The Amorous Ambassador

[Priamo Gregory]

Theperformance kicks off in what is soon revealed to be the official residence of the US ambassador to Britain. It takes place in one living room, with doors leading off to various bedrooms and public rooms, created in a convincing and professional set by designer Derek Blackwood.

Well I was there on Tuesday evening and the audience loved it from the word go. They clapped the set, laughed all the way through and whooped and hollered at the end. The timing of the cast was perfect and the jokes all came over. Your review is unfair.

"I just think it's time for Bay County to laugh," said director Babs Umenhofer, acknowledging everyone who has worked on the show. "And laugh out loud, and laugh in a group, and kind of just be part of humanity again. And this offers you that opportunity in an extremely over-the-top safe space."

With Kaleidoscope's home building in Lynn Haven still under reconstruction post-Hurricane Michael, the community theater has had recent rehearsals and performances at Mosley High School. But because Mosley's own drama department is currently staging "The Wizard of Oz," that space was unavailable for this production.

Auditions were held at Heritage Bible Church, rehearsals took place at the Panama City Beach Senior Center, and the performances will be in the auditorium at Rutherford High School. But that's not all of the community-wide connections, as the Stagecraft class at Mosley High School, under the direction of teacher Bruce Taws, constructed the set on the Rutherford stage. Work was still under way during interviews and rehearsals on Monday night.

"They're getting community service hours and experience while helping us out," Umenhofer said of the students. "Unfortunately, Rutherford doesn't have a drama department, so we couldn't pull from the talent here, but Mosley was more than willing to help us out."

The cast features Steve Lewis as Harry Douglas, the titular ambassador; Kathy Swigler as his wife, Lois; Susannah Wright as their daughter, Debbie; Jennifer Creamer as "Maid" Marian Murdoch; Kate Paxton as secretary Faye Baker; Jason Betz as security chief Capt. South; Harry Schaefer as Perkins, the butler; and Nickolaos Papalaskaris as Joe, the object of Debbie's affections.

The play by Michael Parker is a sequel to "The Sensuous Senator," and one of his "naughty but nice" works to integrate the best loved and most familiar devices of the traditional British farce into a distinctly American work, according to ConcordTheatricals.com.

Douglas, now an ex-Senator, has just lost a presidential election and is appointed ambassador to Great Britain. Along with his wife and daughter, he moves into a country house in England and gets to know the new butler. Each of them announces plans away from home for the weekend, but that doesn't actually happen because they each have hidden purposes.

"They all return to the house at some point," Umenhofer said. "And there's a lot of shenanigans. We have pratfalls and doors and super-glue issues, and a sofa-bed thing going on. We have a spicy next-door neighbor who has captured Harry's eye."

Another actor with a long history at Kaleidoscope is Betz, who has logged two or three shows a year with Kaleidoscope for the past 20 years. He got a military-style buzz cut to help him get into character this time.

"He is completely incompetent, which is one of the most fun characters to play," Betz said of Capt. South, the chief of security at the U.S. Embassy, who is convinced there is an assassin on the loose in the house. "We go for the laughs in this show."

For Paxton, who moved to Bay County just five days before Hurricane Michael struck, this is her first time performing in a Kaleidoscope production. Originally from Leicestershire in the East Midlands just north of London, she joked that it was "brilliant" being cast as an English woman.

"She is not the brightest button in the box," Paxton said of her character, whose clumsiness contributed to Capt. South's victimization. "(South) thinks there's a mad bomber on the loose, but that's actually just my character, who keeps on banging doors into him and what-have-you. And she's completely unaware."

Paxton's theater experience includes training at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art and a stint as a professional actor in England and Scotland. (She also sang in a band, The Nod, during her London days.) She directed a children's play cowritten by Umenhofer for the Kaleidoscope kids summer camp in 2019, which was held at Lynn Haven Elementary School because of the hurricane damage at the theater.

"It's so nice being back on stage again, because it's been about 15 years since I've been on stage," said Paxton, who missed some rehearsals when her father died in February. "It's been a journey, but it's been amazing. ... It's so nice to be back with theater people. ... I was a little bit worried about learning lines, but it's been brilliant."

Umenhofer has worked as prop maker, assistant director and stage manager for various Kaleidoscope shows since first getting involved with the organization about five seasons ago. A nurse by training, she comes from a high school theater background, and she has worked in Kaleidoscope's summer camp for kids, but this is her first time directing a play for Kaleidoscope.

Taking on a show during a pandemic is a challenge for the most experienced director, but Umenhofer said the cast and crew have been up for the challenge. They do temperature checks before each rehearsal (and will do before performances), and they have worked out blocking that maintains what she calls "anti-social" distancing except for brief scenes.

"It was the choice of the actors whether to wear or not wear their masks during rehearsals," Umenhofer said. "The majority of our blocking has been socially distanced for the most part so that we haven't fallen within that 15 minutes of face-to-face time that's the CDC issue."

Only 20 percent of the available seating will be open for ticket sales, allowing audience members to be distanced from one another. And there's an online streaming option for those who aren't comfortable viewing the show in the theater.

"We were really hoping we would be in the new theater, but as with everything when you're doing repairs there are going to be setbacks," Lewis said. "So we're kind of a gypsy troupe right now, making do where we can."

The comic strip Gordo was published in U. S. newspapers for forty-four years (1941-1985). For almost all of this run its creator Gus Arriola was the most visible American of Mexican descent working as a syndicated cartoonist. At its peak Gordo appeared in 270 newspapers and was the more widely circulated and longer-running of only two American comic strips set in Mexico.

Gordo recounted the humorous adventures and amorous preoccupations of a portly Mexican bean farmer, whose name, Gordo, means "fat. " Among the supporting cast were his perspicacious nephew, the menagerie of their farm animals, and citizens of their village. Originally, the characters played to the stereotypes of Mexicans as portrayed by Hollywood and in popular culture.

When Arriola realized that in the U. S. his comic strip was the only mass-circulation medium that portrayed Mexicans, he began taking pains to reflect accurately the traditions south of the border. Gordo was transformed forthwith, and its chubby hero became, more by accident than by plan, an ambassador for Mexico and its culture.

Converting his protagonist to a tour guide in the 1960s, Arriola was able to regale American readers with many aspects of Mexican folklore, history, and art in an entertaining but informative fashion, winning awards and accolades for his efforts. Because animals and insects in the strip were among its stellar attractions, Arriola was creatively positioned to stump for ecological concerns. He was one of the earliest in popular culture to do so.

Profusely illustrated with runs of the strip from various periods, the book traces Arriola's artistic evolution and celebrates the cartoonist as a supremely inventive stylist whose artwork always displays design qualities unusual for a comic strip. His stunning Sunday fiestas of color and design are exemplified with eight pages of full-color reproductions.

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