“If you make people laugh, you know you’re doing the right thing.”
That’s how Selby Long, 10, sums up her role as Mr. Toad, lead actor in this weekend’s production of “The Mad Adventures of Mr. Toad,” by Lynn Canal Community Players’ Summer Youth Theater Conservatory.
The musical comedy is an adaptation of the “Wind in the Willows,” with singing and dancing. Featuring 17 youths and a pre-show by six younger students, the play starts at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Chilkat Center auditorium.
A conservatory veteran, Long said she has an idea of the character she’s portraying. “He’s very pompous. He takes up crazes. He’s very conceited and he’s rich…. I just felt it would be fun to be this person.”
Long played Jack’s mother and Gretel in last year’s raucous conservatory production, “Noodle Rat, Rotten Hat.” As Mr. Toad, she has 151 lines and confesses to being a little bit nervous, although she admits to being “one of those people, after five seconds on the stage, it gets easier.”
Bill Winkley, the play’s production manager, has no doubts. He said Long knew all her lines before rehearsals started. “She’s poured herself into it. She’s done a fabulous job. She takes direction so well.”
Winkley and director Dr. Stanley Coleman are producing the play for the fourth consecutive year. Coleman said he has been surprised at how well students retain what they’ve learned in previous summers.
“We’ve seen real growth in the stage skills in some of these kids. Just in enunciation, projection, characterization – and just in stage presence,” Winkley said.
Long is joined by other young stage veterans including Maddox Rogers, Hayden Jimenez, and Emma Dohrn. Rogers plays Mole, Eli Asper is Rat and Alex Fields is Badger, filling out the play’s major roles.
Hayden is Chief Weasel, an instigator and troublemaker, and Dohrn is the bargewoman.
On Tuesday, Vivian Shallcross, Neva Brownell, and Willa Stuart were rehearsing a song and dance dressed in wide-brimmed hats and full-length dresses. In the scene they play “neighbor ladies” who have a little bit to say about the brash Mr. Toad.
Brownell, a conservatory rookie, sings in five songs and has “a lot of lines” in the play but said she likes “everything” in it. “I really don’t say ‘line’ anymore. I’m really getting it,” she said.
Stuart played a kitchen girl in last summer’s play. She said audiences this weekend won’t be disappointed. “I think they’ll enjoy the characters. They’re funny. And the singing. The whole play, it’s fun.”
Like Brownell, Shallcross is a conservatory rookie. She’s been working with her parents, learning her lines and said she also has learned from Winkley, Coleman and assistant to the director Martha Robichaud. “I think the directors are really good at teaching.”
Robichaud, a professional actress from Baltimore, Md., has led the cast in choreography. Vocalist Cathy Pashigian has returned to help with singing. Kathy Madsen is directing the younger students.
Production manager Winkley said Bear Scott, the son of Haines Police chief Heath Scott, is one of his favorite characters. Bear plays a policeman. “He’s proud as punch to play his dad.”