The cast of ‘Lost in Yonkers,’ the Sauk Theater’s latest production, has overcome quite a few obstacles to bring Neil Simon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning script to Jonesville.
High school sophomore Brock Hayes and his eighth-grade brother Bradley –– cast as leads Jay and Arty Kurnitz, respectively –– have never been cast in a non-musical production before. Their mother, Jennifer (J.D.) Evans, cast as their Aunt Bella, has never performed in a speaking role before now.
“It’s a lot more difficult,” Bradley said, referring to the shift from a musical performance to a straight play. Brock concurred.
“You can’t just do what the director says,” Brock said. “You have to make it seem natural.”
Despite the difficulty of adapting to the new theatrical style, the Hayes brothers, along with the rest of the cast, have worked diligently to bring the script to life, rehearsing four times a week.
“The cast is a dream,” says Trinity Bird, president of the Sauk Theater and director of ‘Lost in Yonkers.’ “We all believe in the material. I adore this play. I have directed it before, but not here.”
Cast members are not the only people enthused about the play. The opening-night audience was incredibly responsive.
“Opening night was crazy,” Bird says. “The audience was clapping for the characters, laughing with them, and then went completely silent during one of the intense scenes. It was exactly what we had hoped for.”
In order to bring scripts like ‘Lost in Yonkers’ to the stage successfully, the Sauk relies upon the time and talents of both its dedicated core team as well as around 300 community volunteers during an average season. No resource goes unused or unappreciated.
The crew’s love for and meticulous dedication to the theater is written into the very walls at Sauk: the seats in the small auditorium are clean, carefully kept, and slightly threadbare. The ceiling, adorned with a completely new lighting system, has been stripped of large patches of water-damaged plaster during recent renovations.
“It’s an old building,” Bird said. “There is always something that needs to be fixed. A lot of people look at this place and see obstacles. We see opportunities.”
For example, during their recent production of ‘Shrek the Musical,’ the small stage space posed a problem when deciding where to place the singing, moving dragon.
“We had a 24-foot dragon that sang and flapped and lived in the scene shop,” Bird said, laughing. “For us, there is no ‘far away.’”
Though the intimacy of the small space is prized, Sauk Theater has plans to expand its staff in the near future and extensively renovate the building, giving it a more energetic presence in the community. They call the 2014 production season the “season of identity.” ‘Lost in Yonkers,’ the first production of Sauk’s new era, is a promising start.
Starring Trinity Bird as Eddie Kurnitz, Brock and Bradley Hayes as brothers Jay and Arty Kurnitz, Jennifer (J.D.) Evans as Aunt Bella, Marla Gilpin as steely Grandma Kurnitz, Trevor Tracy as Louie Kurnitz, and Mary Jean Dulmage as Aunt Gert, the play consists of two acts broken by a 15-minute intermission.
The play will be performed this weekend, Feb. 21-23. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, the curtain will rise at 8:00 p.m. On Sunday, an afternoon matinee begins at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are available online at www.thesauk.org or by calling the box office at (517) 849-9100.
