July 18, 2004
Give My Regards to Bellport
By JULIA C. MEAD
Bellport
A SWARM of lithe young bodies slithered and writhed across the stage, muscles rippling in spandex, tribal tattoos peeking from under cut-away T-shirts. Hands curled like paws, a blond amazon in camouflage pants leaped into the center of the pack, then spun in a pirouette so fierce that the rest of the mob slinked off.
And you thought "Cats" was gone forever. But in regional theater, what was old is always new.
Macavity, Old Deuteronomy, the aging glamourpuss Grizabella and the other Jellicle cats have found their 10th life at the Gateway Playhouse here. That's about 60 miles from the Winter Garden Theater, where the Tony Award-winning musical closed in October 2000 after running for 18 years.
Bellport isn't quite Broadway. With malls, swimming pools and Girl Scout troops, it sits at the epicenter of suburban Long Island. But it's close enough for the thousands of theatergoers who flock here and to nearby Patchogue each summer to see professional actors they've never heard of perform in recently retired musical blockbusters like "Cats" and "Miss Saigon" and reliable workhorses like "Carousel" and "Gypsy." Gateway, which opened in 1941 as a hotel with a theater in the barn, is Long Island's only regional theater that regularly stages Broadway musicals.
And there is common ground between the community of players that Gateway brings together each summer and the community of theater fans it draws each season. The audiences crave a taste of Broadway extravagance, as do the actors, the set builders and even the ushers. And who can beat the convenience, even if it is Broadway on a budget?
"There's an invisible wall somewhere out in Queens that Long Islanders don't want to cross," said Paul Allan, Gateway's producer and a grandson of the theater's founders. In other words, the lights of Broadway may beckon, but it's called Long Island for a reason; many residents view a night at the theater in Manhattan as exhausting, he said.
"Cats" opened July 7 and runs through Saturday. "Carousel" and "Swingtime Canteen" preceded it in May and June; "Gypsy," "Fosse," then "Cabaret" will follow, from late July through late September. Depending on the expected crowd, performances are either at Gateway's 500-seat theater at its Bellport compound, or in the 1,166-seat Patchogue Theater. Mr. Allan declined to specify how many tickets are sold each season.
Arriving in Bellport an hour early for a recent Wednesday matinee of "Swingtime Canteen," a crowd of older theater fans climbed off the Huntington Terrace adult home van. Seated under a tent outside the theater, four white-haired women commented sotto voce on the quantity of meat in their boxed-lunch sandwiches.
"I can't go to Manhattan; it's just too strenuous," said Grace Vehrman, 81. "Here, we can have lunch under the tent, and it's lovely to come here as a community. You can't do that in Manhattan."
"Cats" is being staged in Patchogue, but during the run-up to its opening, the action was in Bellport. The performers rehearsed in one building under the eye of the director and choreographer, D. J. Salisbury, and his assistant, Tesha Buss, who spent two years in the Broadway cast. In the yard, the stage crew built the Jellicle Junkyard, complete with a gigantic tire, broken windows and a giant Friskies box.
"The Winter Garden spent four months building its set, but we only have two weeks," said Kelly Tighe, the set designer whose credits include regional productions of "Titanic" and "Kiss Me Kate."
As his crew sloshed charcoal-gray paint onto platforms, a topless young woman swam laps in the oval pool nearby, behind a former hotel now used for cast housing. Three generations of the Allan family have run Gateway, and Mr. Allan's sister, Robin Joy Allan, is the current artistic and casting director.
She said Gateway's productions gain a cohesiveness that comes from cast and crew living and working together on the compound for several weeks. "Achieving that closeness is hard in New York," Mr. Allan said, "when they just show up to rehearse and leave."
The volunteer ushers, wearing maroon vests, filtered into the theater for the "Swingtime" matinee as Marianne Dominy, the costume coordinator, ironed a white gown. "I used to work in bridal shops, and there everything had to be perfect up close," she said. "This is much more fun. But some of these costumes are old. This dress is self-destructing."
