Cabaret, One More Time

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Cabaret, One More Time

There are some who may quibble with Santa Barbara High School's iconoclastic Drama Department head Otto Layman that he sometimes chooses material that might prove too challenging, too risque even, for a high school production, but he plows ahead anyway; he knows his stu-dents perhaps even better than some of their parents. At least, Otto really, believes he knows what his thespian charges can do and which among them will rise to the occasion. And he rarely misses. His latest challenge is Cabaret, the musical, and the first of what Otto presumably hopes will be a yearly "Summer Stock" production

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SBHS Seniors Say Good-Bye

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SBHS Seniors Say Good-Bye

Clayton Barry is now a Santa Barbara High School graduate, as is Elli Harb, both of whom spent four years at Santa Barbara High School and were an integral part of Otto Layman's Performing Arts Department, particularly as juniors and seniors. The two joined me out-side Pierre Lafond in Montecito's upper village to help analyze what it is that Mr. Layman does that makes him such an overwhelmingly successful director. Otto took over the Performing Arts Department at the high school in 1995, the same year Montecito Journal was launched and, coincidentally, the same year most of this year's seniors (including twins Clayton and Jessica Barry) were born (gulp).

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Coming & Going

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Coming & Going

King Arthur (Jordan Lemmond) and his trusty steed (Clayton Barry) set off in search of the Holy Grail in the SBHS production of Monty Python's Spamalot. Spamalot  is indeed "(lovingly) ripped off form the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail," as its publicity proclaims, but it also cribs unapologetically from Life of Brian and other Python creations.  No matter; it's all good.  In fact, from what I saw of the cast's first dress rehearsal, it's all very, very good indeed.

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The Not so Drowsy Chaperone

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The Not so Drowsy Chaperone

You have no excuse for not catching the Santa Barbara High School production of the The Drowsy Chaperone; the Otto Layman directed Broadway musical plays again this weekend and it stars a number of up-and-coming Hollywood-Broadway talents, many from Montecito. I caught the show on opening night last Friday, November 9 and – this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth – my cheeks hurt from laughing so hard and so often. And I’m not talking about the cheeks I sit on. The Drowsy Chaperone features music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, all close friends who created this Broadway musical parody as a wedding gift.

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