Battle Creek Enquirer from Battle Creek, Michigan • Page 21

Enquirer and News, Battle Creek, Aug. 25, 1974 B-5 Ballet West member to join WMU staff Butler's impressive ballet "CarminaBurana. In addition, he has performed in the musical "Carousel," "Brigadoon," "West Side Story," "Kismet" and in the operas "Carmen," "La Traviata," "Der RosenKavalier" and "Faust." He has studied with William F. Christensen, Harold Chris-tensen, Gordon Paxman, Yu-rek Lazowski, Milorad Mes-kovich, Bene Arnold and MattlynGavers. Previously, he taught ballet technique, pointe work and character dance.

Toledo museum acquires van der Heyden painting San Diego's Old Globe Theater is experiencing virtually SRO audience support for its 25th annual Shakespeare Festival. (APN Photo) Theater thrives in 25th year of doing The Bard KALAMAZOO Richard Spoelstra, a charter member of Ballet West Company since 1964, has been appointed to the dance department of the Western Michigan University College of Fine Arts. Spoelstra received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Utah and has toured Europe and the United States extensively with Ballet West.

Hesoloed with Ballet West in such roles as Dr. Coppelius in "Coppelia," Katchie in "The Firebird Ballet," Dr. Dros-selmeyer and Arabian in "The Nutcracker Ballet" and in John Black singers sought for new musical BURBANK, Calif. A nationwide talent search, similar to the one that turned up Ta-mara Dobson to star in "Cleopatra Jones," is being conducted by Warner Bros. The scope of the search is being broadened to find three beautiful musically inclined black women, age 15 to 25, who can sing well.

They are being sought for the leading roles in "Sparkle," a new rhythm and blues musical scheduled to begin filming later thisyear. The time period covered in the film is 1956 to 1963, according to producers Howard Rose-man and Joel Schumacher. Applicants must send photographs and resume to the Warner Bros, feature casting department, 4000 Warner Blvd. Auditions will be held for those chosen from photographs. AOf Thee I JACKSON The final production of the Clark Lake Players' 1974 season is "Of Thee I Sing," which is playing Thursdays through Saturdays until Sept.

7. Written by George Kauf-mann and Morrie Ryskind. with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, "Of Thee I Sing" opened a long run in 1931 and the next year be- came the first musical to be TOLEDO The Toledo Museum of Art has acquired the painting, "The Garden of the: Old Palace, Brussels," by Jan van der Heyden, who may be Holland's greatest painter of city views. "This brings another significant and beautiful painting to the Toledo Museum's world-famous collection of Dutch paintings," Director Otto Wittmann said. He said that the museum has wanted to acquire the work ever since it was shown here in 1955, but at that time it was owned privately and was not for sale.

"This painting, among van der Heyden's most successful compositions, shows the artist at the peak of his powers," Wittmann said. "Although he painted several different view of this site, none oerhaps is so Sing' staged awarded the Pulitzer Prize for excellence in drama. Only three other musicals have done the same: "South Pacific" in 1950; "Fiorello" in 1960 and "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" in 1962. The show is a satire of politics toward the end of the Prohibition era. It is the story of a man elected president of the United States on a campaign platform of love.

However, his has 15 other cities to visit before reaching Broadway's Bilt-more in December. This is the Clifford Williams' all-male production originally mounted for the National The- ater of Great Britain, and includes a good many of that original cast. The concept avoids any suggestion of i'aggy camp, and a spectator quickly adjusts to the casting eccentricity. Ralph Koltai's austere setting of plastic prisms and pieces, and his erratic costuming, round out an impressive entertainment. The text shines through.

For the inveterate theater fan, intriguing novelty is offered at an establishment called The First Theater in California at Monterey, established by a military troupe in a sailor's inn in 1848. The little structure has been used for a lot of other things since, but it was restored to Thespis in 1937. For the past eight years it has been operated by Laverne Seeman, a robust advertising woman. With amateur casts. Miss Seeman mounts 19th century melodramatic extravaganzas.

Recently, "The Hand of the Law. or Justice Will Prevail" has been diverting crowds eager to hiss the villain, join sing-alongs in post-play Olio and drink root beer. Well, theater is all sorts of things. rics. "Butley" and "Godspell" move in this time when Shakespeare moves out.

"We've had long experience in both professional and community work, so that we feel extremely well experienced in operating under both climates," Noel sums up. California this summer has been a testing center for two big Broadway-bound projects. At the Music Center in Los Angeles, David Merrick's "Mack and Mable" has been prospering nightly despite lugubrious shortcomings that hopefully will be corrected before it reaches the Main Stem The musical concerns the ill-starred relationship of Mack Sennett, dean of film slapstick, and Mabel Normand, his protege who lived not wisely but too well. Robert Preston, playing the cinema whiz, is carrying the heavy-handed affair like a racing son of "Music Man," while costar Bernadette Peters flounders with some emotional obscurities as a sickly siren. Jerry Herman's music lacks a showstopper or anything else, while Gower Champion laboriously directs and choreographs in switch-about imitation of earlier triumph.

