Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

Newspapers like the Sequim Gazette are expected to support the arts in the communities they serve, and usually rightly so.

Sometimes, though, these expectations can be unrealistic.

When I was features editor of The Olympian in our state's capital, I employed a freelance drama critic who attended presentations of local "little theaters" and delivered his honest opinion of the performances.

When he wrote that they fell short of the excellence that the actors - and their friends and relatives - thought the plays achieved, I usually received calls and letters accusing the paper of "not supporting the arts."

I had to bite my lip to keep from replying, "Supporting the arts by praising your play would be oxymoronic."



Born in a barn

It's been with a bit of this churlish attitude that I've watched Olympic Theatre Arts struggle to raise money to refurbish its facility into a first-class auditorium.

Why couldn't the group resort to the strategy that always worked in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney juvenile musicals of the 1940s when they and their friends needed money for a good cause?

"We'll put on a show!" one of them would exclaim.

"My dad's got a barn!" one of the hangers-on would shout, and the predictable plot sang and danced its way to the inevitably heartwarming, if gooey, conclusion.

If a barn was good enough for Garland and Rooney's productions, why wouldn't one work for OTA?

But before someone fills a bucket with indignation and hurls it into the fan, I'm admitting that I've changed my attitude.



The play's the thing

Two events were responsible.

The first was "Doubt: A Parable," a riveting drama exquisitely staged in OTA's "gathering room" last November before the main stage was finished.

The acting convinced me OTA was no "little theater" of amateur hams.

The second event was "Cabaret," the musical chosen to christen the main stage, an undertaking so ambitious as almost to make mediocrity a foregone conclusion.

Yes, "Cabaret" had an occasional cast member who could act better than sing or sing better than act.



Strong performers

But the opening night performances by Sara Shea as the would-be iniquitous Sally Bowles, Colby Thomas as the Kit Kat Klub's outrageous master of ceremonies, and Lee Harwell as a doomed dumpling of a suitor to world-weary Fraulein Schneider, played by Jayna Orchard, blew disappointment clear out of the building.

Shea is gifted with a strong, mellifluous voice and enough moxie to bring off her performance of the narcissistic chanteuse.

Thomas goes over the top and around all the edges in a physically and dramatically demanding role.

Harwell and Orchard are both funny and heartbreaking as sunset lovers forced out of each other's arms by rising Nazi anti-Semitism.

And then there are the Kit Kat girls, sullenly seductive or broadly sexually slapstick in first-class song-and-dance numbers that lack for nothing.



And leg room too

A word about the 163-seat auditorium itself: Except for highly height-challenged people, there doesn't seem to be a bad seat in the house.

The rows also have room so you needn't stand, suck in your gut, tuck in your butt and hold your breath while latecomers sidle to their seats.

So there you have it, a cynic's conversion to true believer that Sequim has the theatrical, musical and directorial talent to produce convincing drama and comedy.



I hear a symphony

As it happened, the night after the OTA opening, I was in the Port Angeles High School auditorium to hear the P.A. Symphony Orchestra play Schumann, Prokofiev and Sibelius.

Were there flaws? Of course. If you want a perfect performance, buy a CD. Besides, perfection makes me nervous.

But the concert was far, far from an embarrassment, especially a rousing performance that matched piano virtuoso's Alexander Tutunov's mastery of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C.

As anyone knows who attends live musical perfor-

mances, there's a sort of wonder in watching people actually make the sounds you hear - the violinists beginning a theme, the cellos repeating it and the double basses underpinning the whole passage, for example.

It was a fine effort all around.

So, will the Gazette support the arts?

With this kind of quality, how could we not?

Just, please, don't ask for reviews.



The wind shifts

Last Tuesday's welcome fate of the Sequim school levy, I think, helps send the civic weather vane in a new direction.

Coming less than four months after voters' approval of a transportation benefit tax to fix Sequim streets, it shows that local folks are willing to pay for maintaining the quality of life for residents of all ages.

That would seem to contradict the Aginners who've rechristened themselves tea party hearties whose mantra is "nooooooo."

A healthy number of Sequim School District voters (53 percent according to Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand's latest figures) turned out and approved the levy by what locally was a landslide of just more than 60 to 40 percent.

I think most folks - because of, not in spite of - the cruel economy are tired of saying, "No."

After all, with the transportation and school issues, voters said, "Yes" to themselves.



Jim Casey is the editor of the Sequim Gazette. Reach him at jcasey@sequimgazette.com.