Company- Camarillo Skyway Playhouse- Camarillo

Camarillo Skyway Playhouse presents the Tony Award-winning musical comedy "COMPANY" 

As part of the 2013 season entitled "Metamorphosis", Camarillo Skyway Playhouse is proud to present its' first musical of the season, Stephen Sondheim's story of love, marriage, and a man named Robert who can't seem to commit to either of those concepts. On the eve of his 35th birthday, Robert contemplates his married friends, his various girlfriends, and life in New York City through a series of witty and funny vignettes. Winner of 6 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Music & Lyrics, and Best Book as well as various Drama Desk Awards and Laurence Olivier Awards, "COMPANY" looks at relationships in an honest and funny way with classic songs such as “The Ladies Who Lunch”, “You Could Drive a Person Crazy”, and “Being Alive”.

"COMPANY" runs through April 28th, 2013. Fridays and Saturdays are at 8:00 PM with Sunday matinees at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $18 for adults, $13 for students, seniors, and military, and $10 for children. Group rates are available.

Online ticketing for all performances can be found here: http://skywayplayhouse.bpt.me/

Camarillo Skyway Playhouse is located at 330 Skyway Drive in Camarillo, CA 93010. For more information call (805) 388-5716, email atinfo@skywayplayhouse.org or visit the website at www.skywayplayhouse.org . Rita Moran of the Ventura County Star says Alex Choate as Robert "proves an engaging song and dance man and an actor with the ability to express a lot with a subtle touch. Whether he’s slack-faced with disappointment or shocked at his friends’ foibles, he’s a magnet for attention. And if all else fails, there’s that wayward curl across his brow and a mischievous smile that keeps the ladies wondering if he’s looking their way."

Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2013/mar/27/theater-review-company-comes-to-the-camarillo/#ixzz2PPzZ9KkR
- vcstar.com

View "Company" Teaser Trailer at Camarillo Skyway Playhouse

Assassins- Camarillo Skyway Playhouse, Camarillo

Camarillo Skyway Playhouse closes its 2012 season of "The American Experience" with Stephen Sondheim's landmark musical, "Assassins" 

Opening Friday, September 28th. Exploring the darker side of the American Dream, the assassins and would-be assassins come together to examine success, failure, fame, and the drive for power in American society. Winner of five Tony Awards including Best Revival on Broadway as well as the Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical, it includes classic Sondheim dark comedy into an imaginary world where the various assassins talk to each other about their hopes and dreams. It incorporates history, the true words of the men and women into the musical, as well as memorable and haunting songs such as "Everybody's Got the Right", "Unworthy of Your Love", and "Something Just Broke". It is a musical that confronts pain in order to heal our society - a true modern classic that you won't want to miss! 
Tickets are $18 for adults, $13 for students, seniors, and military with group rates available. Call (805) 388-5716 or email boxoffice@skywayplayhouse.org to reserve your tickets. 
Showtimes are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM, running fromSeptember 28th through November 4th, 2012. "Assassins" is directed by Brian Robert Harris, produced by Dean Johnson with music direction by David Watkins and conducted by Susan T. Calkins. This show is not recommended for small children.

Review: Assassins- Camarillo Acorn

Dark comedy takes aim

Musical explores nine assailants of American presidents

By Cary Ginell

originjazz@aol.com

Camarillo Acorn

DANGEROUS—Sara Jane Moore (Julie Bermel) meets Lynette“Squeaky”Fromme (Randi Saxer) in this dark comedy about presidential assailants. “Assassins” plays through Nov. 4 at Camarillo Skyway Playhouse. Courtesy Barbara MazeikaJohn Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald:

 “Move your little finger and you can change 

the world.” That sentence sums up Stephen 

Sondheim’s “Assassins,” a sneeringly cynical 

musical that groups nine historical 

presidential assailants in a “Twilight Zone”-like 

revue of comic malevolence.

