Stephanie Zimbalist .............. Lizzie
Carlos Sanz ................ Starbuck
James O'Neil .................. Noah
Joseph Fuqua ................... Jim
"The Rainmaker" opened Oct. 12, 2000 and runs through Nov. 5 at the Laurel Theatre, 1006 E. Main St. in Ventura. Preview performances are Oct. 12 and Friday at 8 p.m., with tickets costing $20, $17 for students and seniors. Tickets for Saturday's opening gala at 7 p.m. are $125, which includes a dinner party with the cast at a nearby restaurant. Regular performances begin Sunday afternoon and continue Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets for those performances are $20 to $35, with senior, student and group discounts available. Tickets are available from the theater box office (call for hours) and by phone, 667-2900. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.
Second Opening: From Au. 9 to Sept. 9. Tickets for Saturday's opening night gala at 7 are $130, which includes a post-show reception with the cast at a nearby restaurant. Previews: today and Friday, 8 p.m.; $21, $23. Tickets for regular performances $23 to $38.
Thursday, October 12, 2000
Los Angeles Times
A Touch of Mysticism
Director tries new tack in casting lead for 'Rainmaker.'
By TODD EVERETT, Special to The Times
Jenny Sullivan wanted to interject a mystical element into the production of "The Rainmaker" that she's directing for the Rubicon Theatre Company. So she decided that Starbuck, the wanderer who promises to bring rain to a parched Southwestern town, should represent "indigenous people--native Americans--people who are really committed to the Earth and the environment."
Darren McGavin created the role on Broadway; Burt Lancaster played him in the 1956 film. But Sullivan cast Carlos Sanz, a Latino, in the role. Stephanie Zimbalist plays Lizzie, the local who is captured by Starbuck's magic, in the production, which opens for previews tonight.
"When I was [directing] 'The Little Foxes' for Rubicon in April," Sullivan said, "I was struck by the fact that so many Hispanic kids showed up at the student matinees. Many of them had never seen a play before, and they were just [struck by] live theater. They were a fantastic audience and talked very passionately and intelligently in the question-and-answer sessions we had after the performances.
"I was thinking about bringing those kids back, and their parents. Jim O'Neil, Rubicon's co-artistic director, and I were struck by the same idea in casting Starbuck. Nothing in the play indicated anything about him, except that he has this magical quality and charisma."
Now that they've rehearsed for some time, Sullivan notes that Sanz fits in well.
"I was thinking that we're really making a statement, but people watching the play for the first time are going to think that it was supposed to be cast this way," she said.
Already, the company has experienced what might
be considered a touch of magic. Searching for props, Sullivan
wanted Starbuck to bang on a Native American drum instead of the
parade-style instrument called for in the script.
"I got a catalog from a group called All One Tribe and
searched for a picture of something that looked
appropriate," Sullivan said. "Only after I'd decided on
one in particular did I read the description under the picture,
that it's called the Rain-Bringer Drum.
"When the people at All One Tribe found out what we were doing, and that Rubicon is a nonprofit organization, they offered us a 50% discount, because they consider theater to be a healing art."
The director was raised in a theatrical household--her father was actor Barry Sullivan and her mother was an actress who retired from the stage after marrying. Jenny Sullivan has worked in regional theaters around the country.
She has known Rubicon's O'Neil and Karyl Lynn Burns for several years, dating to when all were working in Santa Barbara. Most of her directing experience, she said, has been with new works, most notably, Jane Anderson's "The Baby Dance," which she took from the Pasadena Playhouse to off-Broadway. Co-starring in "The Baby Dance" were Stephanie Zimbalist, "Little Foxes" star Linda Purl and John Bennett Perry, who also appears in "The Rainmaker."
She finds the opportunity to work with an established play refreshing, she said, explaining that "it isn't necessary to work with [rewriting and developing] the text all that much."
Still, her next project may be a play she is writing, based on the relationships among herself, her father and her mentally disabled brother. The play will almost certainly debut at Rubicon, Sullivan said, with John Ritter--an old friend--playing the brother.
