POLLARD PREVIEW
Guthrie's Pollard Theatre pulls into 33rd year with classic
Brandy McDonnell offers a preview of Pollard Theatre's 33rd season
G UTHRIE — The Pollard Theatre is showing its age during its 33rd season — on purpose.
“Part of what we always try to do is start with the conversation, `What have we talked about and what haven't we?” said W. Jerome Stevenson, producing artistic director of the downtown Guthrie theater.
“When you take the stuff we've done over the past couple of years, one of the things we've missed is the discussion of age. That became a real clear thing — and we're all living it firsthand because we were all 20 when we started working here.”
The company will open its 20192020 season Aug. 23-Sept. 7 by revisiting Alfred Uhry's 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic “Driving Miss Daisy,” starring Central Oklahoma favorites Brenda Williams as Daisy Werthan, an elderly Southern Jewish woman, and Albert Bostick as Hoke Colburn, her African-American driver.
“You'd be surprised how many people do say, `Oh, I gotta go see that. I love that show, and I love the movie.' And they love the two actors in it,” said Timothy Stewart, The Pollard's production manager.
Acclaimed dramas
Resident company member James A. Hughes will reprise the relatable role of Boolie, Daisy's son who hires Hoke after she has a car accident.
“Alfred Uhry did a really good job giving us a slice-of-life piece ... and it has a real impact on how we see ourselves, how we see race, how we see the progression we've made,” said Stevenson, who is African-American.
“But when you get to be 46 ... you start to reflect and go, `Boy, you know what, this has a lot of stuff to say to me right this minute,' because everybody my age is starting to deal with — or be afraid of dealing with — `What happens when I have to start making decisions for my mother?' "
The Pollard will produce A.R. Gurney's “Love Letters,” a 1990 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Feb. 14-29. The play centers on two lifelong friends who stay connected through a series of letters.
“They end up in marriages, they end up with children, they end up dealing with difficulties of high school and camp and their first dates and crushes. It's all of this kind of experience of looking back on your life and it being the culmination of events that you can see highlighted in these letters," Stevenson said.
Divergent musicals
The Pollard has scheduled two divergent song-and-dance
shows for Season 33: “Evil Dead: The Musical” on Oct. 11-Nov. 2 and “You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown” on April 10-May 2.
After presenting the Central Oklahoma premiere of the stage adaptation of Sam Raimi's 1981 cult classic film about Halloween 2014, the theater is bringing back the fan favorite, which even boasts a “splatter zone” for fans who want to take their bloody good time literally.
“We had people lined up outside to sit in the splatter zone,” Stewart recalled.
Based on the "Peanuts" comic strip, “You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown” will bring Charles M. Schultz's beloved characters to the stage.
“We all grew up watching the Halloween special, the Christmas special, the Thanksgiving special,” said Stewart, who will direct. “I like to be honest to him and true to him and create those characters that he created.”
Christmas classic
The Guthrie company is hoping that audiences will want to relive again Frank Capra's classic Christmas story with its encore production of “It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” from Nov. 29-Dec. 22. The theater shelved its traditional yuletide title, “A Territorial Christmas Carol,” last season after the 2018 deaths of the show's longtime star James Ong and playwright Stephen P. Scott.
“When it went over well last year, we kind of breathed a sigh of relief,” said Stevenson, who will direct. “You can't go wrong with that story, and it's really a question of, `Do they want to see it in this style, this new format?' But that, I think, kind of lends itself to Guthrie and to the time period of the city.”
Magical finale
The Pollard will close its 2019-2020 season June 7-29 with the Oklahoma premiere of “Puffs, Or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic.” Written by Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnick, the show is an affectionate send-up of a certain best-selling book series by J.K. Rowling.
“It very cleverly weaves in everything about the world so that the audience is completely grounded in the world that they know without ever breaking faith with Ms. Rowling,” said Stevenson, a “Potterhead” who saw the original production off-Broadway.
“What they essentially did is created a `Life of Brian'type scenario, in which this character is there at the same time as Mr. Potter and thinks he's just one step away from becoming the chosen guy and is missing it by THAT much.”