In a workshop beneath the stage, Jody Denney built a copy of Macavity's wig by gluing strands of orange "fur" to a net. A complete set of new "Cats" wigs would have cost $29,000, Mr. Allan said. Instead, he bought a used set from a Westchester theater. A show that strives to be as professional and entertaining as Broadway is what draws the crowds, but regional theater, with its smaller audiences, smaller stages and shorter runs, must find ways to be creative on a shoestring, he said.
Most of Gateway's performers are stage veterans, but don't expect to see Betty Buckley or Natasha Richardson reprise their Tony-winning roles as Grizabella or Sally Bowles. Regional theaters are steppingstones. The pros who have played supporting roles on the Great White Way may snare a regional lead, and hungry newcomers without Broadway credits typically land supporting roles.
Jennifer Zimmerman performed on Broadway in "Les Misérables" and on national tours of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "Evita." At Gateway, she landed the plum role, Grizabella, so will sing "Memory." "People think regional theater gets the leftovers, the second-rate performers, but it's not true," Ms. Zimmerman said. "Broadway has become so commercial, which means experienced, talented professionals have to step aside when a movie star takes the lead. So we reach out to regional theater."
Jodie Langel has performed at Gateway twice, the first time after playing Cosette, the female lead in "Les Misérables" on Broadway. "With 'Les Miz' I had a week to rehearse, but Gateway had a whole process that I hadn't experienced since college," she said. "You get the creative experience you don't have in corporate theater."
Ms. Langel co-wrote a pertinent book published in April, "Making It on Broadway: Actors' Tales of Climbing to the Top" (Allworth Press). Based on interviews with 55 Tony winners, it laments the rise of the Disneyfied, corporate megamusical, but observes that the phenomenon has pushed many pros seeking innovation and creativity toward regional theater. "The Broadway musical has changed from an art form to an industry," she said, so regional theater can provide "a place to re-examine why we went into the business. That's where the true art form is now."
One way to be creative, Mr. Allan said, is to cast against type. Ms. Zimmerman is younger than the traditional Grizabella, and William Thomas Evans is a bass baritone singing Old Deuteronomy, a part usually sung by a tenor.
Another path toward creativity is to stretch the boundaries drawn by the "Cats" creator, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Gateway must strictly adhere to the official version's musical arrangement, lyrics and more. Still, there's room to push the back story to center stage, explaining more fully that the setting is a night of sacred significance for the Jellicle cats and developing certain characters more fully, said Jeff Buchsbaum, the musical director. There's also room for new choreography, Mr. Salisbury said.
Several performers said the payoff at Gateway was artistic freedom, different and better roles, and six weeks near the beach. Plus, it's close enough to Manhattan to zip there for an audition and return in time for makeup. "Openings on Broadway are few and far between," Ms. Zimmerman said. "And given the choice between an ensemble on Broadway and a lead in regional, we'll take the lead."
Gavin Esham spent much of last year as the lead in a European tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar," and has seen his share of stateside regional theaters too. He's now playing Rum Tum Tugger. "In the beginning, I used to hate those audiences," he said, sighing. "But I have to say that, if we didn't have people who so faithfully got on the bus to come see us, most of us wouldn't have jobs."
Allison Bonham, a 14-year-old bundle of boundless enthusiasm who plays the youngest cat, Sillabub, perhaps epitomizes what good regional theater is about. "When I'm onstage, sometimes I can't believe I'm there with the stage lights on me and a big audience watching," she said. "It's so exciting, and I can imagine myself doing it my whole life."
She had never seen "Cats," but when she got the call to play Sillabub, her parents rented the video, bought the soundtrack and gave her a kitten, which she named Sillabub. Still, her parents keep warning her that pursuing a career in the theater might mean waiting on tables for a living.
"I still want to do it," Ms. Bonham said.
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