Not only is it one of the more difficult 

Broadway shows to perform, its dark premise is revulsive to many theatergoers.

Originally staged off-Broadway in 1990, “Assassins” closed after only 73 performances. 

Two years later, a London production fared no better.

When “Assassins” finally reached Broadway in 2004, it won five Tony awards, including 

Best Revival of a Musical.

Camarillo Skyway Playhouse producer Dean Johnson and director Brian Robert Harris 

deserve double points not only for attempting to stage the show but for doing so right 

before Election Day.

“Assassins” memorably traverses time and space, with historical criminals interacting with 

one another. Where else can Charles Guiteau, who shot President James Garfield in 

1881, clumsily seduce Sara Jane Moore, who took a potshot at Gerald Ford 

nearly a century later? The bizarre confluence of the deluded assailants 

and their perverted rationales is tied together in the setting of a shooting gallery, 

run by a gruesomely jovial carnival barker played by Louis Graham.

Familiar patriotic numbers such as “Hail to the Chief” and Sousa’s “El Capitan” march 

are stretched and distorted to reflect the twisted perversion of the characters’ 

polluted patriotism.Sondheim’s score is deliberately dissonant, with the singers’ 

parts often sonically at odds with Susan Calkins’ three-piece orchestra.

Sondheim customized the songs to the eras in which each assassin lived, “The Ballad 

of Booth” sounding like a Stephen Foster banjo ditty and the love song John

 Hinckley composes for Jodie Foster deliberately amateurish.

The Camarillo cast labored for four months on the difficult songs, and although much 

of the singing is shaky at times, the acting is universally excellent, with several 

performances standing out. Jim Seerden is shattering as Samuel Byck, 

who was foiled in a 1974 attempt on the life of Richard Nixon. A raving lunatic in 

a Santa Claus suit, Byck rants to conductor Leonard Bernstein through a 

hand-held tape recorder and then to Nixon himself.

Randi Saxer plays Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, one of the lesser-known acolytes of 

mass murder mastermind Charles Manson until she took a shot at Gerald Ford in 

1975. A beguiling actress much more attractive than the plain would-be murderess 

she is portraying, Saxer is chilling in a particularly bloodthirsty performance. Her 

duet with Eric Umali as Hinckley in “Unworthy of Your Love” is the musical highlight 

of the show.  Alex Choate plays John Wilkes Booth with self-pitying nobility. 

The scene in which he and the other assassins persuade a suicidal Oswald (Andy Justus) 

to shoot down John F. Kennedy is superbly disquieting.

In this circus full of triggerh appy fruit- cakes, Julie Bermel’s Sara Jane Moore is 

the nuttiest of all. A foppish five- time divorcee, Moore missed Ford only because 

her gun was misaligned. Bermel’s whacked-out scene with Saxer’s Squeaky is 

horrifically funny as they joust about their respective obsessions.

Kyle Johnson as anarchist Leon Czolgosz ( President McKinley’s assassin), 

Evan Boelsen as Guiteau and Luis Soto’s anguished FDR sniper Giuseppe Zangara 

are equally creepy and effective. Kellie Holm ties everything together as The Balladeer, 

who acts as the Greek chorus of the show.

Due to the unsettling subject matter, gunfire and frequent profanity, “Assassins” is definitely not for 

children. But if you appreciate imaginative black comedy, you’ll have a blast.

“Assassins” plays through Nov. 4. For tickets, call (805) 388-5716 or go online to 

www.skywayplayhouse.org.

http://www.thecamarilloacorn.com/news/2012-10-05/On_The_Town/Dark_comedy_takes_aim.html

Review: The Farnsworth Invention- Ventura County Star

Ventura County Star

'West Wing' creator explores the birth of TV in Camarillo play Who invented TV?

• By Rita Moran
• Posted August 1, 2012 at 2:47 p.m.
• http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/aug/01/west-wing-creator-explores-the-birth-of-tv-in/

A world without television would be a world few today could imagine. But there was such a world, just as there was one without radio, and without motion pictures.

