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Image provided by: Guilderland Public Library
The Altambnt Enterprise *• Thursday, March 16; 2006 Both disturbing and uplifting, Steel Pier fills By Melissa Hale-Spencer GUILDERLAND — Second chances are there for the taking — if you believe in yourself enough to grasp them. That's the message of Steel Pier, a musical set in Depression- era Atlantic City. junior Alyson Lange, the leading lady. \Even when the going is tough,\ added Kousha Navidar, another principal player. \Every week,\ Maycock con- tinues in his notes, \we've agreed this show is bigger than we 'Bob Oates has pulled out all the stops. We're marveling at how spectacular it is.' The show, which ran for just two months on Broadway, in 1997, is coming this weekend to the Guilderland High School stage. \We're the first group in the area to tackle it,\ said Director Andy Maycock, a high-school English teacher. The book is by David Thomp- son, the music by John Kander, the lyrics by Fred Ebb. Kander and Ebb also created Cabaret and Chicago-, this show has that same larger-than-life feel, coming from the pain of the down-and-out and desperate. \It's a difficult show to tackle...There's a lot of dance. The harmonies are tricky,\ May- cock writes in his director's notes. So why did he choose it, espe- cially for high school players. \It's Bob Oates's last year,\ said Maycock, referring to the Guilderland Players' long-time choreographer, who is also a physical- education teacher and the high-school's cross-country coach. \We decided to tackle a really big dance show for him to go out on,\ said Maycock. Steel Pier is all about dance. The story centers on a 1933 dance marathon, where contest- ants compete for big prize money. \Characters show their true colors in a short period of time because they get so little rest,\ says Maycock. The band, liberated from the pit, serves as a character itself. The musicians sit on stage, at the back of a dance-hall set, playing bluesy, jazzy, and big-brass tunes. Besides the marathon dancing, Oates has choreographed some stunning full-stage numbers. In one, 16 girls in short, white sailor dresses with middy collars tap- dance on two different levels, when, suddenly, a chorus of fly- boys pops up from front of the center stage, singing. \Bob Oates has pulled out all the stops,\ said Maycock. \We're marveling at how spectacular it is.\ \Mr. Oates is really great at teaching people how to become a dancer,\ said Zack Tolmie, who plays the leading man. \Some people, at the beginning, couldn't even keep a beat and, now,\ he said, referring to four months of rehearsal, \it looks like you've been dancing all your life.\ \He does it in a fun way,\ said imagined. More dancing. More music. More scenery. More tech- nical tricks to work out. \And every week, we're im- pressed that our cast, our stage crew, and our orchestra rise to the challenge. \These are remarkable stu- dents with remarkable energy and determination. The singers have learned to dance and the dancers have, learned to sing. And along the way, they've put on one remarkably difficult show.\ The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer In their honeymoon tent, Bill Kelly, played by Zack Tolmie, and Alyson Lange, played by Rita Racine, sing about dreaming^ remarkable things in The Guilderland Players'production o/Steel Pier. . The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer A street rat and a sweetheart: Kousha Navidar, left, and Alyson Lange play the parts of an ill- matched couple struggling in the midst of an Atlantic City dance marathon in The Guilderland Play- ers'production of Steel Pier. The story \The story follows a stunt pilot named Bill, who has won a raffle to dance with Rita, a woman who gave Charles Lindbergh a kiss when he landed,\ says May- cock. \Rita is a little bit of a has- , been. Bill falls in love with her...The whole play is about second chances.\ Rita, though, is secretly mar- ried ,to Mick, who has been fixing dance marathons so Rita wins. \Rita's really sick of the game. Mick is a master manipulator,\ said Maycock. She longs to go home and Mick lets her think the Atlantic City marathon is her last, when he's really already promoting the next one in St. Louis. \We see how mean and evil Mick is, how sweet and lovely Rita is,\ said Maycock. \Is she going to stand up to him? That becomes the question.\ The players The cast is up to the task of a difficult play. Zack Tolmie, a junior who plays the part of the stunt pilot, Bill Kelly, has been in a number of Guilderland Players' produc- tions since he was a freshman. His favorite part was as Offi- cer O'Hara in Arsenic and Old Lace. He spent eight weeks mas- tering an Irish accent, which he can still slip into. He plays his Steel Pier part straight — with convincing sin- cerity despite a difficult ambigu- ity, not fully revealed until the end of the play. He manages to finesse the part of a character who is, quite literally, too good to be true. \He's a character who's al- ways happy, optimistic,\ said Tolmie. \He really wants Rita to fall in love with him, but he still feels a lot of pain.\ Tolmie found the most chal- lenging part of this show to be playing authentically in the 1930's setting. Tolmie, who wants to go to New York University after high school, hasn't decided yet if he will study medicine or theater. Alyson Lange, who plays Rita Racine, is sure she wants to pur- sue a stage career. A junior, she's been acting since she was five years old. She considers the New York State Theatre Institute her \home base,\ having played a variety of parts there. She even had a stint on Broadway in 2003, in the chil- dren's ensemble for La Boheme. \I can't even describe it,\ she said, calling it \the opportunity of a lifetime.\ Lange has found being with The Guilderland Players to be \so much fun,\ she said. \I like acting with people my own age,\ she explained. At the same time, her greatest challenge in playing Rita has been portraying someone in her thirties; she's used to playing a part closer to her age. How has she managed that? \I've been to thousands of Broadway shows,\ said Lange. \I listen to how they sound; I see the way they act.\ \She is just wonderful,\ May- cock. says of Lange. \The script (Continued on next page)
