Sign of the Times

ADOPTIONS ARE MUCH IN THE NEWS these days, particularly those involving celebrities or gay couples. Thus, Mo‘olelo Performing Arts Company, the gutsy little troupe that tackles big issues, again is demonstrating timeliness. The group commissioned Kimber Lee, a playwright-actress who happens to be a Korean adoptee, to do a script based on three years of research and interviews. The result is The Adoption Project: Triad (March 17–April 1), which the mobile Mo‘olelo is doing at Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park.

Artistic director Seema Sueko stages the play, which she says “touches on the very real feelings of loss, fear and vulnerability that are shared by all three members of the adoption triad: adoptee, birth parent and adoptive parent.” The various perspectives, she says, are depicted in multifaceted ways, including humor, fantasy and dance.

As usual, Mo‘olelo has recruited a crackerjack cast: Linda Libby, Jo Anne Glover and Sandy Campbell. “The actors will get a terrific workout with this production,” Sueko says. “They each play a variety of roles, running the gamut from an adult adoptee to Barbara Walters—who is an adoptive mother—to a June Cleaver prototype to a Girl Scout den mother.” Erika Malone choreographs.

NEXT ON THE BROADWAY/SAN DIEGO SCHEDULE is Altar Boyz (March 6-11), a title that might give pause to those who remember that in October, B/SD brought us Doubt, the acclaimed drama about a nun who suspects a priest of child abuse. Have no trepidation. This one’s a musical comedy, without a serious note in its book. It opened in New York in March 2005, won that season’s Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding off-Broadway musical and continues to run. It has even spawned a cult, the Altarholics.

The story, conceived by Marc Kessler and Ken Davenport with book by Kevin Del Aguila, concerns a Christian boy band trying to make the big time with a gig in New York—not the most welcoming venue for religious acts. The guys, however, have a plan. They’ll bring along a new digital machine that measures lost souls, then purify the audience until the counter drops to zero.

Like Forever Plaid, Boyz is as much concert as theater, but with more dance moves. Unlike Plaid, the music by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker is new, with all the pop rhythms, including hip-hop. The score includes those bound-to-be-classics “Girl, You Make Me Wanna Wait” and “Jesus Called Me on My Cell Phone.”

BRENDON FOX, who in 2005 left his seven-year post as associate director at the Old Globe to work in L.A., has popped back in town to direct the West Coast debut of Evan Smith’s The Uneasy Chair for the North Coast Rep (February 24–March 25). It’s the kind of material Fox likes—a modern twist on Victorian comedies of manners, centering on a prim London spinster whose limited finances force her to rent a room to a retired sea captain. Their delicate and thorny relationship grows more complicated when he tries to make a match between her niece and his nephew, and the landlady believes she is being wooed by her boarder. It doesn’t turn out the way you might expect.

FROM 1979 TO 1990, Lyric Opera San Diego was the Gilbert & Sullivan Company, annually performing a schedule comprising works from the canon of the renowned British duo. Then the troupe changed its name to San Diego Comic Opera and expanded its repertoire. Now, under its current (permanent?) name and in its fine new home at the North Park Theatre, the company harks back to its roots, performing a G&S favorite, Iolanthe, March 16–April 1. Artistic director J. Sherwood Montgomery plays the Lord Chancellor, with Martha Jane Weaver as the Fairy Queen.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »