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Whidbey Xtra! WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2016 | Vol. 1, No. 43 | WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM | FREE
Last weekend to see Playhouse’s ‘Moon Over Buffalo’
By RON NEWBERRY
rnewberry@whidbeynewsgroup.com
Dann Davies’ lines came back quicker than he thought they would. Three months ago, the actor from Anacortes won the part of George Hay, the central character in the comedy, “Moon Over Buffalo,” which opened Feb. 5 at the Whidbey Playhouse. At 66, Davies figured that memorizing his lines could pose a bigger challenge than during his earlier years in theater but knew he had a big advantage. Davies had played the same character in the same play at the same venue in 1998. “It was easier that I knew the character and also it was a blessing because the lines all came back,” Davies said. But there was one problem, Davies admitted with a chuckle. He started hearing voices from 18 years ago. “When I first started learning the lines, of course, I’m used to hearing the other actors’ voices in their roles giving me my cues,” he said. “So now pretty much I’ve got this cast in my mind. Now these voices have replaced those voices.” Bringing back popular plays from the past has been a theme of the Whidbey Playhouse’s 50th anniversary season. All six plays this season have been performed before on the playhouse stage. “I’ve done a lot of shows that I love to do and this was certainly
Photo by Ron Newberry
Ingrid Schwalbe plays Charlotte Hay in the comedy, ‘Moon Over Buffalo,’ which wraps up at the Whidbey Playhouse in Oak Harbor on Feb. 21. one of them that we had the most fun,” Davies said. “So when I heard that this was going to be done this season for the 50th anniversary, I thought, ‘I think I could still play that role again.’ It’s a completely different cast. Gaye Litka was my wife before. And Gaye was very nervous the opening weekend because her daughter was due to deliver her first grandchild. And now she’s a senior in high school. That’s how the years slide by.” This time around, the wife, Charlotte Hay, is played by Ingrid
Schwalbe, an actress with a professional theater background who moved to Oak Harbor a year ago and made her Whidbey Playhouse debut during “The Lion in Winter” in November. The door-slamming farce, written by Ken Ludwig, revolves around the bickering Hays, two traveling theater actors who have more drama in their own lives than onstage. Set in 1953 in Buffalo, N.Y., the play centers on the conflicting dreams of Charlotte Hay, who aspires to be a Hollywood film star,
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and George, who is content with the theater, which he believes to be superior. When it is discovered that George has had an affair with a young actress, who is pregnant with his child, the couple’s marriage starts to come apart at the seams and Charlotte is determined to leave her husband. Her stance softens, however, when she learns that a famous film director is looking for emergency replacements for a current film and wants to see the couple perform onstage. But by that time, George has complicated matters by drowning himself in self-pity and alcohol. Bob Hendrix, the show’s director, said he laughed out loud the first time he read the play and knew it was a comedy he wanted to be a part of. He is teaming up with his wife, Rusty Hendrix, the show’s producer. Both are pleased with the cast and crew and also proud of the latest Hendrix to be a part of a playhouse production. Their grandson, Landon Hendrix, 11, is handling the lights while grandma watches at his side. “He’s amazing,” Rusty Hendrix said. “I don’t do anything. I just sit here. I watch.” “It’s fun,” said Landon, a fifth grader at Broad View Elementary. “I like doing it.” The production hasn’t come without challenges. One of the original cast members had to depart the show in December, leaving Bob Hendrix to
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re-cast the role of Eileen, the young actress who has the affair with the play’s main character. Kaitlin Barrailler, a freshman from Oak Harbor High School, was one of two acting students from the playhouse’s youth drama program, the Would Be Players, who auditioned, and she won the part. In her playhouse debut, Barrailler, 14, plays a character who is supposed to be in her early 20s and learns she’s pregnant. “I was kind of nervous at first because I was like, ‘I’ve never been pregnant before! How do you play a pregnant woman?’” Barrailler said. “And then my dad was like super not cool with it. But everyone was super supportive, especially Ingrid and all of the other women in the cast for giving me tips on how to be a more mature woman. It was really wonderful.” Rusty Hendrix, who’s also the playhouse president, said extra care was taken to be sure Barrailler and her family understood the nature of the mature role she was about to tackle. Hendrix said Barrailler has done an excellent job during rehearsals. “Little things don’t embarrass her,” Hendrix said, “so I think she can pull the part off 100 percent.” Hendrix also gave credit to Stan Thomas, who directs the playhouse’s youth program. “He trains students to do any role,” she said. The play concludes Feb. 21.