Big theaters have it easy. Plenty of room in the wings to roll sets off, lots of space above the stage to drop down backgrounds. It's the little black box theater — like West Kingston's Center Stage — with little room for scenery, that has to be ingenious.
"I've seen productions of My Fair Lady that were done with six chairs," says Russ Maitland, the company's artistic director. "You don't need all this glitz and glamour to get across a good production."
After an encouraging full season last year — the shows that weren't sold out filled 65-70 percent of their seats — an even more challenging schedule of six musicals and two plays recently began with The Graduate (through February 28).
Going way beyond small-theater, easy-to-stage musicals like The Fantasticks, the rest of their slate is ambitious: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (March 13-28); Violet (May 8-23); West Side Story (July 9-26); Fame (August 13-23); Doubt (September 11-20); Sweeney Todd (November 6-22); and It's a Wonderful Life (December 10-23).
Which is Maitland most looking forward to staging? That would be the 2003 off-Broadway Obie winner, Violet, based on Doris Betts's "The Ugliest Pilgrim," a short story about a disfigured woman.
"It's my fourth mounting Dramatic success of the production," he says. "It is an amazing, amazing story. It deals with so many issues: self-worth, self-confidence. It deals with an interracial couple. It's just so beautifully written. By the time you leave the theater after you've seen this piece, you can fly high."
The optimism sounds right, but the subject matter seems pretty edgy for a musical. It is, Maitland says.
"It takes place during the Vietnam War," he adds. "Tensions were high. People are just trying to make sense of who they are, what their main reason for being on this earth is. That's basically the storyline."
"My soul is going to be in this one," he says.
The rest of him is going to be in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. He will play the part Michael Caine had in the 1988 movie, the urbane and sophisticated con man, straight man to the loopy guy played by Steve Martin.
"I'm excited about Dirty Rotten because it's a challenging piece for the arts center," he says. "We have to transform the entire theater into a Mediterranean-feel atmosphere."
They will have to convince the audience that they are in the Riviera, and a mansion, and a casino.
"It's a fun piece," he notes. "A lot of ballroom dancing. The music is written by the same composers who did Full Monty, so it's the same type of great upbeat music. And a lot of comedy — a lot of comedy."
The director says that everybody thinks that their most difficult show will be Sweeney Todd.
However, "We've got that down. We're doing the Circle In the Square production from New York City, the one done in the round. This set's going to be pretty cool."
Telling the story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, whose customers ended up in meat pies, should be the right kind of show to simplify — a little red, a lot of black, and the audience's imaginations will take care of the rest.
