It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an adaptation of a classic story can provide both great entertainment and a thoughtful way of looking at society.

This is especially true of the Cinderella story – or “Aschenputtel,” as the Grimm brothers called her. While the tale goes back at least to the 9^th century Chinese story Yeh-Shen, contemporary versions such as Broadway Rose’s Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella last year turn Disney’s 1950 animated chirping victim into a feminist heroine. This month, Echo Theater Company takes this idea even further with its concert production of a new work, Rella: The Musical, playing three performances Nov. 23-24, which features a mixed-race orphan. 

Similarly, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with its shipwreck, mistaken identities and disguises, is full of possibilities for new interpretations. Last January, the scrappy Speculative Drama produced the play at Angelo’s, a Southeast Portland dive bar lit with arcade games and blinking beer signs. Now Portland Center Stage is presenting its version of Twelfth Night, which is sure to feature its own set of surprises; and Shake&Pop, a new theater company that promises to merge the Bard with pop culture, is staging its adaptation of Hamlet.

Of course, the novels of Jane Austen also lend themselves to lively interpretations, such as the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice, in which Keira Knightley looked as if she’d been blown to Hertfordshire from the Brontës’ brooding moor. Stretching the basic story even further, Pentacle Theatre in Salem invites us to Christmas at Pemberly, with Mary Bennet, not Elizabeth, as its protagonist.

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So, there are classics, and then there are contemporary cult classics. Even Little Shop of Horrors, which is opening at triangle productions!, has long roots. Apparently, the play’s origins go back to an 1894 H.G. Wells short story, The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, about a strange species of flesh-eating flora. In 1932, John Collier wrote a comedic Green Thoughts, and in 1956, Arthur C. Clarke came out with The Reluctant Orchid. A few years later, Roger Corman made the 1960 comic horror film The Little Shop of Horrors, featuring Jack Nicholson among the cast. Finally, that movie was adapted into a stage musical that opened off-Broadway in 1982 and featured Alan Menken’s music and Howard Ashman’s book and lyrics.

For triangle’s production, Executive Director Don Horn knew he could rely on theater pro Diane Trapp to craft the perfect plant puppet that would eat characters without hurting the actors themselves. You can read below about it and other shows that are opening soon, plus more about Trapp, whose colorful stories about her 40-some-year-career in theater are as entertaining as the plays themselves.

Sure, Little Shop of Horrors, the zany horror musical, has great songs. But it also has a giant paper mache plant named Audrey II, who eats people.

When Horn decided to stage the play for triangle productions!, he called on Diane Trapp, the Portland theater makeup/wig/mask-making virtuoso, to help him with the four progressively larger flesh-eating Audrey II puppets in the show. Trapp had already constructed the first three for a class she taught at Portland Community College last year, but she’s been building a new fourth one – a full-grown Audrey II – for Horn, because the one she’d made with student help was too big for triangle’s loading dock.

So far, she’s happy with the results. “O.K., the thing eats three people, and we had an eating rehearsal yesterday, and success!” she said over the phone last week. “It needs more teeth, but I’ll work on that. It ate them, and they lived through the process.”

A large, moving project like this one inevitably presents some problems, but for Trapp, working through each new challenge is like solving a puzzle. “I just finished a sea dragon for a gallery, and I think I like it a lot because it caused me all kinds of trouble. It never was satisfied with how it wanted to look. Every morning I would wake up and have a cup of coffee and look at it and say, ‘Oh yeah, what do you want this time?’”

Trapp, who’s been working in theater since the early 1970s, wasn’t always into making things, even though her mother was a seamstress and Trapp grew up watching her dad, a baker, “throw bread around.” That all changed when her mother signed up Trapp and her siblings for a theater group. “I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and she wanted us all to do something. They opened up a theater group in our church, and she said ‘You’re all going.’ The whole Trapp clan.”

The group was run by the technical director at Lewis & Clark College, who brought in college students to direct shows, plus various teachers to help the younger kids learn their craft. It was through one of those teachers that Trapp learned how to do makeup, or her “first love,” as she calls it, before she gradually moved on to hair, wigs and masks.

After decades in the business, Trapp has been a vital part of the Portland theater community and enjoys collaborating with other artists. “Each time you work with new materials they create their own little problems,” Trapp says. “A friend of mine, Michelle Gallagher, came over and just volunteered to look at my work and to say, ‘Well, you should have done this, you should have done that.’ So we do it together and then it magically just comes together.”

Besides working on Audrey II, Trapp is busy making wigs for Portland State University’s The Gift of the Magi and rabbit heads for Oregon Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker. “I think the whole dance is a minute and something, and they jump and spin almost the entire time, and so I’m trying to keep the rabbit ears on the head.” Always juggling multiple projects, she adds, “I just got an order from New Orleans for a longhorn goat.”

