On Theater: ‘Moonlight’ shone brightest at Playhouse

Looking back over the past year of productions at the Laguna Playhouse, as this column is wont to do each December, the task of choosing one particular favorite among the six or seven candidates usually proves quite difficult.

Not this year. The playhouse’s rendition of “Moonlight and Magnolias” clearly outshone an impressive field.

Or, as this column put it, “the Laguna Playhouse is presenting an absolutely hilarious account of the rewriting period involving producer David O. Selznick, screenwriter Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming — the latter two summoned three weeks into the original production.”

That motion picture, of course, was “Gone With the Wind,” and, again referencing this column, “Judging by playwright Ron Hutchinson’s concept of how the script came together, audiences might have applauded the weeklong cramming session even more than the movie itself.

“It’s a huge triumph as well for playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle, whose staging is perpetually laugh-inducing.”

For pure entertainment and nostalgia, the runner-up has to be “My Way,” the tribute to singing legend Frank Sinatra, who once said, “You only live once, but the way I do it, once is enough.”

That life was celebrated with “class, verve and gusto” by a cast of four terrific voices under the direction of the show’s creator, David Grapes.

Bunched together in third place are “Ella,” the tuneful biographic sketch of singer Ella Fitzgerald, and “Winter Wonderettes,” the most recent attraction on the playhouse stage.

As for individual excellence, we again turn to “Moonlight and Magnolias” where producer David O. Selznick was “superbly played by Jeff Marlow as an ambitious young Turk married to the daughter of MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer and desperately striving to escape from L.B.’s shadow.”

Two other exceptional performances stood out during 2009. Adrian Sparks delivered “a superlative performance of both intellectual cunning and visceral fire” in “An Empty Plate in the Café de Grand Boeuf,” while “the remarkable Tina Fabrique in the title role ‘becomes’ Ella Fitzgerald in short order, singing and scatting her way through nearly two dozen of her most noteworthy numbers and earning, on opening night, two standing ovations.”

Two other actors from “Moonlight and Magnolias,” Leonard Kelly-Young and Brendan Ford, made their presence felt, while a trio from “Around the World in 80 Days” also shone — Matthew Floyd Miller, Gendell Hernandez and Howard Swain.

Completing the list of exceptionally impressive artists from the 2009 season are Maripat Donovan, heading the one-nun show in “Till Death Do Us Part: Late Nite Catechism 3,” and Misty Cotton, the little gal with the big voice in “Winter Wonderettes.”

It was a bountiful year of laughter and music at the Laguna Playhouse. And, if you missed “Moonlight and Magnolias,” it’ll be on stage in 2010 at the Huntington Beach Playhouse.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.