Gleams Amid the Stage Lights

You never know when a nice surprise is going to spring up among the productions of “Romeo and Juliet” and Neil Simon works that so often form the majority of community theater. Two such surprises can be seen locally--one, in fact, is by Simon.

But first, the other one. Frank Harvey’s “The Day After the Fair,” now playing at the Arts Council Center in Thousand Oaks, is a period drama something like what might have happened if Henrik Ibsen had rewritten “Cyrano de Bergerac” with emancipated women and a dose of Nordic gloom. In fact, the play is based on a short story by Henry James (1843-1916), the expatriate American writer who lived in England.

Edith Harnham (Elyse Ashton) is an attractive young woman whose marriage to the older successful businessman Arthur (Palmer Scott) is--to put it kindly--uneventful. Their maid, an uneducated country girl named Anna (Jennifer Marie Lester), comes to Edith with a piece of news: She’s met a handsome young man from far-off London, and they’ve fallen in love. Before long, Anna discovers she’s pregnant.

Good news: Charles (Christopher Ellis) is still in love with Anna, evidenced by a series of romantic letters. Unfortunately, she not only can’t write, she can barely read. Edith volunteers to answer the correspondence on Anna’s behalf, putting plenty of herself into the messages.

Although it’s not exactly a comedy, “The Day After the Fair” is amusing in the sense of “what-more-can-happen-to-these-poor-people?” And the production, after a few minutes of confusing exposition (heavy accents, swiftly spoken), is well acted and involving under Michael Jordan’s direction.

Jordan has assembled one of his better casts; besides those already mentioned, Pamela Canton appears as the Harnhams’ other maid, and Yvonne Golomb plays Arthur’s spinster sister, whose actions at one point prompt the order, “Sarah, get off of the furniture.”

* “The Day After the Fair” continues through April 25 at the Arts Council Center, 482 Greenmeadow Drive in Thousand Oaks. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets to all shows are $12; $10, students and seniors. For reservations (highly recommended) or further information, call 381-2747.

DISTAFF “ODD COUPLE” MOVES TO SIMI: A few weeks ago, the Marquie Dinner Theatre in Camarillo produced Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” based on a 1984 rewrite of the play by the author, who reversed all the male and female roles. The Broadway cast featured Rita Moreno as Olive and Sally Struthers as Florence, counterparts of the original play’s unkempt Oscar and fastidious Felix.

The well-received Marquie production, directed by Don Pearlman, has moved to the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, cast intact.

“All we did was change the [stage] set,” said Dee Anne Helsel, who portrays Olive. “Even the blocking didn’t change that much. Simi is a bigger theater, and it will take more energy for us to pull it off, but from the beginning, we decided that a slow pace would kill the comedy, so we moved it like a house afire.”

Helsel, familiar to local theatergoers from roles in Santa Paula and Moorpark, has also appeared in television programs and films, including spots as an irate surf-shop customer in the recent “My Favorite Martian,” and a nurse in “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Helsel teaches acting technique to actors and directors, and recently self-published a book, “Acting Real.”

Subtitled “the Official Handbook for the Mechanics of Believability,” it is based on theories of veteran acting coach Lieux Dressler, whom Helsel has known for nearly a quarter-century.

“For years, [Dressler] wouldn’t let people take notes during her classes; people had to take what they could remember from her lessons. Finally, as an older woman, she has allowed me to put these techniques down on paper.”

On the other hand, one might want to reconsider acting as a career upon learning that Helsel, who is successful by industry standards, says she lands an average of one role--from commercials to music videos to features--for every 32 auditions. And she wrote the book--or, at least, a book--on acting.

*

“The Odd Couple (female version) continues through May 2 at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center, 3050 Los Angeles Ave. in Simi Valley. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets for all shows are $15; $12, students and seniors; $8, children 12 and under. For reservations or further information, call 581-9940.

For more information on the book “Acting Real,” or on the technique that inspired it, call 520-3423.