Coming & Going: Young Frankenstein

/
Coming & Going: Young Frankenstein

Holy Toledo! Otto Layman and his Santa Barbara High School Performing Arts Department have done it yet again. Montecito Journal has featured Layman's stellar productions of such classics as Beauty & the Beast, Singing Is The Rain, Spamalot, The Drowsy Chaperone, Footloose (featuring an end of the show performance of the song "Footloose" by its creator, Kenny Loggins), and many other fine productions. I have often wondered in writing what mysterious ability Otto has that allows him to inspire a continuing cavalcade of youngsters bristling with unformed talent to perform at a level, dare I say, decades above their pay grade? But have yet to discover what that is.

Read More

Response to: SBHS Theatre: A Life-Changing Experience?

/
Response to: SBHS Theatre: A Life-Changing Experience?

We so enjoyed reading the excel-lent article written by young Tyler Greenwald on the Santa Barbara High School theater program and its masterful director Otto Layman (On Theatre, "SBHS Theatre: A Life-Changing Experience?," MJ # 19/50). As a teacher and mentor, Mr. Layman deserves enormous praise and appreciation from this community and the young people he has inspired and guided over the years not just for the wonderful plays and musicals he produces with them, but for a much greater gift that he gives. Tyler asked if the Santa Barbara High School theater program is life changing. "Does it deliver more than just applause?" he asks. The answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!" Three of our four sons attended Santa Barbara High School.

Read More

SBHS Theatre: Life-Changing Experience?

/
SBHS Theatre: Life-Changing Experience?

Every year, Santa Barbara High Schools drama program stages three “all-out” productions. These productions consistently play to full houses and earn nothing but positive media reviews making them a significant contribution to the enjoyment and pride of the entire Santa Barbara community. The recent musical of Chicago was such a success, “phenomenal” was the word used most often by audiences and critics alike to describe this production.

Read More

A Show To Remember

/
A Show To Remember

I caught Otto Layman’s Santa Barbara High School musical production of Chicago last Friday night. And, it was terrific. It was better than terrific. It was overwhelmingly good. I didn’t simply “enjoy” the show, I was bowled over by it, riddled with glee, sumptuously entertained, jubilantly absorbed... you get the picture.

Let’s start with the performers: Let’s start with, say, Camille Umoff, who takes on the role of Velma Kelly (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones in the movie version). Camille was Nancy in Janet Adderley’s Santa Barbara Youth Ensemble Theater production of Oliver! at the age of eleven. She is now thirteen and a freshman... a freshman!... at SBHS.

Read More

Cabaret, One More Time

/
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

Read More

SBHS Seniors Say Good-Bye

/
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).

Read More

Coming & Going

/
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.

Read More

The Not so Drowsy Chaperone

/
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.

Read More

HAIR

/
HAIR

The split that divided the generation of the 1960s is one that transcends all eras-the massive contradiction of love against hate. While the youth of the ‘60s doused its spirits with love, many of their elders urged them to fight and kill in Vietnam. HAIR shows an era of revolution where values were redefined as children were sent by their parents to protect them (as in the song “I Got Life”), love for the community overwhelmed love for another individual (as in “Easy to Be Hard”), and duty challenged integrity. Now, with the decade of HAIR 40 years past, Santa Barbara High School has brought this beautiful representation of love, war, and hope back to life. 

Read More