#Karissa Monson

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Eleven Students Given Citizen Honors

The East Pasco Chamber Foundation in partnership with the Greater ZephyrhillsChamber of Commerce recognized eleven students from local Zephyrhills schools. Eleven Students Given Citizen Honors by East Pasco Chamber Foundation The students were honored as the Greater Zephyrhills Student Citizen of the Month for Month. The ceremony took place at Chick-fil-A in Zephyrhills on September 20 th at 8:00 am. Students are chosen by the teachers and administration of their individual schools for exemplary effort,achievement and contribution to their school, family, and community. The students receiving honors were: - Allaster Spivey (9 th grade, Academy of Spectrum Diversity) - Austin Dick (4 th grade, Children’s Educational Services Elementary Campus ) - Mikayla Washington (6 th grade, Children’s Educational Services Secondary Campus) - Jackie Herrera (5 th grade, Chester W. Taylor Elementary School) - Layla Decara (7 th grade, East Pasco Adventist Academy) - Karissa Barrington (6 th grade, Heritage Academy) - De’Najah Jackson (6 th grade, Raymond B. Stewart Middle School) - Josiah Gomez (Pre-K, West Zephyrhills Elementary School) - Audney LaPoint (5 th grade, Woodland Elementary) - Cameron Sanford (7 th grade, Zephyrhills Christian Academy) - Yaxiel Nieves (12 th grade, Zephyrhills High School) Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Academy of Spectrum Diversity, Chris Dester, had this to say on behalf of the one the parents of this month’s student Citizen Allaster: “When Allaster came to the Academy 4 years ago he was struggling in so many areas, he couldn't read, write, or understand math. This was so upsetting for him, not understanding what he needed to do each day as well as a heartbreak for his family not being able to help the way he needed. Fast forwarded to today, not only is he reading, writing, and solving math problems he is getting an award for being such an AMAZING student.” Sponsors and supporters of this year’s program are as follows: - AdventHealth Zephyrhills, the City of Zephyrhills - Chick-fil-A of Zephyrhills - IR Staffing - San Antonio Citizens Federal Credit Union - Spotlight sponsor of month Suncoast Credit Union - The event is supported by U.S. Congresswoman, Laurel Lee - Senator Danny Burgess, District 23 - Florida House of Representatives Randy Maggard, District 38 - Pasco County Clerk of Court, Nikki Alvarez - Zephyrhills Mayor, Melonie Monson - Pasco County Sheriff, Chris Nocco - Bahr’s Propane Gas & AC - BGE, Inc - Culver’s - East Pasco YMCA - Faithful Friends Pet Cremation - Jarrett Ford of Dade City - Kona Ice - Pasco-Hernando State College - Pin Chasers Zephyrhills - Pioneer Florida Museum & Village - Sonny’s Bar-B-Q - SouthState Bank - The Zephyrhills/Wesley Chapel - Ministerial Association - Trax Credit Union - VITIS Realty. If you are an area business and would like to support this impactful program, please contact Vicki Wiggins at the Zephyrhills Chamber of Commerce at 813-782-1913. The Greater Zephyrhills Chamber of Commerce advances economic growth and prosperity for thecommunity. The Chamber of Commerce is incorporated in the State of Florida as a 501(c)6 nonprofitorganization. Membership is comprised of businesses, government agencies, public-private corporations,nonprofit organizations, and individuals with a shared interest in preserving and enhancing the quality oflife in Zephyrhills. The Chamber seeks to promote a vibrant and active business climate supportingeconomic growth through leadership and active involvement by the membership. The East Pasco Chamber Foundation is incorporated in the State of Florida as a 501(c)3 nonprofitorganization. The East Pasco Chamber Foundation is dedicated to advancing the quality of life in EastPasco through education, leadership, economic development, and community enhancement. Read the full article

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REVIEW: "The Mousetrap" at The Theater Barn

REVIEW: “The Mousetrap” at The Theater Barn

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REVIEW: "She Loves Me" at The Theater Barn

REVIEW: “She Loves Me” at The Theater Barn

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by Gail M. Burns

She Loves Me is the very definition of the word “charming.” It premiered on Broadway in 1963, in the heyday of Big Book Musicals, and while it sort of fits in that category with a large cast, multiple sets, and a two and a half hour run time, it lacks the big dance numbers and scores of high kicking chorines that audiences of that era craved, so despite a stellar cast that first big production was a comparative flop.

