Worth a repeat performance

Tom Titus

You might think that the last thing Tim Nelson and Diane

Makas-Weber would want to do after working through September and

October on the musical “Side Show” would be to plunge right into

another production of the same show. But that’s exactly what they’re

doing.

Director/musical director Nelson and choreographer Weber -- who

helmed the Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts

production -- have joined guest director Teri Ralston, the Orange

County musical actress who made it big on Broadway and has returned

to pass on her experience to local students.

Ralston is directing “Side Show” for the Santa Ana Academy for the

Performing Arts program, with Nelson and Weber aboard as musical

director and choreog- rapher, respectively. The show opens the first

week of December.

Ralston made her mark in local theater before heading for New

York, was a member of the original cast of three Broadway shows --

“Company,” “A Little Night Music” and “The Baker’s Wife.” The first

two, written by legendary composer Stephen Sondheim, were huge

successes.

The veteran singer/actress/director has amassed a long and

impressive list of credits on Broadway, in L.A. theater and on

television since she played the teenage Luisa in a Laguna Playhouse

production of “The Fantasticks” back in 1965.

These days, Ralston is in residence at the Laguna home she’s owned

for 15 years -- that is, on those rare occasions when she’s not

teaching a class in musical theater at South Coast Repertory or UC

Irvine.

Born in Colorado, she moved to the art colony at the age of 12 and

soon fell under the influence of a favorite teacher, who plucked

young Teri from one of her classes and entered the then-inexperienced

student in an Orange County theater competition in a scene from the

play “Hello, Out There.”

Ralston won a best actress award for that effort -- the first of a

plethora of honors which would fall her way -- and her career choice

was cemented. As a college student, she returned to Laguna for her

“Fantasticks” role in a production that also featured Mike Farrell

(“M*A*S*H,” “Providence”) as El Gallo.

Ralston has come a long way since that summer production of “The

Fantasticks” in Laguna. Bernadette Peters may be the definitive

Stephen Sondheim musical actress, but Ralston must be right behind

her. She performed in the original productions of Sondheim’s

“Company” and “A Little Night Music,” which she left, incidentally,

to star in “Annie Get Your Gun” at Laguna’s Irvine Bowl, as well as

the lesser-known musical “The Baker’s Wife,” and has both directed

and performed in a tribute to the composer, “Side by Side by

Sondheim” with Peggy Lee. She’s also played Sally in two productions

of “Follies,” as well as Mama Rose in “Gypsy” -- all Sondheim

creations.

As a director, Ralston has helmed Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” at

USC, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in Alaska and

“A Little Night Music” in Thousand Oaks. She joined the reunion of

the original “Company” cast at the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and

New York’s Lincoln Center.

And that’s just the Sondheim section of her credits. Ralston has

headlined productions of “I’m Getting My Act Together” and “Taking It

on the Road” and “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”

-- her first show in New York. She starred as “Mame” at the South Bay

Civic Light Opera and has directed “Man of La Mancha,” “My One and

Only,” “Me and My Girl” and “No, No, Nanette.”

She’s not exclusively a musical actress, either. Ralston has been

featured in a number of straight plays, including South Coast

Repertory’s original production of Craig Lucas’ “Prelude to a Kiss,”

Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Women” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” along with

“The Octette Bridge Club.”

TV audiences have seen Ralston on “Frasier,” “Dharma and Greg,”

“Wings,” “Murder She Wrote,” “One Day at a Time,” “Married with

Children” and the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

Her awards (including a “woman of the year in theater” accolade in

this column, a distinction she shares with one-time “man of the year”

Nelson) would fill several volumes, but one she’s most appreciative

of came just this past April when the Arts Orange County proclaimed

her the outstanding individual artist of 2001 in the performing arts.

“I really love being back in Orange County,” she said, noting that

she’s been renting her L.A. digs to such personages as Chita Rivera.

“I had set out to find a way of staying in Laguna. I guess you really

can go home again.”

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Independent.