Santa Barbara High School Theatre Flashback

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Santa Barbara High School Theatre Flashback

Have you seen the best little musical theater company in Santa Barbara? It’s filled with super talented teenagers working together with a group of remarkable professionals. It has been staging the finest American musicals for the last 20 years, almost 50 productions, everything from Singin’ in the Rain to Spamalot. This week you can boomerang back to the ’60s and see their mind-blowing production of Hair and realize how relevant and resonant that musical is for audiences today.

This is musical theater at its best; oh, by the way, it’s in a high school.

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From Santa Barbara to Broadway

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From Santa Barbara to Broadway

For every star on Broadway, there are thousands of hopefuls toiling away in summer stock, college productions, and high school shows. What keeps them going — along with the sheer pleasure they take in performing — is the dream that someday they will break through to the big-time and join their idols on stage in a full-scale Broadway production. For Dana Musgrove Costello, that Broadway dream came true. The young singer/actress is currently appearing in the season’s most popular new Broadway musical, Finding Neverland, alongside Glee’s Matthew Morrison and Kelsey “Frasier Crane” Grammer. Costello’s road to Broadway started at Santa Barbara High School and continued through the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA) in Santa Maria, which makes her a perfect demonstration for area theater kids of the fact that, yes, it can happen here, and maybe even to you. 

I spoke with Costello by phone from New York recently, and then I corresponded with some of the teachers who knew her when she was here. The portrait that emerged from these conversations confirmed some of the musical theater’s most deeply felt convictions.

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Review: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

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Review: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

This exciting and playful production succeeded in tearing down the theater’s well-known “fourth wall,” that invisible barrier separating the audience from the action, and it did so in multiple ways. First, there were the direct physical assaults, as when, in the opening number, Aaron Linker (who played the Music Hall Royale actor Mr. Clive Paget) and his character (the sinister choirmaster John Jasper) jumped off the stage and landed just before the front row, his leap perfectly timed to emphasize his self-assessment as “quite mad.”

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Chicago Gets Remade: Santa Barbara High

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Chicago Gets Remade: Santa Barbara High

On a Monday in October at 4:30 in the afternoon, the theater at Santa Barbara High School buzzes with half a dozen different constructive activities. And I do mean buzzes — and constructive — as one of the most noticeable things happening onstage is a young man welding. Not 20 feet from where this safety-hooded figure solders pieces of metal, a dance rehearsal with choreographer Christina McCarthy goes on. As the dancers in their sweats practice a combination, the giant tabloid newspapers with headlines about murder and scandal sit suspended overhead; suddenly, things start to make sense. We’re in Chicago — not the Windy City, but the Broadway show, which plays at Santa Barbara High School Theatre November 1-10.

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Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast

This high school production of the enormously popular Disney musical was as high-tech and ambitious as any play produced in Santa Barbara this year. Otto Layman, Chris Walas, and the extraordinary cast did a wonderful job deepening and darkening the familiar fairy tale, contributing to an evening of nonstop musical fun and laughter. As Belle, Santa Barbara High’s Jana McIntyre brought a beautiful voice with a warm rich tone along with excellent acting skills to this demanding lead role.

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