Flash forward half a century and She Loves Me is right in vogue. It is an ensemble piece, rather than a star vehicle, with lots of delightful roles for a range of performers, and the music is character-driven and quirky. It is an endearing tale told well about a group of perfectly ordinary people who you come to find fascinating.

The year is 1937, but there is no mention of the political turmoil in Europe at that time, and the show covers about six months, from midsummer to Christmas of that year. Mr. Maraczek (John Trainor) is the owner of a chic Parfumerie that bears his name.  There he sells ladies’ perfumes, cosmetics and beauty products with the aid of his clerks: Georg Nowack (Patrick Scholl), Ladislav Sipos (Allen E. Phelps), Ilona Ritter (Alexa Renee), and Steven Kodaly (Travis C. Brown), and his eager young delivery boy Arpad Laszlo (Ali Louis Bourzgui).  On a lovely June day in 1934, it has been decided not to replace a recently departed clerk because business has been a bit slow.  But then Amalia Balash (Alexandra Foley) shows up and, by making a miraculously quick and clever sale of a musical cigarette box, is hired nonetheless.

There is no love lost between Amalia and Georg (which is pronounced the English/American way, not the European “GAY-org” despite its lack of a final “e.”)  They just seem to rub each other the wrong way, and both are preoccupied with their relationships with their pen-pals, who they have never met except by letter. Amalia is feeling that it is high time to settle down and hopes she has found her match in her “Dear Friend” of the letters

Ilona has been having a highly unsatisfactory affair with Kodaly (pronounced Koh-DYE) who is a handsome, slick, and smary womanizer.  (You will not be surprised to learn that the supremely handsome, slick, and smary Jack Cassidy originated the role on Broadway and took home a Tony for his efforts.) During the course of the show Ilona realizes that she needs to take another approach entirely to find the man of her dreams.

While Georg and Amalia are the romantic couple at the center of the plot, each character is brought fully to life in Joe Masteroff’s libretto, Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics, and Jerry Bock’s music.  You come to like and care for each of them, except the slimy Kodaly who really doesn’t care what you think anyway.  None of them are perfect or special, they are just plain, average, hard-working folks.  In other words, they are very real people to whom it is easy to relate.

For this most charming of musicals, director and choreographer Kelly Shook has assembled the most delightful and talented of casts. All of them very young save for Phelps and Trainor, which adds sparkle to the show but changes the original story in which everyone save Arpad is over 30. Georg, Amalia, Ilona, and Steven Kodaly should be hearing the clock ticking therefore anxious to find love and professional advancement before it is too late. But the Theater Barn is a magnet for talented young performers on their way up, and many members of this cast will also play middle-school students The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling bee in two weeks, so a young cast was inevitable.

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As soon as I heard Foley sing in Pump Boys and Dinettes I knew she would be Amalia. She has a marvelous trained operatic voice and the youth and energy to make Amalia endlessly appealing. I said in my Pump Boys… review that she twinkled. Here she gets to shine with full star wattage. Scholl is much too boyish for Georg, but he sings flawlessly (even while turning a cartwheel) and matches Foley’s energy on stage.

The petite Renee is a little firecracker of sexuality as the worldly Ilona. While Amalia is a lovelorn “good girl,” Ilona wonders why her open appetites haven’t won her the affection she craves. Her happy ending is greeted with enthusiasm by the audience.

Brown plays Kodaly as a truly creepy slimeball, taking the character’s unctuousness to a new level and while tossing in a 21st century dash of sexual fluidity. He possesses a fine counter tenor, into which he slips with ease at surprising moments.

A Berkshire native, Bourzgui brings both youthful buoyancy and professional panache to young Arpad*. This young actor has been all over area stages this summer a trend a hope he continues in years to come even if his career takes him off to bigger things.

