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'Nautilus'
20,000 Leagues' Explores New Depths in Writing, Staging
February, 2003
By Steven Graham
Lakewood Sentinel
On the first day of rehearsal for the new Walden Family Playhouse production, director Jules Aaron already was warning his actors not to botch the boat scene.
"You don't know what I had to go through to get these rowboats," he said. "I was on the phone for two days. I have to give up my salary, everything."
The award-winning director was exaggerating with dramatic flair, but it reflects the complex effort behind the new musical, "Nautilus: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," which opens Wednesday, Feb. 4, at the Lakewood theater.
Fitting for a submarine adventure based on Jules Verne's classic book, the production was a Herculean effort to write and stage.
"This is a big show," said writer David Rambo. "It had to be epic. It had to be huge."
He said the director worked hard at shipping in the perfect boats for the set, but they are upstaged by a 27-foot submarine interior that rotates 360 degrees, a spinning fiber-optic globe and a giant squid (see related story).
However, even they aren't the most impressive facet of the production. The play's biggest hurdle was overcome long before the octopus took shape and the rowboats were christened.
After deciding to stage the undersea epic, Walden's producing artistic director, Douglas Love, asked a Los Angeles playwright and a New York musician to write the script together for a children's play in Colorado.
Rambo, who said he was impressed with the caliber of earlier Walden work, wrote the adaptation, leaving holes for Gary Pozner to fill with music and songs from across the country.
"We wrote a show together by e-mail," Rambo said. He met Pozner on Jan. 1, weeks after completing the script and a day before the first "Nautilus" rehearsal.
"Jules Verne would have loved the technology of how this was created," Rambo said.
Both said they grew up reading Verne, and jumped at the opportunity to work on "Nautilus," despite the logistical challenges.
Although both Rambo and Pozner admit they were skeptical about the process, they said the long-distance collaboration was helpful in some ways.
"You can make suggestions so freely on an e-mail that you wouldn't do face to face," Rambo said.
Rambo is well known in theater circles for "God's Man in Texas," which has been produced all over the country and broadcast on National Public Radio. He also wrote an episode of "CSI," the CBS investigation drama.
Pozner has written music for television and film, but has spent most of his career as a touring musician, traveling the world with Peter Gabriel, Tom Tom Club and his own band, EO, among many others.
He plays a wide variety of instruments from the pennywhistle to the drums, many of which figure in the "Nautilus" score. He said he wanted the music to have a contemporary feel, partly because Verne was such a progressive scientific visionary.
Also, the source material was so interesting that the script and score almost wrote themselves, according to Pozner.
"When I started re-reading the book, every character started singing," he said. He wrote 13 songs for "Nautilus" in one month.
For his part, Rambo was diligent about returning to the original book. He didn't even watch the famous Disney movie adaptation before finishing his script, because he said he didn't want to be influenced by the film's interpretation. He stuck closely to the book, even maintaining the 19th century language.
"It's very contemporary but it's lyrical enough that it doesn't violate the feel of the 19th century," he said.
At the same time, he said he had to take some liberties to make it a compelling musical.
"We invented some story," he said, noting that the book is essentially Captain Nemo's travelogue. He said it has little character development, which is vital to theater. He also created a narrator named La Mer.
Rambo said he hopes the musical sends kids to the library searching for Verne.
"I think this will make people who haven't read the book go out and read the book," he said.
As always at Walden, the musical is also tied to broader educational standards. Visit www.waldenfamilyplayhouse.com for lesson plans and more information on the musical.
"Nautilus: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" runs Feb. 4 through March 14 at the Walden Family Playhouse in the United Artists Theater complex at the Colorado Mills mall in Lakewood. Show times are 9:45 and 11:45 a.m. Wednesday through Friday, and noon and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $16 for adults, and $14 for children and seniors. For tickets and information, call 303-590-1475 or visit the Web site.
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