01/05 Thanks to Suzette Zurbano for the following articles:
12/3/99 Star-Ledger (Newark N.J.) 007
1999 WL 30211682
The Star-Ledger Newark, NJ
(c) 1999. The Star-Ledger. All rights reserved.
Friday, December 3, 1999
Ticket
NJ STAGE - Holiday oratorio made arduous trip to Millburn
Peter Filichia
Star-Ledger Staff
N.J. STAGE : REVIEW
King Island Christmas
Where: Paper Mill Playhouse, Brookside Drive, Millburn When: Tuesday
at 7:30 p.m. How much: $28, $35 and $40. Call (973) 376-4343.
(Publication page references are not available for this document.)
The Eskimos who struggle in "King Island Christmas" to get food to
their isolated village have nothing on lyricist Deborah B. Brevoort.
The Ridgewood native worked long and hard to get her musical version
of "King Island Christmas" to the stage. Despite many roadblocks,
Brevoort's efforts prevailed. And so, the oratorio will play Paper Mill
Playhouse on Tuesday.
Not long after Brevoort moved to Alaska in 1978 ("My husband and I
went there for a honeymoon and never left"), she discovered a 30-page
children's picture book called "King Island Christmas" by Jean Rogers.
It told of a tiny island in the Bering Sea, whose 150 inhabitants wait
each winter for a boat to deliver supplies - and a priest - before the
sea freezes. But one year, a huge storm arrives early, and the community
learns that the boat won't be able to reach them. That means no food -
and no clergyman to marry engaged couples.
"So," says Brevoort, "15 people got together and carried an oomiak -
that's a boat made from walrus skin - over the snow and ice and a
mountain to get to the ship. I thought this was a story that sang out
for music."
And Brevoort knew from musical theater. "I fell in love with it at an
early age," she says. "My parents were members of the Ridgewood Gilbert
& Sullivan Opera Company. They couldn't afford baby sitters, so they
took my younger brother John and me to rehearsals. By the time I was 8,
I knew every song to every G&S operetta."
Brevoort also credits Janet Steinle and Stuart Postal, two English
teachers at Ridgewood High School, for spurring her interest in
playwriting. Nevertheless, for many years, she didn't do anything with
"King Island Christmas."
For one thing, she was busy with her chores as producing director of
the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, where she also acted - "because
performers were not plentiful," she says with modesty. But she couldn't
have been too bad, given that she landed the lead roles in "Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof" and "The Cherry Orchard."
Finally, in 1991, she returned to the lower 48, received graduate
degrees from Brown and the NYU Musical Theatre Program, and, in 1994,
secured a three-year option on the property.
"The condition was that a production had to be scheduled by June 30,
1997," she says. "I figured I could make that easily."
But the first composer she tried didn't work out. Neither did a
second. Suddenly, it was February 1997, and while Brevoort had finished
her lyrics, not a note of usable music had been written. "Only five
months left before my option expired," she says. "I figured I'd have to
drop my dream."
Then a friend suggested that she try David Friedman.
Friedman is a Manhattan cabaret favorite who wrote both music and
lyrics for "Help Is on the Way," now an established anthem in the fight
against AIDS; "Listen to My Heart," recorded by Kathie Lee Gifford,
Laurie Beechman and Nancy LaMott, and "My Simple Christmas Wish," in
which a woman asks Santa Claus in no uncertain terms to make her "rich,
famous, and powerful" so that she can "step on all my enemies and never
do a thing."
But Friedman occasionally sets music to others' words. "I gave David a
lyric," Brevoort says, "and he immediately started writing music to it -
music that's still in the show today."
Friedman's speed impressed Brevoort, who then impressed upon him that
it all had to be completed in 150 days, and that a theater would have
to promise to do it, or else their efforts would be wasted.
"So," she says, "I asked Molly Smith, Perseverance's artistic
director, to hear what David had written - all four bars of it. Even
with so little, Molly saw what I saw, and wrote a letter to the book's
publisher and assured them that she'd do it in Alaska. Which she did the
following winter, after David and I completed it."
