Two actors synchronize two roles in 2 musicals

By BARBARA FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 17, 2000

Four or five years ago, Broadway actor Colin Stinton made theatrical history when he played four different roles in two radically different productions in two different auditoriums on the same nights -- and sometimes matinee and evening shows.

For the first half of the show, he played three roles in the madcap musical Guys and Dolls in the National Theatre's Olivier auditorium. Then he ran up and down four flights of stairs to appear in the second acts of both Guys and Dolls and the melancholy drama Death of a Salesman at the National's Lyttelton auditorium.

Fortunately, both auditoriums were in the same building. Even so, Stinton sometimes appeared for curtain calls for Salesman outfitted in one of his Guys and Dolls costumes and vice versa, which may have been a tad disconcerting to the audiences.

Now, two local actors are doing a similar feat -- only they're dashing more than 12 miles between venues, one in New Port Richey, the other in Hudson.

Starting on Monday, Michael Dixon and Sara DelBeato will spend their days rehearsing the musical The Music Man at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre in Hudson, then make a mad dash to the Richey Suncoast Theatre in New Port Richey to appear on stage in the musical Company. Company will close on July 2, and five days later, the pair will open The Music Man.

"I'm giving them special dispensation to do this," said Show Palace director Jimmy Ferraro.

It helps that both Dixon and Ms. DelBeato have worked for Ferraro in many other productions and have won his confidence. Dixon won an award for his work at the Palace: "best supporting male actor" for his portrayal of Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! last season. Ms. DelBeato has won local, regional and even national awards for her singing.

"This is Sara's 10th or 11th production with us and Michael's sixth or seventh," Ferraro said. He has no doubt both actors will do well in both shows.

Their Richey Suncoast director, Dick Poole, is equally at ease about the arrangement.

"I usually make notes during rehearsal to help the actors," he said. "For them, I end up with a blank page."

Interestingly, Poole turned down Ms. DelBeato for a role in the Richey Suncoast production of The Music Man two years ago. "She came in pigtails and overalls," Poole recalled. He told her to come back when she got a little older.

"She came in for Company and said, "I'm back,' " Poole said. "I just love her; she is so talented and has a lovely voice."

Ferraro is happy to share his actors' talents.

"I'm thrilled that Michael and Sara are over at the Richey Suncoast. It gives them an opportunity to do some roles that they might not be able to do at our professional theater and to work with other directors and choreographers and all that."

Neither of the young actors -- Ms. DelBeato is 16 and Dixon is a 1997 graduate of Springstead High School -- is at all worried about doing double duty.

"I'm used to doing this at the Show Palace," Dixon said. "We're always in rehearsal for one (show) as we're doing another, so it's pretty routine for me now. It's just difficult this time because of two different theaters."

Dixon says that keeping his two roles separate is easy.

"I'm the villain in Music Man and the good guy in Company," he said. "It feels like doing Jekyll and Hyde."

The shows are completely different in style, period and feel. The Music Man is a straightforward, traditional musical set in the early part of the century in the Midwest. Company is a breakthrough, "high concept" Stephen Sondheim show set in contemporary New York City and told partly in the present and sometimes in flashback.

Even so, the main character in both shows is similar: thirtysomething men who are happily single and on the prowl who finally decide that being married might be better.

"I am in love with both shows," said Ms. DelBeato, who plays two sweetheart roles in The Music Man and a cynical ex-girlfriend of the lead in Company.

"The (roles) are so amazingly different, I think I'll do okay," she said.

Ferraro often encourages his actors to seek out other roles at other venues, especially when they aren't playing in a show at his theater. Neither Dixon nor Ms. DelBeato is in the current all-female Nunsense, playing through June 25 at the Palace.

Recently, Ferraro allowed resident choreographer Steven Flaa to take a sabbatical to work at the Fireside Dinner Theatre in Fort Atkinson, Wis. Last season, a frequent Palace performer, singer-actor Dalton Benson, played the lead in Stage West Community Playhouse's Cabaret in between playing a supporting role in the Palace's Oklahoma! and a big feature part in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

"(Community theater) is a marvelous training ground for the professional actor," Ferraro said. "I know that when (actors) come back to me to be in shows, they will be thoroughly enriched with more training and be open to a lot more."

Ferraro himself got his start in community theater -- Richey Suncoast Theatre itself.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.