The Guffman Syndrome
on reviewing community theater

Writing about small town community theaters, I find myself constantly reevaluating my critical criteria. How critical should I be? Should I mention it when a leading actor flubs a line, or when someone answers a phone before it rings -- or should I assume these opening-night gaffs are going to be fixed in subsequent performances?

It would be different if I was a big shot critic in New York covering professional theater, but I’m not. The newspaper I write for is in a city of slightly less than 200,000 people, and our coverage area encompasses neighboring towns with populations ranging from 6,000 to 60,000. Community theater in these towns is put on by friends and neighbors, and I don’t want to be overly harsh in judging them. On the other hand, I don’t want to mislead readers by being overly generous. How to strike that balance is a constant consideration.

Actors, directors and stage hands in community theater work long hours, usually without pay, for the sheer joy of being involved in the magic that is theater. Most of them come to the stage after their regular jobs, be they school teachers, doctors or waiters. Some of them may have been acting since childhood and have theatrical experience commensurate with that of professional actors. Others may be trying their hand at acting for the first time.

We come to expect community theaters to look like the troop depicted in the movie "Waiting for Guffman." There are the classic examples we all know:

In other small towns I have seen rave reviews for such Guffman theaters gushing that the latest little theater performance is just as good as performances in bigger cities, thus tacitly admitting they are small time.

I have seen some classic Guffman moments. One of the worst was a performance with multiple scene changes with stage hands literally bumping into each other, going the wrong direction and moving the wrong objects. At one point the director actually walked out on stage during a scene change, grabbed a stage hand’s shoulders and turned him in the right direction.

But luckily for me (and all the theater fans around here), such moments are rare. Tacoma and Olympia are more sophisticated than a lot of towns of similar size, and we have some outstanding community theaters look much more like Off-Broadway than "Waiting for Guffman."

This brings me back to the question of what criteria I should go by when critiquing them. The director of one local theater has told me he hopes I review their productions according to the same criteria I would use when reviewing professional companies, because he would hope to be able to learn from my critiques. For the most part, that is exactly what I try to do. I try to approach the art of criticism not like a Gene Shalit, who feels he has every right to be as nasty as he wants when criticizing multi-million dollar movies, but rather the way a good teacher would criticize students. I try to be as positive as possible without being an unabashed cheerleader. If I have one failing, I suspect it may be that I tend to be overly generous, although you’d never guess that if you read some of the letters I’ve received from disgruntled actors and their fans.

South Puget Sound community theaters

Following are brief descriptions of theaters I regularly review:

Tacoma Actors Guild is the only fully professional theater in the South Sound region. They have recently undergone major changes in management and direction, and their upcoming season (2006-2007) looks promising. They have also instituted a new play series in collaboration with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance that promises to be an exciting addition to the region.

Harlequin Productions performs in the beautifully remodeled State Theater in downtown Olympia. It is a semi-professional theater, meaning they typically have one or two professional actors in each production, with the rest of the cast being seasoned amateurs. They are noted for risky scheduling. Every year they have at least one Shakespeare play (founder and artistic director Scot Whitney is a Shakespeare fanatic). Every summer they have a rollicking musical review (such as a salute to Motown) and every Christmas season they have a 1940s-style "radio broadcast" set in a New York nightclub called the Stardust (think "Prairie Home Companion" with swing music). Their music reviews and "radio broadcasts" are original productions written by Whitney and his wife, Linda, with musical direction by Scot’s brother Bruce.

Capital Playhouse is another performance company in Olympia that is sometimes referred to as semi-professional, even though it is rare when they bring in equity actors or directors. They specialize in musicals -- usually Broadway hits such as "Cabaret" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." They also try to have at least one extremely edgy play every season, such as "Urinetown" or "Hegwig and the Angry Inch." Founder and artistic director Jeff Kingsbury is a flamboyant and talented actor and singer who typically stars in one big production every year. The one complaint I have is that their space is too small for some of their more boisterous productions.

Olympia Little Theater is purely amateur, but the quality of their plays is top notch. They also host performances by Theater Artists Olympia (TAO), an edgier and more experimental theater group that put on one of the best performances of "Macbeth" I have ever seen.

Lakewood Playhouse is a small theater. Their plays are presented in the round, and their production values are typically excellent. Their play selections tend toward modern classics with social consciousness, and they are one of the few theaters in the region that produce the works of local playwrights.

Tacoma Little Theater produces a balance of drama, musicals, comedies and children’s plays. Some of their productions have been of uneven quality, but their best works are excellent. Some of the best things they have done have been big production musicals such as "Ain’t Misbehavin’" and "1776."

Tacoma Musical Playhouse also specializes, as the name implies, in big musicals -- the bigger the cast the better. Founder Jon Douglas Rake, who directs nearly all of their shows, is at his best when he has 20 or thirty singers and dancers on stage at once. Their annual musical version of Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol" is Broadway caliber (but, of course, without the expensive sets).

Encore! Theatre in the bedroom community of Gig Harbor is less polished than some of the other theaters in the area, and an outstanding training ground for performers. They also specialize in musicals. During the summer they do outdoor musicals on a large stage in a meadow. These are usually lighthearted entertainments that appeal to the whole family.

Centerstage in Federal Way bills itself as a professional theater, but strictly speaking it is more of a semi-professional house like Harlequin Productions. They avoid edgier plays and stick with ones that have popular appeal.

Beginning in the summer of 2005 I started a selection of the best in local theater for the region as an annual feature of my regular weekly column for The News Tribune. Go to "Critic’s Choice" to see my selections for the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 seasons.

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© 2006 by Alec Clayton