Thanks to Philo T. Farnsworth, a Utah farm boy with a flair for electronic and mechanical invention, TV arrived sooner than it might have, even though he didn't always get full credit for his crucial contributions.

The battle among a multitude of potential innovators at various U.S. research and business sites is a focus of Aaron Sorkin's play "The Farnsworth Invention," now on stage at Camarillo Skyway Playhouse. At 13, Farnsworth was the youngest to envision all-electronic television and his insights were phenomenal. Sorkin, who many TV fans will remember as creator-writer of "The West Wing" series, brings the same kind of quick-and-clever dialogue to the stage that he did to the tube. That's both a virtue, thanks to the riveting intensity it produces, and a bit of a drawback as technical information comes at an audience fast and furious, leaving some at opening night missing essential strains of the argument, while at least catching the funniest of the comeuppances delivered. Farnsworth's relentless drive and many-faceted mind can at times be as confusing as it is compelling.

Central figures in the cast do their utmost to deliver the information-laden lines crisply and persuasively. Best at communicating the fast-moving text is Patrick Beckstead in the title role. From the opening scene when as a bumptious student he asks his new science teacher if he can skip the basic course and the teacher says no, it's obvious something's in the air. The next day Farnsworth produces his "homework," a mass of papers that cover the entire course, and the teacher changes his mind.

From that moment on, Beckstead, as convincing as a grown up as a kid, fuels Farnsworth's fire though endless experimentation on crucial elements of TV transmission, working with only a few friends who are equally surprising innovators.

The major confrontation of the play, it turns out, comes from another young man, David Sarnoff, who emigrated with his mother and siblings from Europe to America in 1900, when he was 9. Sarnoff was a driving force in the expansion of radio, eventually heading Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and alert enough to recognize the possibilities of television as an even more world-changing communications force. Of course, it took quite a while before the technical problems of making television actually work were solved. And possibly, some shenanigans to latch on to Farnsworth's key work. The smooth Sarnoff is effectively played by Eric Mello, who gets to utter the words that define him in Sorkin's play, "The ends do justify the means … that's what means are for."

Sorkin's play has been criticized by some history buffs for its crucial courtroom scene in which Farnsworth loses the patent-right contest. It seems that he actually won, but that would have made a different kind of story. The explanation centers on the fact that there was more than one legal skirmish and that Farnsworth lost some even while ultimately winning and going on to invent many other patents in his areas of interest.

Director Elissa Anne Polansky effectively handles the cast of 23, many in multiple roles, with action taking place against a simple backdrop that includes a second-level area to accommodate a continuous flow of scenes. There are familiar faces in the cast along with welcome new ones, all obviously committed to a serious performance of the play, presented for the first time on a major county stage.

But the most striking element of the production comes at the opening when two large screens on either side of the stage come alive with unforgettable television moments, from grainy shots of Walter Cronkite announcing John F. Kennedy's death and the appropriately unearthly sight of an American walking on the moon to silly flash-by shots of Lucy and Desi, "All in the Family" and Richard Nixon gamely intoning "Sock it to me!"

Now that television and other means of mass communication have flooded the world the question no longer seems to be how are we going to communicate with the rest of humanity, but can we try to make what we send out worth the electronic trip?

"The Farnsworth Invention" may not be the most colorful drama onstage, but it is a timely reminder of what life was like before TV, and how much struggle went into making it a reality.

'The Farnsworth Invention'

Aaron Sorkin's take on Philo T. Farnsworth's battle to create television in the early years of the 20th century will be staged through Aug. 26 at the Camarillo Skyway Playhouse, 330 Skyway Drive, Camarillo. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $18 general, $13 seniors, military and students; and $10 children 12 and younger. Call 388-5716 or visit skywayplayhouse.org.

Email Rita Moran at ritamoran@earthlink.net.