As busy as she is, she says of Horn, “He works so hard. He does everything. I mean, he’s directing this. He’s working on props and costumes. He knows how to calmly keep things together.”  As Trapp says, “When Don needs help, you do it.” 

Little Shop of Horrors plays at triangle productions!, Nov. 29-Dec. 21.

ALSO OPENING

Twelfth Night, or What You Will at Portland Center Stage, Nov.24-Dec.22

Marissa Wolf, PCS’s artistic director, directed Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2023. Now she’s back working with the Bard again, and with some of the same actors among her stellar cast, including the always fabulous Treasure Lunan, Tyler Andrew Jones, Andy Perkins, Nicole Marie Green and Andrés Alcalá. See Twelfth Night on the company’s U.S. Bank Main Stage.

Corrib Theatre’s Waiting for Godot at COHO Theare, Nov. 29-Dec. 15

Billed by Corrib as a “tragicomic romp,” Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, is directed by Patty Gallagher at CoHo Theatre.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Gallery Theater in McMinnville, Nov. 22–Dec. 15

The final show of Gallery’s 2024 season, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, is a musical adaptation of the 1968 movie that starred Dick Van Dyke … which itself was an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s book. When an eccentric inventor and his two children restore an old race car, they discover it can magically float and fly, but the evil Baron Bomburst wants the car for himself. Directed by Katrina Godderz, with music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is recommended for ages 11+.  

HOLIDAY SHOWS

A Christmas Carol at Portland Playhouse, Nov. 26–Dec. 29

Returning director Charles Grant also brings back familiar members of the cast, including Lester Purry, Benjamin Tissel, Deolphon “DJ” Curtis, and Lauren Steele. The adaptation and original lyrics are by Rick Lombardo, with original music by Lombardo and Anna Lackaff.

Broadway Rose’s Hallmark parody Five Golden Rings, Nov. 27–Dec. 22

What’s more fun than watching a holiday Hallmark movie? Poking musical and affectionate fun at one. Holly, a business executive from the big city, gets snowed in at a quaint Vermont bed and breakfast for Christmas, and – surprise! – falls for its owner. As the press says, “From flannel shirts to flirtatious snowball fights, Five Golden Rings is everything you want in a ‘Greeting Card Christmas Show.’” Directed by Dan Murphy, with a book by Stephen Garvey, and music and lyrics by David Abbinanti. The show plays on the Broadway Rose New Stage in Tigard. Get your tickets soon, though: This one is selling out fast.

Passin Art’s Black Nativity, Nov. 29–Dec. 15

Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity is back at Passin Art, Portland’s oldest Black theater company. The musical tells the story of the birth of Jesus Christ from a Black perspective, using a combination of scripture, poetry, dance, and song with griot-style narration. This year’s cast features many favorites from previous seasons, plus Kenisha Blackman, a Seattle-based finalist on America’s Got Talent. Mainstage at the Brunish Theatre. Directed by Jerry Foster, with musical direction by JerMichael Riley.

Stumptown Stages presents It’s a Wonderful Life, Nov. 29–Dec. 22

This award-winning musical adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic film has a book and additional lyrics by Janet Mouser, music and additional lyrics by Michael Allen Harrison, plus additional music and lyrics by Julianne Johnson, and lyrics by Alan Berg. The show, which plays at Portland’5’s Winningstad Theatre at Antoinette Hatfield Hall, is for all ages.

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, at Pentacle Theatre in Salem, Nov. 29–Dec. 21

Set two years after Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ends, Miss Bennet focusses on the sermonizing sister Mary as the heroine this time. Directed by Jennifer Gimzewski, the story by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon is part of the Pemberley trilogy, which includes The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley and Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley. The show is recommended for ages 10 and older.

Rudolph the Re-Nosed Reindeer at NW Children’s Theatre, Nov. 30–Dec. 29

An encore performance of last year’s show, Rudolph is a musical adaptation of the TV special, featuring the shiny-nosed reindeer and plenty of his fellow misfits. Music and lyrics by Johnny Marks, script adaptation by Robert Penola. Rudolph runs for about 75 minutes at The Judy.

SHORT RUNS

The Tesla City Stories, Nov. 22

For November, the live “radio” theater is presenting The Wilde Card Mysteries and Blevins to Betsy, two stories from the archives of the Tesla Broadcasting Company (1943-1945). See them at TOC Portland, formerly known as The Old Church Concert Hall.

Hand2Mouth’s 24-hour devising festival performance, Nov. 23

Hand2Mouth bills its second season of the 24-hour devising festival as “a celebration of defiance in the face of pressure to ban certain lives and lifestyles and histories and cultures.” Once again, four teams of local artists will have just 24 hours to create an original devised work.

