Good Ideas No Mystery While Play Develops

Ventura County’s oldest continuing community theater, the Conejo Players, has a strong enough subscriber base that it can occasionally take chances and enough conviction to occasionally do so. For the next few weeks, the group is presenting two plays that otherwise probably wouldn’t get produced locally. One, “The Assassin’s New Friend,” is the premiere production of an English-style murder mystery; the other, running weekend matinees only, is “Falsettos,” a musical dealing with (among other things) a gay couple.

Like “Murder in the First,” now playing in Ventura, “The Assassin’s New Friend” is a work in progress, with director Marjorie A. Berg contributing changes to John Kaasik’s original script on the fly: As of this weekend, for instance, it’s reportedly more clear by the end who is guilty, of what--and why--than in earlier performances. And those are always nice things to establish in a murder mystery.

The story involves a writer of true crime fiction who answers a knock on his door one night and is greeted by a man who says someone is going to assassinate the writer’s neighbor. The audience figures out what’s going on before the writer does, and it’s like that through much of the play. Not that Kaasik doesn’t include plenty of twists and false trails, but his characters are so uniformly dumb that they behave like teenagers in a slasher movie. They aren’t very appealing, either; two are extremely brash and blustery, as well as thick-witted.

On the other hand, there are some good ideas here, and indications are that the play will continue to improve as the run continues. For those who enjoy this sort of thing, “The Assassin’s New Friend” may be worth seeing just to be among the first to be able to nudge the person next to you and explain what’s going on. It’s not fair to read the program too closely before the play, though; two significant plot points are revealed therein.

Dave Karen plays the writer; Lorraine MacDonald is his wife; Robert West is the mysterious stranger; Marc Honor and Maggie White play a lawyer and his wife; and Gary Cunial plays a house painter. MacDonald’s performance hints that she’d be effective in a comedy.

DETAILS

“The Assassin’s New Friend” continues Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. through July 15 at the Conejo Players Theater, 351 S. Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. Tickets are $10 Thursday, $12 Fridays and $14 Saturdays. For reservations or further information, call 495-3715.

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At first glance, “Falsettos” may seem the harder sell in Ventura County. The show follows a man, his wife, their son, their analyst and the man’s lover over a couple of years. It isn’t a comedy, though it has humorous moments, and all the dialogue is sung. The plot isn’t exactly set in the opening number, “Four Jews in a Room, Bitching,” but the irreverent tone is.

“Falsettos” originated in a series of three one-act musical plays by William Finn, the second and third co-written with sometime Stephen Sondheim collaborator James Lapine. Those two, “The March of the Falsettos” and “Falsettoland,” were subsequently combined to form “Falsettos,” which debuted on Broadway in 1992, playing just over a year.

The current production, ably directed by Shawn W. Lanz, is quite impressive and occasionally touching. And to those who may find the sung dialogue a little difficult to get used to (hint: Try to sit near the stage), Act II adds so much to the first act, it’s hard to understand how the first could ever have stood alone.

Steve Kirwan and Delaney Gibson play the couple--Marvin and Trina--with Alex Mastrovito especially impressive as their 12-year-old son (one scene takes place at his bar mitzvah); Tom Hand as the psychiatrist, Arryck Adams as Marvin’s lover; and Leslie Duval and Laura Danielle Lombardo as a lesbian couple next door. Marianne Robertson appears, briefly, as another of the analyst’s patients, and Charles Padilla leads the six-strong “Teeny Tiny Band.”

DETAILS

“Falsettos” continues Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. through July 15 at the Conejo Players Theater, 351 S. Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. Tickets are $7; no reservations will be taken. For further information, call 495-3715.

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Todd Everett can be reached at [email protected]