© 2012 Ventura County Star. All rights reserved. 

Assassins Auditions- Camarillo Skyway Playhouse, Camarillo

AUDITION ANNOUNCEMENT! 

“ASSASSINS” at Camarillo Skyway Playhouse – 

July 29^th and July 30^th by appointment from 7 PM-10PM with callbacks on August 1^st from 7 PM-10 PM. Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by John Weidman. Directed by Brian Robert Harris, Produced by Dean Johnson, Musical Direction by Dave Watkins.

Please be prepared to sing one song (either uptempo or ballad) that showcases your range best. Musical theater only, no pop or classical. Can be from a Sondheim-composed show but not required. No dance audition required. Callbacks will consist of singing and/or reading from the show.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO MAKE YOUR APPOINTMENT, CONTACT PRODUCER DEAN JOHNSON AT dean.johnson373@roadrunner.com OR (805) 285-0730

FOR SPECIFIC QUESTIONS, CONTACT DIRECTOR BRIAN ROBERT HARRIS AT brianrobertharris1979@yahoo.com

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

The Balladeer: 18-40, tenor, Woody Guthrie/Joan Baez type, open to casting male or female and all ethnicities, must have strong acting chops and a storyteller’s presence, ability to play guitar or banjo a plus.

John Wilkes Booth: 25-35, baritone, intense, darkly handsome and charismatic. Requires an exceptional actor.

Charles Guiteau: 35-40, tenor, bright, sunny, completely out-of-his-gourd insane.

Leon Czolgosz: 25-32, bass, brooding, uneducated, blue collar, strong sense of being wronged. Has a slight Eastern European accent.

Giuseppe Zangara: 25-35, tenor, angry, heavily-accented immigrant. Mostly speaks Italian. Under 5’5 is a plus.

Samuel Byck: 35-50, baritone, hysterically irate loser in a Santa suit. Not as much singing for this role.

John Hinckley: 18-25, baritone, depressed college student obsessed with Jodie Foster. Ability to play guitar a plus.

Lee Harvey Oswald: 20-30, tenor, suicidal and lonely, may be doubled with the Balladeer, but if not does not sing much. Preference is for someone who really looks like Oswald.

Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme: 18-25, mezzo, hippie girl with a very sharp and dangerous edge, a follower of Charles Manson.

Sara Jane Moore: 30-45, mezzo, overwhelmed, confused, clumsy housewife.

The Proprietor: 30-55, baritone, runs the shooting gallery. Friendly carnival barker type, but must have vague air of menace. Will also play in the ensemble.

Ensemble: All ages, all genders, all types, ideally around 10-15. Seeking a microcosm of America. Ensemble members will play supporting roles, including Emma Goldman and some of the assassins’ victims, and have several key songs, including “Something Just Broke”, a number which is solely for them.

Ability to play musical instruments is a plus for all actors auditioning.

1776- Camarillo Skyway Playhouse, Camarillo

Camarillo Skyway Playhouse is proud to present "1776" ,

Where John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson fight for freedom and draft the Declaration of Independence. This affectionate musical portrays the founding fathers not as the legendary icons they sometimes become in history books, but as the real human beings they were. The story focuses on John Adams as he attempts to persuade his future fellow Americans to vote for independence and break free of England. 
The original production was nominated for five Tony Awards and won three, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. It's a riveting musical filled with history, humor and romance. Celebrate the founding of America just in time for the Fourth of July! 


The musical runs from June 1st through July 8th, 2012 with performances at 8 PM on Fridays and Saturdays and Sunday matinees at 2 PM. 
Ticket prices are $18 for adults, $13 for students, seniors, and military, and $10 for children. Group discounts are available -- call the Box Office at (805) 388-5716 for more information. Reservations can be made by emailing boxoffice@skywayplayhouse.org or by calling the theatre. For special discounts, follow CSP on Twitter at @SkywayPlayhouse or visit the website at www.skywayplayhouse.org as well.