San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SAN DIEGO’S FAVORITE CHARACTER ACTOR IS PLAYING DEAD — AGAIN
It’s hard work playing a dead guy.
Just ask Ralph Johnson, who is performing the title role in the musical “Lucky Stiff ” this winter in a coproduction that runs Jan. 28-Feb. 19 at Scripps Ranch Theatre, then moves to North County for a second run with Oceanside Theatre Company March 3-19.
The beloved San Diego character actor said that even though he doesn’t have to memorize any lines or stage blocking for the show, it takes a great deal of concentration, listening and stillness to play the role of Tony Hendon. Hendon is a newly dead American millionaire whose final request to his nephew and sole heir, Harry, is to take Tony’s corpse on an all-expensepaid gambling vacation in Monte Carlo. Johnson first played the role of the lucky stuff in a 2016 production at Grossmont College.
“People say it must be easy to sit in the wheelchair and be dead. But you do have to pay attention,” he said. “I have some choreography when I’m seated. I have to slump over or lean over or my head goes down, and I do get up at one point during a nightmare scene and do a little dancing and singing. But other than that I’m just in the chair. It’s an acting exercise. You can’t cough, you can’t sneeze. If you fail, it will ruin the whole show.”
In the 1988 Stephen Flaherty-lynn Ahrens musical, Tony’s will requires that Harry dress Tony’s body in a suit, tie, hat and dark sunglasses, so nobody at the casinos will know he’s dead. But even behind the sunglasses, Johnson said he plays the role with his eyes closed so he won’t react or laugh if something funny or unexpected happens onstage.
The musical is being directed by Kathy Brombacher, the now-retired founding artistic director of Moonight Amphitheatre in Vista, which has been Johnson’s longtime artistic home. This year marks the 30th anniversary of his first performance at Moonlight.
“I adore Kathy. She’s a treasure in this community,” he said. “You think back about the hundreds or thousands of people you meet doing theater and I’ve met so many lifelong friends who I’ve learned so much from over the years.”
Johnson became an actor in midlife. After earning a college degree in music education in his 20s, he quickly realized he didn’t enjoy teaching. Instead, he got a job at Sequoia National Park and spent 12 years there working in concessions, personnel and hospitality positions. He moved to San Diego in 1984 for a hotel industry job and started auditioning for roles in community theater as a hobby. His first local acting gig was in a Christian Community Theatre production of “Fiddler on the Roof ” in 1990.
In the years that followed, acting became Johnson’s passion, so he worked day jobs in the mortgage, publishing and security industries to support his theater work. Over the past 33 years, he has appeared in more than 100 productions, both in San Diego and elsewhere around the country.
Now in his 70s, with homes in San Diego and Palm Springs, he’s still enjoying stage work and has no plans to retire.
“Being an actor is hard. You’re always looking for the next job. Fortunately I haven’t had to do acting to put food on the table, so I don’t worry as much about if there will be a next job,” he said. “A few years back I was driving home from L.A. and I said to myself, ‘You’re getting old and your opportunities will be less,’ and I was at peace with that. The career I’ve had has been wonderful, and it’s not over yet.”
For tickets to “Lucky Stiff ” visit scrippsranchtheatre.org or oceansidetheatre.org.
L.J. Playhouse launches fellowships
Kat Yen has been announced as the first recipient of La Jolla Playhouse’s 2023-24 Directing Fellowship. Launched last spring, the two-year fellow programs for directors and stage managers were created as part of the Playhouse’s Anti-racism Action Plan to be more welcoming to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices.
Yen is a Taiwanese American theater director from New York City, with a master’s degree in directing from Yale University. She has directed at multiple theaters and is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. She joined the Playhouse staff this month. The recipient of the first Stage Management Fellowship will begin later this year, and their name will be announced closer to their start date.
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
‘The Sign Painter’
Set during World War II, “The Sign Painter” tells a dark, real-life history with bracing irony and fairy-tale whimsy. Ansis, a sign painter in rural Latvia, lives through three regime changes in the span of a decade, each reflected in the hues he’s asked to color official buildings and signs with: green is favored by the dictatorship of Karlis Ulmanis, red by the Soviet occupation, and black by the Nazi invasion that follows.
Like the slightly canted angle that director Viesturs Kairiss uses throughout the 2020 film, this playful conceit offers an off-kilter perspective on the past, emphasizing the tragic absurdity of human brutality. Ansis, played by Davis Suharevskis with an aura of wideeyed purity, maintains a principled if diffident innocence throughout, while his two lady loves — the forthright Jewish comrade, Zisele (Brigita Cmuntova), and the sweet, sly Latvian Christian girl, Naiga (Agnese Cirule) — act as his strong-willed foils. The slapstick of the film’s first half, replete with painting accidents, petty jealousies and romantic high jinks, gives way to bloody scenes of war and displacement in the second, making for a gutting tonal seesaw that Kairiss executes with finesse. Available on Tubi.