"King Island Christmas" has since played numerous venues around the
country. At the Paper Mill, artistic director Robert Johanson directs
and appears in the production. Also featured are Paolo Montalban, who
played the Prince in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" on
television; Judy McLane, who starred at the theater in "Evita" and
"Oliver!"; Paul S. Iacono, who was recently seen as Young Patrick in
"Mame"; and Dee Billia, from the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival's "The
Threepenny Opera."
1. "I fell in love with it at an early age," says lyricist Deborah B. Brevoort.
"My parents were members of the Ridgewood Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company.
They couldn't afford babysitters, so they took my younger brother John and me
to rehearsals. By the time I was 8, I knew every song to every G&S operetta."
NEWS SUBJECT: Arts & Entertainment; Arts, Entertainment & Theater Section (ART AEN)
EDITION: FINAL
11/29/99 Dallas Morning News 1C
1999 WL 29820560
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 1999 Information Access Company. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 1999
The Dallas Morning News, L.P.
Monday, November 29, 1999
One magical day inspires a play.(TODAY)(KIDS' THEATER)
Nancy Churnin
FULL TEXT
King Island Christmas is a play of Christmas Past that is hoping for a
big future.
The play, which gets its first full-scale production at the Lyric
Stage in Irving Saturday, is inspired by the recollections of Rie Munoz,
who couldn't forget a magical day in 1951 when the 150 townspeople of
King Island, Alaska, refused to accept that the sea was too stormy to
bring a priest in time to lead their Christmas service.
The villagers radioed the boat with the priest that if the sea was too
rough on the side where the villagers lived, then the boat - the North Star -
should go to the other side of the island where it was calmer. The North
Star wouldn't be able to dock, but the villagers would carry an oomiak -
a walrus-skin covered boat - over the mountain that separated them from
the other side. Then they would row their small boat out to get the
priest and the small presents - oranges, chocolate, small toys - he had
for the children.
Ms. Munoz, now 78, was a Los Angeles native who went on a vacation to
Alaska, fell in love with the land and stayed. She was a schoolteacher
on King Island when she joined the others on their hike 1,000 feet up.
"I admired the spirit of these people," Ms. Munoz says from her home
in Juneau. "Who would ever think of carrying a boat over a
mountain? But the Eskimos are a very resourceful people. They don't
think, "Oh, the weather's too rough and it's too bad he can't come.'
"It was a wonderful, joyful excursion. All of the village went along,
the children, the mothers with babies on their backs, even the dogs."
That spirit of what can be accomplished when people work together is
at the heart of the story. Ms. Munoz first told it through illustrations
for a children's book written by her friend Jean Rogers. (Ms. Munoz says
her 7-year-old granddaughter likes to count the villagers in the picture
to make sure she has drawn all 150. She has.)
And now King Island makes its debut in the continental United States
at Lyric Stage. It may seem like quite a leap from rough island life to
a comfortable theater in landlocked Texas.
But as far as composer David Friedman is concerned, King Island
Christmas is a universal story that he hopes will spread.
Mr. Friedman, 49, a native New Yorker, is a frequent conductor of
Disney films, and his songs have been recorded by Diana Ross, Barry
Manilow and Petula Clark. He likes to refer to himself as the "litmus
test" for the project.
He's Jewish and so hopelessly urban that his first reaction to hearing
about the storm was: "Why not have the doorman shovel the walk?"
But librettist Deborah Baley Brevoort, 45, who brought him the
project, found that he was the first composer she approached who
understood why she couldn't get this slim little children's book out of
her head.
"Everyone said I was crazy, but I wanted to write the Christmas show
that I always wanted to see but no one has ever done," Ms. Brevoort says
from Juneau.
And it turned out that Mr. Friedman felt the same way.
"I love to write things that put a point of view into the world about
our connection to the world, to nature, to the importance of assisting
other people. Your first reaction may be, "Oh, this is about Alaska, how
exotic, how different from you and me.'
"But one of the things that would make this world a vastly better
place is if people would realize that we're all one world and when that
one world works together."