Up in San Francisco, on the other hand, audiences had premier look at a classy, stimulating "As You Like If that and "Much Ado about Nothing." The silver anniversary is one year late because the public lost interest in then-amateur performances of the bard and the faltering gate was revived with a 1953 season of "Mr. Roberts." The summer company went professional in 1959. The current 19-member Equity company, augmented in bits by student apprentices, includes such Broadway and regional stalwarts as Victor Buono, Eric Christmas, Penelope Fuller, John Glover and Bej am in Stewart. Their rotating display in- eludes a staging of "twelfth Night' by the oddly apt patronymic tandem of Christmas and Noel; the second part of "King Henry IV," devised by Edward Payson Call; and "Romeo and Juliet," done by the Festival's first woman director, Diana Maddox. A chief associated in the festival's climb to what can be described as sturdy, consistent dependability is Peggy Kel-lner, set designer for 19 years.

Over the years the Old Globe, originally built for mini-Shakespeare performances at the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition, has showcased formidable acting and directing talents. Jacqtiel-ine Brookes, Douglas Watson, Richard Spoelstra new dance instructor He and his wife, Gretchen, will arrive in Kalamazoo from Ballet West's summer season in Aspen, Colo. delightfully complex in its bird's-eye pointof view." The painting looks from the old palace of the Dukes of Brabant, since destroyed, and gazes down into a formal garden where a man and a woman promenade. Silhouetted against a blue sky are trees, weathervanes and the Church ofSt.Gudule. "Painted with van der Heyden's characteristic attention to detail, filled with bright sunlight which organizes the picture into broad areas of light and shadow, the painting demonstrates his gift for painting almost microscopically while retaining breadth of vision," Wittmann said.

The work came from the H.E. ten Cate Collection of A1-. melo, Holland, from which the Toledo Museum's landscape by Hobbema also came. in Jackson election nearly causes war with France, when the president rejects the affection of an illegitimate of fspirng of Napoleon. The characters are mostly caricatures of politicians, such as the vice president who goes around Washington, D.C., unrecognized and can only get into the White House on a guided tour.

All performances are at 8:30 p.m. Purple Leaf l.Vht. Reg.S360'' Price Morris Carnovsky, Jon Voight among the mummers; William Ball, Allen Fletcher, Ellis Rabb, Mel Shapiro and Duncan Ross among the stagers. The first seven productions were put on by B. Iden Payne, drama's venerable scholar-teacher.

"What the Globe has done from a national standpoint," says Noel, "is that actors are playing verse better than before, getting away from the Brando naturalism "For a nucleus of classic actors, the Globe and the Shakespeare Festival at Ashland, have contributed much." As an adjunct to the 420-seat Old Globe, the 245-seat Carter Theater next door was opened in 1969 for exhibit of more contemporary pieces. This year it has been "Your Own Thing," the prize-winning musical adaptation of "TwelfthNight." Noel's satisfaction with silver anniversary results is slightly tempered. "What I really wanted as another theater," he says. The plan, gestating for some years, is to erect a 700-seat auditorium of inconspicuous $3-mil-lion design in a canyon behind the Old Globe; for an extension of programming. When the Shakespeare Festival isn't in progress, the Balboa Park plant reverts each winter to amateur community theat Carrying case or cabinet extra ED Ygdmt Full Think of saving $60.

saving even more by trading in your old machine for a generous allowance! And what a great machine this is, with a built-in buttonholer, 14 built-in stitches including speed basting, many other sophisticated features at your fingertips with all-dial controls. While Quantities Last! Bv WILLIAM GLOVER SAN DIEGO, CALIF. (AP) "We've never had anything like this," says Craig Noel, a man not easily swayed to verbal rapture. SRO business at the Old Globe Theater's 25th annual Shakespeare Festival explains the doughty producing director's terse gratification. Attendance for the June 4-Sept.

15 three-play display has been averaging 99.1 per cent of capacity, which is just about as close to sellout as you can get without putting a ticket bite on inevitable management guests. "Audiences come because they assume you know what you're doing," is how Noel explains the steady climb toward saturation attendance during the past seven years. Tourists form half the audience. The conspicuous quality of drama exhibits in the Elizabethan playhouse that nestles in one of famous Balboa Park's eucalyptus dells is cleanly solid and ungimmicked. Everybody remembers Hamlet's beseech about clear speech.

"The Globe and its environment are not conducive to far-out interpretations," argues the man who has set policy ever since the theater opened in 1949. Noel recalls as "abominations of all time" a couple of early far-out romps with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Beech Trunk 891 AOO M. 9 1 KTOO A trunk NT lit. SO 1 A00 JL Aftn g0" Hi Orig. Price 756 Exclusive Singer" push-buttor front drop-in bobbin Naw! Mill I I II II 1 i Rlue Spruce 12'ht.

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