NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, July 8.
SEQUIM — Unlike most plays, the audience for “Scapino!” at Olympic Theater Arts will actually become part of the performance, said director Pat Owens.
The comedy opens this evening at the theater, 414 N. Sequim Ave., and is scheduled to run through July 24.
“Normally in theater there is a fourth wall — the wall between the audience and the actor — so the actor shuts out the audience and goes on as if they are not even there,” Owens said.
“In this show, the fourth wall doesn’t exist at all. They talk to the audience throughout the show, they get the audience involved in the show. The audience is part of the cast, as far as we are concerned.”
Owens warns those squeamish about such interactions not to sit in the front row because they “may get picked on,” he said.
“Scapino!” is an adaptation of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin’s “Les Fourberies de Scapin” written by Jim Dale and Frank Dunlop in the 1970s.
This riotous farce is a delightfully modern twist of the Molière classic comedy, said Carol Fealy Willis, OTA general manager.
Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor in the 1600s who is considered by historians to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature.
The play takes place in 1960 era Naples, Italy, where Scapino, the leading character, formulates an intricate scheme to help two men avoid arranged marriages.
“These two young men go off and get themselves married while their fathers are away on a trip arranging marriages for them,” Owens said.
“The fathers are coming back to town, and so they go to Scapino who is the local con-artist, and ask him to get them out of trouble. The whole play is Scapino getting them out of trouble. It is fast paced, it is full of action, slap stick humor and is just a fun show.”
The cast consists of 14 actors.
The title role Scapino, derived from the word “escape,” is portrayed by Danny Willis, 19, of Sequim.
Those who are being duped include Mark Valentine as Argante and Mike Carpenter as Geronte, two fathers who have committed their sons to arranged marriages.
The sons, played by Brohm Dason as Ottavio and Mike Roggenbuck as Leandro, are instigating the antics, because in their father’s absences, they have chosen their own betrothed — Giacinta portrayed by Kaylee Ditlefsen and Zerbinetta portrayed by Sheenieka Dolan.
“It could be a little bit of a misconception at the beginning,” Roggenbuck, 15, of Port Angeles, said of his character.
“It is all a big misunderstanding, but I get to beat Danny Willis with a sausage, so that is always fun.”
All the while, it appears there is little that the chaperone Sylvestro, played by Sean Clark, or the Nurse, played by Kath Beecher, can do to prevent the sly Scapino from having his way.
The play takes place in an Italian quay one bright, sunny and colorful day outside a café where the waitress, played by Rebecca Horst, rules the roost and also somehow manages her staff of comical, singing waiters who include Luke Silliman, Mikaele Baker and Emily Carol as well as the ever-present local bum, Carlo, played by Michael Fellows.
The set was designed and built by David Willis.
Pulling the strings
“I think Scapino is . . . a puppeteer of peoples’ lives — helping them find a way out of [troubling] situations,” Danny Willis said.
“Scapino is a kind of mastermind of Naples and he has a loyal very good friend — who I would call [a] sidekick — Sylvestro. We gallivant around together, but he could never match [Scapino’s] intellect. He finds himself getting mixed up in stuff he can’t get out of.”
The play explores “the serendipity of [real life] and reflects how things never work out as you expect, and the boom-boom-boom spontaneity of things that happen,” Danny Willis said.
He said he prepared for this role by studying about Naples and speaking with a local Italian family.
“I asked them some questions on what it is like to be an Italian family,” he said, adding he learned Italians have tight-knit families that stick together.
That expands to Naples as a whole, he continued.
“It is a city built on community and relationships,” he said.
“It is not so much hustle and bustle as it is people and families coming together.”
Danny Willis has practiced his comedic chops as part of Tweaking Reality, an improvisational troupe based at OTA, he said.
For this play, Danny Willis said he relies on the script to provide the comedy.
“It is a different take . . . because comedy comes from the script,” he said.
“As much as you try to make it funny, it won’t be funny. I think the only way to achieve comedy in a show like this is just to say the lines and let them speak for themselves.”
Ditlefsen, 18, of Sequim, said the cast achieves comedy by keeping it lighthearted on stage.
“We just have fun in rehearsal and then we keep up the energy for when we actually need to be presenting something in a professional manner to an audience,” she said.
“As long we keep up the energy, and as long as we are having fun, then that is really the point of it.”
If the actors “know what they are doing and they have fun doing it, then that fun is contagious to an audience and the audience has fun too,” Owens said.
Sometimes, it is hard not to giggle while saying the lines, Ditlefsen continued.
“There are a few times when it is difficult, especially since the show is so clever,” she said.
“They use the audience in a way that you would never expect, and they use the fact that this is a play, and we all know it’s a play in ways that you wouldn’t expect. You really need to see it. It is very well written.”
Owens agreed.
The audience will “have a laugh and a good time and leave feeling as if they were a part” of the play, he said.
Tickets
“Scapino!” opens at 7:30 this evening.
It will continue Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. through July 24.
A Pay-What-You-Will performance is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. July 14.
General admission is $16 for adults, and $10 for children 16 and younger. Group discounts are available for groups of 10 or more. Contact the box office for group reservations.
For more information, visit www.olympictheatrearts.org, or call the theatre box office — open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays — at 360-683-7326.