As noted, She Loves Me is not a big dance show because it is a simple tale about simple people who, while they are more apt to burst into song at work than you or I, do not break into dance nearly so often. But there is one big number – A Romantic Atmosphere – and it is also delightfully comic. Shook and the company do a marvelous job with it, led by Levi Squier as the flamboyant head waiter at the Café Imperiale and Xavier McKnight as his butter-fingered busboy.

My big concern going in was that She Loves Me was physically too large a show for the Theater Barn. It requires three or four major sets and fairly rapid changes. Set designer Anthony Martin has solved this problem by essentially building only one set – the interior of Maraczek’s Parfumerie, which opens up from the back of the stage when needed. Otherwise the stage is quite empty save for a few bits of furniture to suggest the other settings, and to leave space for this large cast to maneuver.

It is hard to believe that Bock and Harnick’s next show was Fiddler on the Roof which is such a ponderous (it runs over three hours with a strong headwind) book musical.  She Loves Me verges on being operetta, and its songs, while delightfully catchy and tuneful, don’t take the intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-coda format of a standard Broadway Ballad.  Harnick’s lyrics are character specific and almost stream-of-consciousness, often eschewing regular rhyme-schemes in order to surprise the audience into really hearing what the character has to say. Thankfully the aggressive over-miking that plagued Pump Boys and Dinettes has been abandoned and Musical Director Ollie Townsend leads a three-piece band in appropriately gentle musical accompaniment from behind the scenes.

You are guaranteed to love this production of She Loves Me, so catch it quick, before it vanishes.  This really is a show for the whole family that will make you laugh and cry and shout ��Bravo!”

She Loves Me, book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock, based on a play by Miklós László, directed and choreographed by Kelly Shook, runs August 9-19, 2018 at The Theater Barn, 654 NY Route 20 in New Lebanon, NY. Musical direction and keyboards by Ollie Townsend, Mike Lucchetti on drums, and Robin Tucksmith on upright bass. Set design by Anthony Martin, costume design by David Louder, lighting design by Karissa Monson, and stage management by Justin Hsu. CAST: Ali Louis Bourzgui as Arpad Laszlo, Allen E. Phelps as Ladislav Sipos, Alexa Renee as Ilona Ritter, travis C. Brown as Steven Kodaly, Patrick Scholl as Georg Nowack, John Trainor as Mr. Maraczek, Alexandra Foley as Amalia Balash, Michael Santora as Keller, Levi Squier as the Waiter. ENSEMBLE: Christy Yin, Katelyn Widmer, Olivia Hubbard, and Xavier McKnight.

https://www.thetheaterbarn.org/

*She Loves Me is based on the stage comedy Illatszertar or Parfumerie by Miklós László, who fled his native Hungary for the U.S. in 1938. He was still alive when this musical debuted on Broadway in 1963, and it is a nice touch that the writers gave Arpad his last name, and christened their newly imagined soubrette, a character that does not appear in László’s original, Ilona, which was László’s mother’s name.)

REVIEW: “She Loves Me” at The Theater Barn by Gail M. Burns She Loves Me is the very definition of the word “charming.” It premiered on Broadway in 1963, in the heyday of Big Book Musicals, and while it sort of fits in that category with a large cast, multiple sets, and a two and a half hour run time, it lacks the big dance numbers and scores of high kicking chorines that audiences of that era craved, so despite a stellar cast that first big production was a comparative flop.

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by Gail M. Burns

The original London production of The Mousetrap, which opened in 1952, is STILL running; and there are endless amateur stagings every year all around the world. But if you’ve managed never to see it, this production at The Theater Barn is your opportunity to enjoy a fine mounting of this classic whodunnit.

I am slightly puzzled why this one, out of all of Dame Agatha Christie’s plays, should be the perennial favorite, but there is no arguing with the facts. People love this play.

