Depression Novel Has a New Relevance

A 60-year-old novel set during the Depression touches a timely chord in The National Theatre of the Deaf’s adaptation of Robert Nathan’s “One More Spring,” as the Connecticut-based company returns to Southern California for its annual sojourn, beginning Thursday.

“In the midst of failing banks and institutions, a man loses his business and has to leave his store--suddenly homeless, with no idea of where he’s going to spend the night,” adapter/director J Ranelli said of the story. “He and another man, a violinist, decide to stay in Central Park. The story is about what they do, who they meet, how they survive that first winter . . . but it’s also very funny. And there’s a striking resonance with today’s (homeless) situation.”

Ranelli, who was turned on to Nathan’s novel three years ago by NTD artistic director David Hays, believes that the transition from page to stage is a fluid one: “There was a very lyrical language, which one feels obliged to preserve. It’s the writer’s point of view, the filter or gauze through which he sees the characters. The way one tells a story is often as important as the story. So to preserve that tone, that voice, we created the character of the storyteller, who guides us through the story with his hands.”

Unlike productions that provide sign-language interpretation of a spoken production (often from the side of the stage), NTD features simultaneous--and integrated--presentation of spoken and sign language. The company will perform at the Bob Hope Center in Palm Desert (Thursday), Cal State Long Beach (Saturday), Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre (next Sunday), the Barclay Theatre in Irvine (Oct. 10), Occidental College (Oct. 12-13) and U.C. Santa Barbara (Oct. 15-16).

CHECKMATE: There are many ways to play “Chess.” One is at Long Beach Civic Light Opera, where a new version of the 1984 London musical (by Tim Rice and pop group ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus) opens Thursday.

Director/choreographer David H. Bell originally came to the project for a staging in Chicago last February--with permission from Rice to “play around” with the piece. Two years earlier, Rice had commissioned Richard Nelson to do major re-writes for the show’s Broadway opening. Bell borrowed from both the New York and London productions--but not from the Robert Coe text that was used in the national touring production that played at Orange County Performing Arts Center last May.

In fact, the Long Beach version has a different beginning and ending from the Orange County staging, as well as a different focus, according to Pegge Logefeil, LBCLO’s executive director: “Ours is more about the relationships between the characters, as opposed to the espionage.”

“I’m using the basic structure of the Broadway version--the added prologue, the second act set in Budapest,” explained Bell. From the London version comes “the sense of scale, musicality, metaphor.” And from recent history comes a distinctly period setting. “I started rehearsals in Chicago three weeks after the (Berlin) Wall came down,” he said. “This was a play set specifically in the Cold War attitudes of the last 40 years. So by setting it in 1979, we don’t have to deal with issues of glasnost , Gorbachev--any of that.”

SEASONS’ GREETINGS: East West Players kicks off its 25th anniversary season with the world premiere of Karen Huie’s “Songs of Harmony” (Oct. 17-Nov. 25), followed by Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” (Dec. 12-Jan. 20, 1991) and “Canton Jazz Club,” a new musical celebrating the mystique of ‘40s-era Asian nightclubs (April 10-June 2). The Feb. 2-March 17 slot has yet to be filled. . . .

CalRep in Long Beach opens its second season Friday with Soviet playwright Alexander Buravsky’s comedy “The Body Shop” (through Dec. 9). It will play in repertory with Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker” (Oct. 19-Dec. 15). CalRep’s next two plays in repertory will be Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of “A Doll’s House” (Feb. 1-April 6) and Howard Burman’s “Caruso” (Feb. 15-April 27).