SEQUIM — If you’re thirsty for a happy ending right about now, the Irrigation Festival is prepared to deliver twice over.
The story begins with Lumiere, the talking candelabra, “the enlightener” come to life in the person of 18-year-old Isaac Boekelheide.
One April day, Boekelheide was rehearsing his candle-bearer role in “Beauty and the Beast,” the Irrigation Festival operetta originally slated to open at the Sequim High School Performing Arts Center on May 1.
Troubling symptoms
A tall man forming a plan for a career in music and theater, he found he couldn’t walk straight. His long legs kept turning him leftward.
Feeling dizzy and nauseated, he allowed his mother, Barbara Boekelheide, to take him to Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles.
A brain scan revealed a fluid-filled sac on his cerebellum, the part of the brain that facilitates coordination and motor control.
Boekelheide was transported in an ambulance to the University of Washington Medical Center, where he underwent brain surgery April 8.
But before departing for Seattle, Boekelheide had a question: “Will I still be able to be in the play?”
Christy Rutherford, co-director of “Beauty and the Beast,” assured him that he would.
Boekelheide continued practicing his Lumiere lines through the darker moments before surgery, such as while he was inside the MRI machine.
After his release from the hospital the evening of April 10, Boekelheide learned that the “Beauty” premiere had been moved back a week, to May 8, to give him time to recover.
Last Saturday, Boekelheide and his costars stepped into their elaborate costumes for “Breakfast with the Beast,” a children’s party at the new Sauer Kraut deli and bakery on Sequim-Dungeness Way.
Back in step
In his purple tights, gold-trimmed coat and candlesticks, Boekelheide was light on his feet.
“I’m pretty much back to where I was,” he said.
“I need to be careful about my neck,” he added with teenage nonchalance.
His parents, Barbara and Bob Boekelheide, said that the plum-size cyst had a raisin-size tumor beside it, and both were benign growths.
“It was deemed a hemangioblastoma,” Barbara said, a condition that’s “rather rare in a child his age.”
In a couple of months, her son will take a test for a genetic marker, von-Hippel Lindau disease, that produces cysts along the spine, brain and kidneys.
MRIs will also become part of his future: four this year, two next year while he’s attending Western Washington University, and one each year after that.
“His prognosis is for a normal life at this time,” Barbara said, “without the further genetic test.”
She and her family are of course hoping for a negative result.
This week, Lumiere and crew have spent nights running through final rehearsals, polishing details and staying up late at the Performing Arts Center.
Rutherford, maker of many costumes and set furnishings for the show, sewed throughout an interview on Wednesday afternoon. She recalled visiting Boekelheide in the hospital the day after his surgery.
“You can’t believe this kid. He was studying his lines,” she said, adding that Lumiere is a major role that belonged to Boekelheide alone.
Carrying candlelight, “he introduces you to everything that’s going on in the castle,” where Belle, the lovely young Frenchwoman, meets Beast, the ugly guy who later proves that nothing is as it seems.
Ellen Cain, the 17-year-old who portrays Belle, said the extra week of preparation was a welcome change for the cast of some 33 Sequim elementary, middle and high school students.
“We’re all grateful,” she said.
Rutherford, who’s co-produced Irrigation Festival operettas for the past 16 years, said this one is particularly sweet.
Of course “Beauty and the Beast” has a happy ending, she said — as does the true tale of the candle bearer.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com