With banned books as the theme this year, the artists will be given various ingredients, such as a banned book, a prop, a famous quote, or a work of visual art to spark a new work to be performed at The Judy. Among the creators/performers are the always-impressive Sammy Rat Rios and Paul Susi. The festival director is Michael Cavazos.

Rella: The Musical premieres at Echo Theater Company, Nov. 23-24

The concert performance of this updated Cinderella story features a mixed-race orphan who dreams of joining the elite Charming Family Circus. With a blend of musical theater, pop, hip-hop, and North African folk music traditions, the show explores identity, institutional racism, community and belonging with humor and music, including a live band. Rella was written by Aaron Wheeler-Kay and Bevin Victoria, and will be presented for just one weekend.

Profile Theatre’s Reading Series: The Plays that Inspired Lauren Yee, Nov. 23 & 24

For its 2024-25 season, Profile Theatre is welcoming back playwright Lauren Yee, whom  American Theatre magazine listed as the second-most-produced playwright of 2020. “After an acclaimed production of King of the Yees in 2022 and sold-out readings of three other plays last February, it’s clear that audiences are eager for more,” says Artistic Director Josh Hecht. “The plays lined up are urgent and topical, but with the sly humor, joyous delight, and bold theatricality that have made Lauren a sensation.”

For its two-day reading series, Profile is presenting two scripts selected by Yee: Five Flights by Adam Bock, directed by Josh Hecht, and God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz, directed by Tamara Carroll. Performances of The Plays that Inspired Lauren Yee will be at New Expressive Works.

Y/OURS: tending gratitude and other acts of (radical) subversion at PSU, Nov. 20-24
Portland State University Theater is exploring the role of a citizen artist in a polarized society through a performance that’s been devised, performed, and designed by PSU students. The project is guided by theatermaker and social justice advocate Damaris Webb and design professor Solomon Weisbard. See the performance of Y/OURS at the Lincoln Hall Boiler Room Theater (LH 55).

CONTINUING SHOWS

Dorothy’s Dictionary by E.M. Lewis continues at 21ten Theatre through Nov. 24. You can read the ArtsWatch review here.

Flash Ah-Ahhh!, the space operetta by StageWorks, Ink, will be on stage at Chapel Theatre in Milwaukie through Nov. 23.

A Christmas Story, a musical based on the movie, continues at Lakewood Theatre Company through Dec. 15.

Liberace and Liza: Holiday at the Mansion (a Tribute), through Dec. 22

The glittering show, starring David Saffert and Jillian Snow, plays at Portland Center Stage’s Ellen Bye Studio. PCS promises new songs and a newly dazzling Moroccan Room in Liberace’s mansion. Tickets sold out last year, so if you’re thinking of going, grab your tickets now.

COMING IN DECEMBER

Shake&Pop performs Hamlet in Milwaukie, Dec. 5-21

The first production from this new theater company sounds like a doozy: Hamlet, with a script re-imagined by Isabella Buckner to focus on addiction and recovery. Directed by Veronica Everett. See it at Samaritan Lodge #2 in Milwaukie. Masks are optional but encouraged for audience members.

The 12 Songs of Christmas: A Christmas Cabaret, Dec. 6

Becca Berger-Howe’s winter cabaret performance is a musical journey that celebrates everything from the first winter snowfall to Christmas drinking. The production includes choral music, jazz classics, and holiday musical showstoppers. Special guests include members of the Portland Revels Chorus, Sophie Ledingham, and Krampus, the Christmas Devil, who will be available for photos after the show. Featuring Reece Sauve on the piano. Catch the show at Resound NW in Portland.

DRAMA NEWS

Portland Center Stage makes a switch in its season lineup

Due to financial challenges, Portland Center Stage has changed the lineup for its current season. Instead of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding by Jocelyn Bioh, it’ll be presenting Mrs. Harrison, by playwright and humorist R. Eric Thomas, who writes The Oregonian’s advice column, “Asking Eric.”

Mrs. Harrison is a dark comedy about a reunion between two former college friends – one a successful playwright, the other a struggling comedian. An exploration of race and friendship, the show will run from Jan. 19 to Feb. 16, 2025, in the slot originally scheduled for Jaja’s. In a press release, Artistic Director Marissa Wolf wrote, “…we’re thrilled to work  with Jaja’s director Tiffany Nichole Greene in a new collaboration with playwright R. Eric Thomas for this funny, biting, and gripping play. I hope it will bring a beautiful space of connection in our January/February slot.”

Tickets for March return of Hamilton on sale now

Tickets for the Broadway in Portland production of Hamilton, March 4–23, 2025, are on sale now. Based on Ron Chernow’s acclaimed biography and set to a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, R&B, and Broadway, the musical has won 11 Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, plus a special citation from the Kennedy Center Honors. Hamilton’s  book, music, and lyrics are by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Onstage at Keller Auditorium.