There’s a special housewarming planned for tonight. The event will feature pirates and catered Italian food.
And don’t bother bringing a gift. Your attendance will be gift enough.
Northwest Savoyards Musical Theatre Society is ready to welcome one and all to its new home. After 18 years as Snohomish County’s local musical theater troupe, Savoyards is finally getting to perform in a real theater on a real stage.
Savoyards opens the 2008-09 season at historic Everett Theatre in downtown Everett. The first show is Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” which runs through Nov. 16. This season also includes the romantic and funny “Once Upon a Mattress,” opening in February, and the classic “Fiddler on the Roof” in June.
Northwest Savoyards has partnered with the Everett Theatre Group, which manages Everett Theatre, in a joint agreement that both struggling arts groups are betting will lead to their ultimate success and survival. A third partner in this team is Everett Symphony Orchestra, which will perform three concerts with a smaller orchestra at the historic Everett Theatre this season. Tentative future plans involve reconfiguring the stage to accommodate the full orchestra for all symphony performances.
To celebrate opening night at its new house, the Savoyards organization is having the Seattle Seafair Pirates entertain patrons and having the event catered by Smashed Tomatoes restaurant.
“It’s feeling so much like home,” Savoyards executive produce Jeremy Edwards said.
Edwards talked before a special preview performance of “Pirates of Penzance” held for family and friends of the understudies, who took over the main character roles.
The excitement and energy from the cast and crew during that preview night was palpable. In the most recent years, Savoyards’ productions have been staged at the Snohomish County Public Utility District auditorium. Edwards praised the benefits of the auditorium; still, the PUD is not a theater.
“Here we have more seats and we have the frontage out onto the street from this beautiful building with everyone seeing us,” he said. “It’s so wonderful being in a real theater.”
For the Savoyards’ cast, many are getting to experience a real “green room” for the first time — an area where actors can relax between scenes. As an added touch, Edwards put stars on all the dressing room doors.
“We are in this 100-year-old building and it’s the real thing. It’s like being in New York,” Edwards said. “This is true theater, to me.”
The “Pirates” production will be backed by a 15-piece orchestra made up of Everett Symphony members to deliver some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s timeless tunes such as “I am a Pirate King!” and “The Very Model of a Modern Major-General” and “A Rollicking Band of Pirates We.”
In this witty, swashbuckling comic opera, Frederic was apprenticed as a child to a band of tender, orphaned pirates by a nurse who, not able to hear too well, had mistaken the original instructions to have the boy apprenticed as a pilot. Frederic made the best of it, but still was quite happy to be freed from his indenture on his 21st birthday, though he had to wait a bit longer because he was born in a leap year. By the end of the second act, a cacophony ensues when the pirates encounter a major general who is not too keen on military strategy but has a large contingent of beautiful, unwed daughters.
Northwest Savoyards Musical Theatre Society was founded in 1990. Though the troupe premiered with a sold-out performance of “H.M.S. Pinafore,” its beginning shows were performed in a high school gym before eventually landing at the PUD auditorium. Now, the Savoyards organization is good enough to attract actors and supporters from all over the Puget Sound region and believes the future looks bright at Everett Theatre.
“Change is always good and exciting,” Edwards said.
Reporter Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo@heraldnet.com.
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