Bainbridge High actors blast off with ‘Return to the Forbidden Planet’

Published 11:30 am Saturday, May 2, 2015

Monsters, robots and Jerry Lee Lewis tunes abound in the Bainbridge High School theater’s production of “Return to the Forbidden Planet,” a campy retro sci-fi musical based ever-so-loosely on William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and the classic 1956 film, “Forbidden Planet.”

Originally, BHS drama teacher and theater director Barbara Hume said the students were slated to perform “Footloose,” but instead decided they’d rather find a story that was a little more out there.

Hence, Shakespeare in space.

Rediscover a time when life and music were a little simpler in this timeless take on the classic story: boy meets girl, boy and girl meet mad scientist and then everyone gets attacked by a vicious monster.

The annual spring musical ends the dramatic calendar at BHS, Hume explained, which features three large events, including the ever-popular Winter One Acts as well as the fall play.

When the students approached her about staging “Return to the Forbidden Planet,” Hume remembered, she was intrigued.

“My theater officers brought it to me,” she said. “They had me rethink ‘Footloose’ because, [while] this show is dated in a good way, ‘Footloose’ is dated in a bad way.”

Upon closer inspection, Hume said, the students and she agreed that many parts — especially the female parts — had not aged well.

“They actually called it misogynistic,” Hume said of the students, referring specifically to songs like “Holding Out For a Hero” and “Let’s Hear it for the Boy.”

“I agreed after I took a closer look,” she said. “The female roles were not all that inspiring. They were a little too submissive for our tastes.”

Then, reviewing the students’ suggested alternative with the show’s choreographer Alyza DelPan-Monley, Hume said they were both instantly on board.

“We both really got a hoot,” she laughed. “This is the English version of ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ This was the brainchild of a producer in London who loves American pop culture and early rock ‘n’ roll.”

And rock it does, as well as roll, boasting a Jukebox-style soundtrack including hits like “Wipe Out,” “Good Vibrations,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Monster Mash” and more.

Along with the richly vintage music, the show includes enough sly Shakespeare references to please even the most bodacious Bard booster.

“He writes struggles that we all relate to even today; universal themes,” Hume said, explaining the ease with which Shakespeare’s works can be made to fit any medium and genre.

“Nothing is authentic in this show,” she laughed. “It’s very ‘comic book’ in its look. I think of it as an ongoing comic strip because there’s very few black outs and it just rolls from one song into the next. It is just this sort of constant roll of this cartoon that unravels in front of you.”

Tasked with staging the movement in this moving comic strip, DelPan-Monley, a Seattle dancer/choreographer with a taste for contemporary dance and vibrant sweaters, said she was keen to use the musical’s sci-fi setting as a base for the show’s “movement vocabulary.”

“There are very clear numbers that are meant to be dance numbers,” she noted, saying that an early dance workshop with the 24-student cast led to some otherworldly inspiration.

“I was interested in textures of space because this is a piece about space, so [thinking about] moving in zero gravity or thinking about aliens and tentacles or thinking about a robot and the way a robot moves,” she said.

Though nothing about this production ultimately turned out the way she first envisioned earlier this year, Hume agreed that — though the differences were surprises — they had all been good surprises.

“This was a real stretch. It takes us someplace we’ve not gone before in the theater program.”

Spring show at BHS

What: The Bainbridge High School theater spring musical “Return to the Forbidden Planet.”

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 2 and 9 and Friday, May 8 (Doors open at 6:30 p.m.).

Where: The BHS Large Group Instruction Theater.

Admission: $8 for students and $12 for adults. Tickets for sale at the door. No presales available.