La Jolla Playhouse's 'Spectacles' reaches out to kids' fears, fantasies

By Anne Marie Welsh
THEATER CRITIC

February 19, 2005

KEN HOWARD Bay (Ogie Zulueta, center) with a rabbit, an alien and two friends (from left: Danielle Kohne, Amir Khastoo, Rhys Green and Jeannine Marquie).

Poor Bay. He just turned 11. He's near-sighted. He wears big glasses. He even lisps, for goodness sake. And at the annual talent show, when he plays his flute, the kids boo.
His mother wants him to be Yo-Yo Ma; he wants to be a major league baseball player like his hero from the Seattle Mariners, Ichiro Suzuki.

What's a boy to do?

In Julia Cho's action-filled new play for kids, Bay (Ogie Zulueta) takes off on a hip, fairy-tale journey through the woods, where he meets a helpful rabbit, a wacky alien (Rhys Green) and his alternate futures – as a musician like Ma and a hitter like Ichiro.

Five nimble, shape-shifting actors, plenty of hip-hop and songs by Florence Yoo, and the witty direction of UCSD grad Robert Castro, bring Cho's yarn to vivid life. After 40 busy minutes, Bay makes an important life-affirming decision.

"Bay and the Spectacles of Doom" premiered recently at La Jolla Playhouse's new Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center, before launching a two-month long tour of schools, libraries and community centers. Cho's play is the latest in a laudable series commissioned by the Playhouse for its Performance Outreach Program, a k a POP, from established and emerging playwrights.

Cho, for instance, has received high praise for her "The Architecture of Loss" and other adult works off-Broadway, just as Julia Jordan, who penned last year's "Guitar," a poignant study of a grieving adolescent, also has a burgeoning career all over the country.

La Jolla Playhouse has scheduled three free public performances of Julia Cho's new play geared to children ages 6 to 12: 6 p.m. Tuesday, San Diego Scottish Rite Center in Mission Valley, 1895 Camino del Rio South. Reservations at (619) 293-4888 9:30 a.m. March 3, Malcolm X Library and Performing Arts Center, 5148 Market St., Emerald Hills. Reservations at (619) 527-3405 10 a.m. March 10, City Heights Performance Annex, 3795 Fairmount Ave., City Heights. Reservations at (619) 641-6103

In 1987, the first of these original Playhouse shows opened after lunch at Toler Elementary School in Clairemont. It was a musical written and directed by Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff and choreographed by Jean Isaacs. "Silent Edward" proved ambitious and fun, and as ever with McAnuff, ahead of its time; one tune in that clamorous show was an ode to the microchip.

"I genuinely don't believe that children are less important than adult audiences," McAnuff said then. "The Playhouse would like to do more work that takes on the concerns of young people. Plays that deal with their fears and worries and interests, not just their fantasies."

He said he hoped the POP tours would enable his theater "to commission new professionals – writers, actors, and composers." Though the tours were suspended when the Playhouse fell on hard times, McAnuff has been as good as his word, investing again in these new plays for POP as soon as he returned to the Playhouse from Hollywood four years ago.

The shows have differed widely in style and tone – from director-mask maker Ralph Lee's exquisitely designed tale distilled from legends of the Chiapis ("The Origins of Corn/El Origen del Maíz"); to Jordan's affecting and compassionate drama of loss ("Guitar"); to Luis Alfaro's raucous family comedy "Ladybird, the Life and Times of a Roller Derby Queen."

But like "Bay and the Spectacles of Doom," they've all had one thing in common: They take children – their emotional lives, their growing minds and imaginations – seriously.

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