MARYSVILLE — Red Curtain’s show must go on despite ongoing construction.
Director David Bailey is excited to be putting on the classic “Arsenic and Old Lace” play in Red Curtain’s new, huge facility.
“Dunn proved that live theater will work here” in Marysville, Bailey said of Dunn Lumber, the previous Red Curtain site.
Red Curtain’s new home is in a commercial space at the back of the Goodwill shopping area on State Avenue. The arts center features a big lobby, office, the primary theater space, green rooms and storage. The theater, with its 50-foot-wide stage, will seat about 130 people.
The second floor offers space for classes, rehearsing, costumes, concessions and more storage.
“This is phenomenal,” Bailey said.
The goal of the Red Curtain Foundation is to make sure north Snohomish County has a center for arts education, cultural exchange, concerts and community theater.
“It’s a huge project, worth about $130,000. We are so close to finishing, but we’re still $40,000 short,” Red Curtain’s Beckeye Randall said of fund-raising efforts.
Randall’s husband, Werner “Randy” Randall, has been working construction 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to get the art center open.
The foundation has been busy with fundraising, grant writing, planning, design and construction.
RCF president Scott Randall said: “Our mostly volunteer crew has spent months converting a warehouse space into a performing arts facility.”
Bailey said he’s not worried that work won’t be done by the time the play starts Oct. 21.
“It’s like remodeling at my house,” he said with a smile.
Beckeye said they are always in need of volunteers but a big push this last week before the opening could really help.
“The community is really rallying around this and making it a priority,” Bailey said.
Jemica Dabney is the stage manager for the first play, which has a cast of 13.
“It’s great what they’re doing here,” she said. “It’s nice to have a local venue insteading of having to go to Seattle.”
As for the play itself, leading man Mortimer Brewster is a drama critic who is bringing his fiancée to meet his family…two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with wine laced with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch” of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt; and a murderous brother who has undergone plastic surgery by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to conceal his identity, and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff. The play was made into a movie in the 1940s, directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant as Mortimer.
The production plays at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays from Oct. 21 through Nov. 6.
For Christmas, Marysville-Pilchuck High School graduate Nick Poling and friend Alex De Roest have written a crazy show titled “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” loosely based on the 1964 B science fiction film of the same name. The show runs Dec. 2-18.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” plays Jan. 27 to Feb. 12, “You Can’t Take It With You” is scheduled for March 24 to April 9, and “Noises Off” closes the season May 19 through June 4. Also planned is a middle school and high school student play during spring quarter.
Among the classes offered this quarter are acting classes for all ages.
Because final construction is ongoing, an American Red Cross fundraiser concert — “Country Girls Sing the Blues” by Marcia Kester, Bev Cloe and Britta Grass — has been moved to Nov. 19.
For details go to www.redcurtainfoundation.org.
Gale Fiege of The Herald contributed to this report.
