat and sloppy, while Hannah (Kristine Ann Lowry,) fits Shannon’s description of her as “a thin, standing-up female Buddha.”

Nonno (Wood Lockhart) seems to dodder more when he wants attention. He recites his poems in a strong voice, especially the epic he’s been working on. Young Charlotte (Kushi Beauchamp) escapes Miss Fellowes long enough to beg Shannon to let her help him.

Jake Latta, the substitute tour guide, is played by Mark Toepfer, Hank, the bus driver, by Richard Kerrigan, and Maxine’s two houseboys by Eric Sadler and Noah Benet.
“Night of the Iguana,” directed by Cris Cassell, will be at The Barn Theatre in the Marin Art & Garden Center, Ross, Thursdays through Sundays until June 17. Thursday performances are at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.
Ticket prices range from $17 to $25. An audience “talk back” with the actors and director will be offered after the matinees on May 27 and June 10.

For complete information, call 456-9555 or see www.rossvalleyplayers.com.