After rewriting, fine-tuning, tweaking and tinkering with his own stage adaptation of "Alexandre Dumas' 'The Three Musketeers' " at least four times during the past 12 years, Pioneer Theatre Company Artistic Director Charles Morey hopes that his newest production, which is playing Sept. 19-Oct. 6, "is the definitive production — whatever that is."
Morey directed the show for its world premiere in 1989 — also on the Lees Main Stage of Pioneer Memorial Theatre on the U. campus. (Since then, the facility's name has been expanded to the "Roy W. and Elizabeth E. Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre" — honoring the two Kaysville benefactors who donated $4.1 million to PTC in 1998 for what is now a nearly finished expansion project.) This new edition of the swashbuckling classic is "about 20 minutes shorter, which is all for the better," Morey said.
The original production had 27 cast members including such popular performers as Patrick Page and Robert Peterson. Page has since gone on to Broadway, where he had a leading role in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" for a couple of years. He left that show last month and is playing in "Arms and the Man" at the prestigious Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn.
Peterson, meanwhile, has moved to St. George, but will be back for the second half of PTC's 2001-02 season. The drama's newest version has a cast of 24.
"We're doubling some of the roles in different ways," Morey said, adding "Without a doubt, this is the best company that's ever done this show anywhere," Morey said.
Three members of the original cast are back again, 12 years later — all in the same parts they performed before (with a couple of minor "multiple role" exceptions). Anne Stewart Mark is again playing Anne of Austria, with Richard Mathews as Monsieur Bonacieux and David Valenza as Jussac.
This will be Mathews' fourth time in the production. He's also performed in California and Detroit.
Guest Equity artists include Anderson Matthews as Alexandre Dumas, Robert Devaney as D'Artagnan, Hayden Adams as Rochefort, Margot White as Constance Bonacieux, Christa Scott-Reed as Milady de Winter and Noble Shropshire as King Louis XIII.
R. Ward Duffy, Mark Mineart and Mark Silence will play Athos, Porthos and Aramis — the Three Musketeers.
Max Robinson is the conniving Richelieu.
Other Equity players in a variety of roles include Bruce Bredeson, Brian Coffey, Tom Jacobsen, Kaitlin O'Neal and Scott Stevensen. Non-Equity members are Daniel Beecher, Regan Glover, Joshua Grant, Matt Kohler, Jeff Owen and Patrick Rosier.
"It's been done several times by other companies," said Morey, "six or seven times elsewhere by other colleges and universities and even one high school — against my advice. It's a huge production, and there are so many fights, I'm afraid that with inexperienced people, someone's going to get hurt."
Getting hurt is unlikely in PTC's production. Two well-known fight choreographers — David L. Boushey and Dale Anthony Girard — are coordinating all of the fight sequences.
PTC's resident scenery designer, George Maxwell, is using the same basic "double revolve" concept that Morey and the late Ariel Ballif had for the 1989 version. "But George is taking off from that original design and solving what were some problems. This new set is the most flexible and least cumbersome and I'm very pleased with that. The scenic design has been refined to where it does everything it needs to do," said Morey.
Other behind-the-scenes activity includes costumes by Carol Wells-Day, incidental music by James Prigmore, choreography by Jayne Luke, lighting by Robert Jared, sound by Joe Payne and hair and makeup by Monica McGuire.
PERFORMANCES will be 7:30 p.m., Mondays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. on Fridays and 2 and 8 p.m. on Saturdays, Sept. 19-Oct. 6. Single tickets range from $18 to $37. All seating is reserved. Group and student discounts are available. For reservations, call 581-6961.
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