Mr. Friedman plans to fly out to catch the opening of King Island
Christmas. He hopes to cull ideas from this and other productions now in
development, for a production he hopes ultimately will go to Broadway.
To drum up interest, he is selling a CD of the show's music produced
by 12-time Grammy winner Thomas Z. Shepard, orchestrated by Emmy and
Grammy winner Peter Matz and recorded by such Broadway stars as Tony
winner Chuck Cooper; Marin Mazzie, now starring in Kiss Me, Kate; and
Paolo Montalban, Prince Charming in Whitney Houston's Cinderella.
The idea is inspired by the way Andrew Lloyd Webber promoted the album
of Jesus Christ Superstar before there was a show.
And any interest spurred by the show at Lyric Stage wouldn't hurt
either.
A Christmas Carol is one of the most beloved and popular family shows,
a Christmas staple at the Dallas Theater Center and stages all across
the country.
But Joel Ferrell, artistic director of the Casa Manana Playhouse, felt
that the scripts he read were too frightening and the language too
arcane to be accessible to his young audiences at the Casa Manana's
Children's Playhouse.
So he spent the last nine months crafting a one-hour musical
children's version of Charles Dickens' classic with the help of Dallas
composer Elaine Davidson.
"We tried to give it a fun feel," he says. "The Muppet Christmas Carol
had an influence on me."
The Muppets gave him the idea not only to inject more humor where he
could, but also to use puppets or puppet-actor combinations for his
ghosts.
While the works in Casa's regular season demand a lot of his
attention, he feels a great deal of loyalty to the children's
programming. After all, it was seeing his first show as an 8-year-old at
Casa Manana that got him into theater in the first place.
"I begged my parents to go and thought it was the most glorious thing
I ever saw in my life. I was completely hooked. My parents call it the
day the curse hit," he says.
At 40, it's still a thrill watching the faces of his young audiences.
"I love to hear the oohs and ahhs that let you know they're sitting on
the edge of their seats."
Not all the skating will be at rinks this week. The Classics
Children's Theatre presents ArtsPower National Touring Theatre's Hans
Brinker's Christmas, complete with a dazzling race for silver skates
Sunday at Williams High School in Plano.
ArtsPower, which recently brought its touching production of A Little
Princess to the Classics and the Jewish Community Center's FamiliArts
series, musicalizes Mary Mapes Dodge's book about a boy in 1840s Holland
who learns some unexpected lessons about courage and character on his
way to the race.
Macy's, as fans of Miracle on 34th Street may recall, was the store
warring with Gimbel's as to which one had the best Christmas spirit.
Well, Gimbel's may not be around anymore, but Macy's Dallas Galleria is
alive and well and taking an active role in sponsoring the Dallas
Children's Theater's production of Miracle on 34th Street, opening
Friday. The store is even supplying some of the fashions worn by Susan,
the young girl who finds it hard to believe that there really is a Santa
Claus.
PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
* Lyric Stage presents King Island Christmas at the Irving Arts
Center's Dupree Theater, 3333 North MacArthur Blvd., Irving. Saturday
through Dec. 18; performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays; 2:30
p.m. Sundays and Dec. 18. Tickets are $15 to $25. Call 972-252-2787.
* Casa Manana's Children's Playhouse presents Scrooge - A Children's
Christmas Carol at Casa Manana Theatre, 3101 W. Lancaster, Fort Worth.
Friday through Dec. 19; performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and 2 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays. School performances at 10 a.m. Mondays through
Fridays (with a signed performance for the hearing impaired at 10 a.m.
Friday) through Dec. 17. Tickets are $9 and $4 for school groups. Call
817-332-2272.
* The Classics Children's Theatre Series presents Arts-Power National
Touring Theatre's Hans Brinker's Christmas at Williams High School, 3000
Los Rios Blvd., Plano. 2 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $6. Call
972-596-8948.
* Dallas Children's Theater presents Miracle on 34th Street at El
Centro College Theater, Main and Market streets. Performances at 7:30
p.m. Fridays, 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets are $13 children, $15 adults. Call 214-978-0110.