It’s Curtains for Moorpark Melodrama Operators

It was a scene straight out of a classic melodrama: The landlord demands the rent and casts out the tenants.

That’s what happened last week as the Magnificent Moorpark Melodrama & Vaudeville Company shut down after its current operators were forced out.

On Thursday, Ventura County Judge John J. Hunter returned the theater business to previous owner Linda Bredemann, along with a judgment for $9,600 in back rent.

Bredemann said Monday that the actual debt owed by operators Bob and Beverly Frazier exceeds $30,000.

Bob Frazier disputed her figures, saying, “We had an agreement that we saw one way and Linda saw another way.”

The Fraziers’ departure, Bredemann said, may spell the end of the melodrama performances at the playhouse, where the couple would mount several genre parodies each year, such as the recent “Fenster of the French Foreign Legion” and “The XYZ Files.”

The shows employed many young actors from the area, and the Melodrama & Vaudeville Company was one of the very few local theaters paying its performers.

The building on East High Street dates to the early decades of this century, having served as a silent movie theater, evangelical church and newspaper office, among other incarnations.

The Fraziers have run the Melodrama & Vaudeville Company since September after taking over from Bredemann, who had operated the business with her husband, Harvey, for a dozen years. Harvey Bredemann died in March 1997, leaving his wife to handle the business.

Soon afterward, Bredemann sold the theater business--but not the playhouse property--to the Fraziers. A seasoned television writer, Bob Frazier had run similar operations elsewhere with his wife, notably one near Mt. Rushmore.

“I didn’t realize how much I counted on Harvey until he passed--I had classic depression,” Bredemann said.

After the Fraziers took over, the presentations changed somewhat. The scripts, most co-written by Bob Frazier, arguably retained the quality of those of earlier shows, but the sizes of the casts and the amount of money spent on sets and costumes dropped notably.