theatre
TEN YEARS CALLS FOR SOME FREAKY FUN!
CHRISTOPHER ASHLEY ON 10 YEARS WITH
LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE AND THE OPENING OF THEIR NEW DISNEY MUSICAL FREAKY FRIDAY! by lisa lipsey
It’s not often that I mention a man crush, but I do have a few and they are all typically acclaimed performers and artists. Only one of them is local and the crush has developed over the years, thanks to a series of interviews in The Rage Monthly. My wife isn’t jealous, though I think due to my enthusiasm, she has a slight crush, too. I can rightly celebrate him on this milestone year, his tenth visionary season leading La Jolla Playhouse, as Artistic Director Christopher Ashley brings us a new Disney Musical,Freaky Friday.
It was a particularlyFreaky Friday on the eve of
Friday, January 20, after the “Inaugural Address of Terror” and the strange, un-San Diego like rain storm. Ashley agreed as my heart skipped a beat when we said our greetings and I familiarly called him, “Chris.” There are two reasons I swoon: First, his wicked-smart creativity and second, his risky penchant for new works. Granted, Disney’sFreaky Friday is not the highest of his high-stakes, new play ventures. It’s Disney and LJP, but for Ashley,Freaky Friday is a full-circle moment. “I went in for a meeting with Disney six or eight years ago and we were talking about various material…I jumped atFreaky Friday. When Iwasfirst starting out, I directed a children’s theatre version, so it is neat, thirty years later to revisit that material. I loved the original novel by Mary Rogers, it is full of heart, wit, insight, playfulness and compassion. It is the mother of all body-switching stories and both the films are classic. EvenBIG came after this one.”
Ashley continued, “LJP before and in the last 10
years, has often done restless, innovative, new work which can be really exciting to be a part of, as artists and as the audience. It is a risky, not pre-approved journey of discovery. What I enjoy aboutFreaky Friday, is it speaks across the generations. It is satisfying to see a grandparent and grandchild watching the show together. Or a great grandparent who is 80, together with their great grandchild, who is 14, experiencing art together. An intergenera- tional play is something the playhouse has not done frequently.” One would expect some clever adaptations, as the
show moves from big screen to the live stage. “In the Lindsey Lohan/Jaime Lee Curtis film version, the body switch happens during an earthquake, when they open fortune cookies. In our version, the story is set in a single-parent household, the father is gone, but before he died he left them each an hourglass. When they accidently break it, you get that body-switching moment. Magic revolves
around time and precious memories of the father. The second, twin hourglass was recently sold and they have find it to switch back,” reveals Ashley. “There is great fun in this show, from staging to
the complete collaboration of the mother Catherine (played by Heidi Blickenstaff) and the daughter Ellie (played by Emma Hunton). Watching them learn how to become one and how to speak, adopt physical mannerisms and personality. Asking an actress to flip between two people—a teen with all the concerns and things they haven’t figured out yet and a fully-adult character. It also asks, as stories go, ‘What does it feel like to be you?’” Ashley opined. “We are diving into the minds of the characters and musicals are uniquely great at doing that. Songs really share the ‘How does it feel?’ and sometimes a scene has a hard time doing that. The score is indie rock and it is really tuneful, I’ve found I spend all my off-time singing it at home.” The cast just had a second run through in the rehearsal room and next is technical staging. Ashley
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RAGE monthly | | FEBRUARY 2017 FEBRUARY 2017
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