A musical tribute to the hectic early days of live television features a live orchestra and a movie clip shot locally.
By PAMELA GRINER LEAVY
Published October 29, 2004
LARGO - Hell broke loose this week in the Largo Cultural Center, and it wasn't caused by Halloween ghosts and goblins. The curtain goes up tonight on Eight O'Clock Theatre's production of My Favorite Year , a rousing musical tribute to the early days of live television.
"Hell week" is theater language for the final few days and nights of hectic rehearsals and preparations leading up to a show's opening performance.
My Favorite Year , set in 1954, is based on the 1982 movie starring Peter O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker. The plot, based loosely based on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows , focuses on young Benjy Stone, a freshman writer on The King Kaiser Comedy Cavalcade . Stone gets to meet and babysit his boyhood hero, Hollywood swashbuckler Alan Swann, when Swann guest stars on the show.
While the Eight O'Clock Theatre troupe of 26 actors, 15 technical crew members and a 14-piece live orchestra rehearsed for more than five weeks, the last days are always challenging, said Jason Tucker, 30, the show's director and musical conductor.
"The last week is all about the lights, sound, music, costumes and props and all together is called hell week," Tucker said. Near the show's beginning is a 40-second film segment of a fictional movie Defender of the Crown , starring Alan Swann. Written by Tucker and shot on a trail at Sawgrass Lake Park, a professional movie director spent six hours with six actors and a crew of five producing the film.
The film plays on the stage as Benjy Stone, played by James Grenelle, sings the song Larger Than Life , a song that lets the audience know why Stone idolizes Alan Swann.
Patrons get a sample of the depth of Tucker's talent in the playbill for My Favorite Year . The sixth-generation St. Petersburg native has been active in community and dinner theater since he was a child. Tucker also holds Broadway theater credits and served as musical conductor on the 2002 national tour of Cinderella starring the legendary Eartha Kitt.
In collaboration with community theater stalwart Jason Fortner, Tucker composes and stages entertainment material for Club Med International's North American resort villages.
At Monday night's semi-dress rehearsal, Tucker yelled out "hold" several times. Actors weren't yet in full costumes and not all the sets were used. Tucker stopped rehearsals to make sure timing and lights were just right.
Additional cast members include Gary Smith as Alan Swann. Smith, who by day works in receiving at Kmart, performed in his first Pinellas County show in 1974. Starring as Alice, Swann's sidekick, is Susan Demers, an attorney who heads up the paralegal training program at St. Petersburg College.
As a professional child actor, Demers worked on national and regional tours of The Bad Seed , The Sound of Music and in a St. Petersburg Little Theatre production of The King and I , where a young Jason Tucker played her son.
An audience's unfamiliarity with My Favorite Year 's lyrics adds to the show's appeal, Demers said.
"The best is that not everybody knows every word and lyric that comes out of your mouth," she said. "It's new for the audience."
Amanda Elend, Tucker's girlfriend, and winner of a 2004 favorite actress Lary Award for her work in Crazy For You at St. Petersburg Little Theatre, is a creative writing major at Eckerd College. She plays a lead King Kaiser Cavalcade staff member.
Theater, whether it's professional or community, is all about connecting with the audience, and cast members must exude that talent, Tucker said. He also points out that community theater actors and crew have day jobs and volunteer their free time to the production.
"Community theater is its own heart," Tucker said.
While older audiences will recall the work of such legends as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Woody Allen on Your Show of Shows , Tucker sees young theatergoers warming to My Favorite Year .
Tucker credits Jonathan Larson, the creator of the hit rock musical Rent, with attracting new generations to live musical theater. Larson died at age 35 of a heart ailment, just days before Rent opened on Broadway. (Rent opens Nov. 16 at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.)
" "Rent did so much as we were on a precipice where people under 40 weren't willing to take that leap of faith, to sit and watch a piece where people will say something and then break into song about it," Tucker said.
My Favorite Year also offers theatergoers a live orchestra experience, which is fading on Broadway as producers cut costs by substituting recorded music. The 14 members playing at Eight O'Clock Theatre are paid a stipend for their performances.
One orchestra member, Jerry Silverman of Tampa, plays a synthesizer in the show, and by day serves as director of choirs and vocal arts at Saint Leo University.
Silverman hopes that live orchestra music survives as a musical theater art form.
"We are so fortunate in the Tampa area to have not only a wealth of talented musicians, but also a group of community theaters that support live musicians," he said.
IF YOU GO
Eight O'Clock Theatre presents My Favorite Year through Nov. 14 in the Largo Cultural Center, 105 Central Park Drive. The curtain goes up at 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $19, $17 each for groups of 10 or more, and $10 for students. For information and tickets, call the box office at (727) 587-6793.
