‘Pied Piper’ Takes On ‘Dreamcoat’

When the book is written on Orange County community theater of the ‘80s, the section on musical comedy might read like Tim Nelson’s resume. For almost a decade, he has been a ubiquitous figure in troupes from Garden Grove to San Clemente.

Performer, composer, lyricist, musical director--the tall, blond, 32-year-old stage veteran with the Buster Brown face is all of these.

He has starred in more than a dozen shows, among them “Dames at Sea” and “Grease” at the Gem Theatre; “Godspell” at the Buena Park Civic Theatre; “Oklahoma!” at Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call in Tustin, and “42nd Street” at Downey Civic Light Opera in Los Angeles County.

“Tim is kind of a Pied Piper for music-theater types,” an admiring producer said. “He once took a job at a Fotomat so he could bring his portable keyboard into the booth and work on orchestrations between customers.”

Nelson wrote the score and half the lyrics of “The White Arrow,” an original musical based on the Robin Hood legend, for the Newport Theatre Arts Center. He was musical director of dozens of other shows.

And he did all of this in his spare time--when not teaching music at three Westminster elementary schools or singing tenor in the Opera Pacific chorus (in “Aida” and “La Boheme”) or auditioning for professional roles in Los Angeles.

Yet Nelson never directed a show from top to bottom until he made his directorial debut last weekend at La Habra Depot Playhouse with a revival of the 1968 pop-rock musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“Being a full-fledged director is incredibly more time-consuming than anything else I’ve done,” he said last week during rehearsals. “Maybe that’s why I’ve waited so long. Doing everything means I can no longer be concerned just with the music or the vocals. Now I know what an administrator must feel like.”

He scarcely looked like one, seated at an upright piano in the lobby of the Depot Playhouse. As his young company of players filtered in, costumed for a full-dress rehearsal like characters out of a Hollywood biblical movie, Nelson began to run through vocal warm-ups.

“Make sure you nail those words tonight,” he urged. “I will be taking performance notes. You’ve got to keep the energy up. You’ve got to keep those faces up. Remember, it’s the focus in the face that counts.” Two dozen faces brightened. Two dozen voices soared, lush with sonorous harmonies.

“I can’t tell you what fulfillment I get from this,” he said. “But it’s coming to a point where my agent is starting to say, ‘You’re not 21 anymore. You’re going to have to make some choices.’ I love directing. I want to do more of it. I also know I’m never going to give up performing.”

Nelson traced his interest in the theater to his college years, when he was cast as the lead in “Promises, Promises” for an amateur troupe in Revere, Mass.

Born and raised on a farm in Litchfield, Minn., he started out playing oboe. “I come from a musical family” and also sang from early childhood.

“I left the farm at 12,” he said. “We moved around a lot. Every time we got to a new city, I’d research the symphony. I’d get the name of the principal oboist and tell him I want lessons.”

Though Nelson was good enough to play for several seasons with the Boston Pops, he found the prospect of musical stardom more to his liking than free-lancing in an orchestra pit.

“I guess I knew from the moment I got out on stage that my fulfillment lay in the theater,” he said. “Playing the oboe was fun. But I had done it for so long, it started weighing on me. It began to feel like an obligation.”

The oboe training came in handy. Lacking the budget or space for a live orchestra at the small Depot Playhouse, which is a former train station, Nelson put together a prerecorded sound track for “Dreamcoat.” He not only conducted the score for a studio pickup band for playback during performances, he laid down his own tracks on piano, flute, piccolo, oboe and synthesizer.

“You do what you can,” Nelson said. “We’re being pretty accurate musically. But I think we’ve made it more fun for the performers and, hopefully, for the audience--which is the ultimate goal.”

Say amen, somebody.

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” runs through Dec. 10 at the La Habra Depot Playhouse, 311 S. Euclid St. Show times: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $6 to $8. Information: (213) 905-9708 or (213) 691-8900.