"I can tell you this because John told me I can tell people," she reports with pride: "He says it's the best part he's been offered since 'Sling Blade.' "
Tuesday, October 17, 2000
Los Angeles Times
The Silver Lining Holds Up in 'The Rainmaker' Revival
By PHILIP BRANDES, Special to The Times
The notion of dreams coming true might seem a preposterous conceit in a morecynical era, yet "The Rainmaker," N. Richard Nash's unabashedly optimistic 1953 teleplay-turned-Broadway-hit, still has the power to keep disbelief at bay in Jenny Sullivan's affectingly staged revival for Ventura's Rubicon Theatre.
Preceding "The Music Man" by three years, Nash's fable, about a traveling con man (Carlos Sanz) who lives only in his dreams and a lonely spinster (Stephanie Zimbalist) who lives entirely outside hers, shares some of the same fairy-tale appeal, sans trombones. In this case, trouble's capital T rhymes with D, which stands for "drought"--both meteorological and spiritual--as a family of Old West-style ranchers grapples with encroaching urbanization in the 1920s.
Director Sullivan and her first-rate cast add heightened gravitas with a tough-minded approach to the upheaval wrought by changing social values. In this regard, Zimbalist's bravura performance as Lizzie anchors the production with a letter-perfect portrait of a smart, independent-minded woman who can't live up to her community's traditional expectations. Angry at being shopped around like a farm animal to potential husbands by her father and brothers, Lizzie's self-destructive resistance is comic and poignant at the same time.
Lizzie's complexity deepens with the appearance of Sanz's Starbuck, the drifter who offers to bring rain--for a fee, of course. Relying less on charisma and more on brooding mystery, Sanz delves beneath the charlatan to reveal the wounded dreamer who is as out of place in the world as Lizzie herself.
Their beautifully played connection aches with a partiality that brings the fairy tale gracefully back to earth.
The supporting cast does a superb job in both defining its characters' strengths and limitations, and showing the healing wrought by Starbuck's influence. James O'Neil's Noah is the pragmatic elder brother enslaved to rationality, who finally realizes that in trying to keep his family from breaking its heart on what he considers foolishness, he has been demeaning and belittling them. Joseph Fuqua engenders cheers as his slow-speaking brother Jim, who sees more clearly with his heart than Noah sees with his head, but lacks the self-confidence to trust his own feelings.
Jeff Kober convincingly depicts the show's biggest stretch--the loner deputy who overcomes his own massive prejudices to buck the system and even his grizzled sheriff boss (Tony Perry). But the true catalyst for all these changes is not Starbuck, it's John Bennett Perry's sensitive portrayal as the rancher patriarch who seems to have lost his footing in the world with the loss of his wife, yet somehow recognizes that the obvious con man can supply the missing spark that will bring completeness to his struggling family.
Production values are excellent, from Pamela Shaw's sweat-stained costumes to Tom Giamario's elegant set, which squeezes three locales onto an intimate stage. After nearly half a century, "The Rainmaker" still makes a handsomely staged case for miracles.
Thursday, August 9, 2001
Los Angeles Times
VENTURA COUNTY CULTURE
By JOSEF WOODARD, Special to The Times
... Let the Theater Begin: Rubicon Theater Company, the crown jewel of Ventura's theater scene, starts its new season with a welcome summer rerun. Starting this weekend, last fall's popular Rubicon production of N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" will return to the Laurel for a run till Sept. 9.
Director Jenny Sullivan leads the original cast, including Carlos Sanz and Stephanie Zimbalist, familiar to television audiences through stints on "NYPD Blue" and "Remington Steele," respectively.
The play, which had a successful revival on Broadway in 1999, began its life on the small screen. Nash's work debuted in shorter form in 1953, for the Philco-Goodyear Television Theatre, but was fleshed out for its Broadway incarnation.
The Rubicon's upcoming season promises plenty to get out of the house for, including productions of George Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," "Old Wicked Songs," "Sylvia" and other peripheral events.
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