Comedy, mystery and music at Vanguard

Tom Titus

Vanguard University of Southern California, once known as Southern

California College, has come up with a 2002-03 theater season that

touches most entertainment bases -- comedy, mystery and music.

The Costa Mesa college has a four-show season of vintage plays

scheduled, but will bring back a popular entry from past seasons to

kick things off early in September. It’s “The Road Most Traveled,” a

musical romp through the defining moments of growing up.

This time around, it’s being directed by senior student Rachel

Hart and will take its audiences through “the horrors, the wonders

and the humiliating moments that every human experiences in the

pursuit of conquering childhood.”

The coming-of-age musical will be offered for one weekend only,

Sept. 5 through 8 at 8 p.m., with a matinee Sept. 7 at 2 p.m. in the

college’s Lyceum Theater. The Vanguard season officially begins in

October with one of the most noteworthy plays in history -- Agatha

Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap,’ which has been entertaining London

audiences since the 1950s. Greg Mortensen is directing this

celebrated whodunit, which strands its characters in a rural

countryside inn with murder in the air.

You can match wits with the actors (if you haven’t already seen

the show) Oct. 18 through 20 and 24 through 27. Curtain is 8 p.m. for

the Thursday through Saturday performances and 2 p.m. for weekend

matinees, although the Oct. 24 show will start earlier, at 7 p.m.

Costa Mesa theatergoers who were disappointed when the Civic

Playhouse canceled “Charley’s Aunt” in favor of “Steel Magnolias”

last season will have their chance to catch the Brandon Thomas farce

at Vanguard beginning Nov. 15. Theater department chairman Susan K.

Berkompas will stage the frenzied farce.

For the uninitiated, Charley’s aunt is a college student in drag

impersonating a chaperone at a stuffy English boys’ school where two

of his fellow students wish to entertain their ladyfriends but are

bound by Victorian decorum. The play has a few miles on it (Jack

Benny starred in the movie version), but usually is quite appealing.

It plays through Nov. 24. “Fiddler on the Roof” was one of Broadway’s

biggest hits a few decades ago, and the “traditional” musical will

hit the Vanguard stage Feb. 20 under the direction of Carey Curtis

Smith, who staged the college’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor

Dreamcoat” last season.

This ever-popular story of Russian dairyman Tevye and his five

daughters caught in the country’s political upheaval will be

presented from Feb. 20 through March 3 and promises to fill the small

Lyceum stage to overflowing. The tone changes, but the locale doesn’t

when the Vanguard season closes in April. “Fools,” Neil Simon’s

tongue-in-cheek tale of a Russian village where everyone is the

village idiot, tells of a visiting schoolteacher determined to crack

the town’s curse of universal stupidity.

No director has yet been assigned to this project, which will

occupy the Lyceum from April 4 through 13.

Vanguard’s Lyceum Theater is located on the university campus at

55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, but may be more easily accessed from

Newport Boulevard. Tickets for the college’s season are available at

the door or can be reserved in advanced by calling (714) 668-6145.