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washington county arts guide
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december 2012 – february 2013
By Matthew Korfhage
I
t’s four weeks before opening
night and Joshua Stenseth is
worried about his voice. The
actor has just finished a round
of the Christmas classic “Sleep
Well, Little Children.” His tone
was pure and pitch-perfect, with
the crystalline sunny timbre of a
Midwestern winter.
Still, he says, he’s got a slight sniffle,
and it makes him anxious.
“You ever get that?” he’s asking his
four co-stars, who are gathered around
the piano. “You have a little cold, and
then you wake up one day and your
voice is suddenly gone?”
“I had the same thing,” Amanda
Valley tells him. “I had to speak in a low
voice all the time and I couldn’t talk on
the phone. It really freaked out my
children.”
On Nov. 23, all five actors will be
opening Christmas on Broadway, a
brand-new holiday musical at the award-
winning Broadway Rose Theatre
Company in Tigard. Writer and director
Rick Lewis conceived the play’s roles
and songs specifically for the five
performers he cast in the roles; Stenseth
must be able to perform, and so he will.
The Broadway Rose Theatre
Company celebrates its 20th anniversary
this year, and has long been regarded as
one of Oregon’s premier producers of
musical theater.
The holiday show is always a big
draw and this year they’ve chosen an
original musical revue, a popular format
in which a plot somehow allows the
performance of classic crowd-pleasing
songs.
And as far as Broadway Rose artistic
director and co-founder Sharon Maroney
is concerned, Lewis is the best revue
director around. “Musical revues are a
special niche,” she says,” and Rick is the
king of musical revues.”
Indeed, Lewis has won
five different Drammies —
Portland theater awards —
as a musical director on
various Broadway Rose
productions. “He could be
up there orchestrating the
phone book and it would be
beautiful,” says Maroney.
The concept of Lewis’
revue is simple: Four young
would-be Broadway actors
find themselves trapped in
an old Broadway theater —
called, appropriately
enough, The Holiday — on
the eve of Christmas Day.
Aided by a tour guide
(Valley), the four find a
script for an old unstaged
holiday play, and put on a
musical Broadway revue right then and
there, in the abandoned theater.
The very real audience at the
Broadway Rose will be the audience of
the actors’ imaginations.
If this plot sounds a bit
minimal, that’s entirely the
point; the story line of a
musical revue is just a coat
hook for beautiful clothes.
“It’s all about the music,” says
Lewis. “Everything else is a
nice little surprise.”
In concept, the play is a bit
of a spoof on the old Andrew
LloydWebber musical
tradition, and a spritely romp
in the toolbox of the old
Hollywood let’s-put-on-a-show
Bing Crosby movies of the
1940s.
Because of course, when
these four actors who’ve
never met find a script
they’ve never read, they
immediately put on the show of their
lives. “I think about the show Smash,”
says Lewis, “where Tom, the composer,
sits down at the piano and tells the jazz
guys, ‘I’m in G, just follow.’”
Lewis laughs at the very idea. “It’s the
inanity of this, that these four people who
just met are singing in four-part
harmony.”
But it’s part of the magic of theater, he
says, that everything can be made to feel
so effortless, so lighter than air. “I’m
trying to make it simple and stupid and
have it not take itself too seriously,”
Lewis says.
But a real musical production takes a
lot of serious work— especially since
Lewis’ production contains medleys and
snippets of over 30 different Broadway
tunes, Christmas songs and lushly
harmonic originals by Lewis himself.
During a late-October rehearsal, the
group is doing something they call a
“push-through,” quickly setting up all the
entrances and exits and stage positions
for an entire act of the play, detail by
methodical detail, at breakneck speed.
The stage they’re working on still has
some exposed plaster board with
Local writer Rick Lewis will debuts his ”Christmas on Broadway” in Tigard this holiday season
Working hard for a good revue
Rebecca Teran plays an actor whose Broadway dreams come true for one magical night in Broadway Rose’s holiday show.
Craig Mitchelldyer
Showtimes
■
“Christmas on
Broadway” will be
presented at the New
Stage, 12850 SW
Grant Ave. in Tigard,
through Dec. 23.
Evening show times
are Thursdays-
Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.
Matinees are 2 p.m.
Sundays and
Saturdays (Dec. 1, 8
and 15 only). Tickets
start at $30 for
adults, with discounts
available for groups
and youth. For a
listing of show
performances or to
order tickets, visit
broadwayrose.org or
call 503-620-5262.