Friday, August 8, 2008

Uptown Players going with youth movement in Zanna, Don’t!

By Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

Mike Morgan

Zanna stars James Chandler, left, and Steven Guez, right, as newly in love boyfriends magically set up by gay matchmaker Zanna (Ryan Cowles, background).

Uptown Players is a young theater company, but they’ve never been younger than they are right now.

After a phenomenally successful production of The Facts of Life inside Station 4’s Rose Room, Uptown co-founder Craig Lynch says the troupe has been re-energized about the future. That includes an upcoming season stacked with regional premieres of youthful productions (see below), promising developments in the company’s bid for a larger theater space and this week a new show full of fresh talent.

Zanna, Don’t! marks the youngest cast ever assembled by Uptown.

“Their youth turned out to be a plus in just about every way — most especially because I guess they are too young to have big egos,” jokes Coy Covington, who is directing the show.

It’s set in a bizarro high school where all the stereotypes are reversed: chess is the popular spectator sport while jocks are considered outcasts; straight kids hide in the closet while gay romances bloom in the halls — especially when gay matchmaker Zanna waves his magic wand. All set to a giddy portmanteau score of country, pop, show tunes and R&B sounds.

“After Bare and Bent, people were coming up to me saying, ‘Please, God, let this be a happy show,” says Ryan Cowles — who at 25, is the granddaddy among the actors.

Co-star Kayla Carlyle appeared in Uptown’s last musical set in a high school, Bare, but Zanna — with its giddy energy and happy ending — is the antithesis of that show, she says.

“It has a real lovely message but it doesn’t take itself too seriously,” adds Lindsey Holloway, a relative veteran making her Uptown debut.

Indeed, many among the cast are new to Uptown Players and/or working with each other for the first time. When Steven Guez, who plays the boyfriend of James Chandler, reveals that this marks his first time acting in a musical — “I’ve never had any dancing or vocal training,” he confesses — Carlyle’s jaw drops in astonishment.

“What?!” she blurts out.

Her surprise probably stems not just from Guez’s talent, but the belief held by nearly everyone working on the show that Zanna is deceptively difficult. “It seems bubbly and wholesome,” says Cowles, but the process has been arduous.

“It’s like a train,” explains Holloway. “Once you get started, it goes.”

Still, that didn’t prevent them from inserting an intermission — Zanna is usually performed as a one-act musical.

“We’d probably die without one,” Carlyle admits, proving that even young people need a breather now and then.

Zanna, Don’t!, KD Studio Theatre, Aug. 8–Sept. 7. Thursdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. $25–$30. Uptownplayers.org.

EXCLUSIVE: UPTOWN PLAYERS REVEALS 2009 SEASON

Uptown Players’ new season reflects its growth and success — all productions run a week longer than in prior seasons. The slate:

Broadway Our Way (Jan. 9–18). The annual fundraiser with top local talent.

Trials and Tribulations of the Trailer Trash Housewife (Feb. 13–March 15). Del Shores’ newest play, a raucous comedy with music, gets its regional premiere.

The History Boys (April 3–May 3). Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning play about English schoolboys and their sexual awakenings.

Mommie Queerest (May 29–June 28). On the heels of the huge success of The Facts of Life, Uptown returns to the Rose Room with another cross-dressing play from Jamie Morris.

Altar Boyz (Aug. 7–Sept. 6). Hysterical musical about a Christian boy band with some gay hanky-panky.

Breathe (Oct. 9–Nov. 8). A penetrating new musical of seven stories.

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