The setting has almost become a cliché – a young couple, Mollie (Sydney Berk) and Giles (Adam Giannone) Ralston, opens a guest house in their home, Monkswell Manor, about an hour south of London. As their first four guests – Mrs. Boyle (charlotte Harvey), Major Metcalf (Sky Vogel), Miss Casewell (Cara Moretto), and Christopher Wren (Ali Bourzgui) – arrive a big blizzard snows them in, and brings another unexpected arrival, the flamboyantly foreign Mr. Paravicini (John Trainor) who claims his car has overturned in a snow bank.

The police phone to say that Detective Sergeant Trotter (Patrick Scholl) is about to arrive to question everyone in the house about a murder up in London, which is connected to the terrible abuse of three young children at a farm nearby Monkswell Manor about fifteen years earlier. One child died from the beating, but a brother and sister, now in their early 20s, survived.

But shortly after Trotter’s arrival – on skis – one of the guests is murdered and it is obvious that someone in the house is the murderer.

Reviewers and attendees are sworn to secrecy about the play’s surprise twist ending, although after 66 years the secret has leaked out. Wikipedia gives the plot in its entirety, but I advise buying a ticket and seeing the ending for yourself. It’s much more fun that way!

Director Allen Phelps has assembled a strong cast, who do right by Christie’s broadly drawn characters, each of whom has something to conceal. Regional theatre veterans Vogel and Trainor turn in solid performances in very different roles. Vogel is understated as the somber Major Metcalf and Trainor gives an over the top performance as the mysterious Paravicini.

Berk anchors the show nicely as the naïve and sympathetic young Mollie Ralston. Costume designer David Louder has given her a pair of attractive mid-century outfits to wear – rationing is still in effect in Britain, so no one has the wherewithal to dress extravagantly, although Lord knows the flighty Christopher Wren tries.

Bourzgui plays all aspects of Wren nicely. He is by turns excitable, silly, sly, scared, warm, and angry, all in a way consistent with his character. Giannone moves from milquetoast to menacing as he become jealous of Mollie’s friendship with Wren, and as Scholl’s dogged questioning brings everyone in turn under suspicion.

Only Moretto is miscast as Miss Casewell, who Christie clearly describes as “mannish.” While not voluptuous, she is just the wrong shape to be mistaken for a man, although she makes good effort lowering her voice, and striding manfully about in an impressive pair of black thigh-high boots.

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The Theater Barn has a new sound system and is fully miked this season. In general, I am not in favor of body mics, especially in a small house like the Barn, but Karissa Monson’s sound design was solid and the voices did not sound artificially amplified. Having a modern sound system is a great boon to hearing-impaired patrons, since it not only boosts the sound overall but can be connected in to assisted listening devices. It also allows the Barn to adjust the levels if the heat necessitates leaving the air conditioning on during the show, or a heavy rain drowns out the actors voices. The real test of their system will come during their musical productions, which start in two week with Pump Boys and Dinettes.

Anthony Martin has designed a serviceable set, although the solid red curtain covering the large bank of windows up center is jarring. A softer color or a subtle pattern would have been a better choice.

The emphasis here is on the mystery, not the murder. There are no gunshots or on stage violence, so the show is good family fare as Christie keeps everyone guessing until the very end. This is a nice way to introduce tweens to the fun of mystery writing.

The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, directed by Allen Phelps, runs July 5-22, 2018 at The Theater Barn, 654 Route 20 in New Lebanon, NY. Set design by Anthony Martin; lighting and sound design by Karissa Monson; costume design by David Louder; stage management by Justin Hsu. CAST: Sydney Berk as Mollie Ralston; Adam Giannone as Giles Ralston, Charlotte Harvey as Mrs. Boyle, Sky Vogel as Major Metcalf, Cara Moretto as Miss Casewell, Ali Bourzgui as Christopher Wren, John Trainor as Mr. Paravicini, and Patrick Scholl as Detective Sergeant Trotter.

All tickets $29; $27 for Sunday matinées. Tickets are available online, by calling 518-794-8989, or in person at the box office which is 10 am to 9 pm. https://www.thetheaterbarn.org

REVIEW: “The Mousetrap” at The Theater Barn by Gail M. Burns The original London production of The Mousetrap, which opened in 1952, is STILL running; and there are endless amateur stagings every year all around the world.