Advertisement

Why is a zany comedy troupe performing ancient Roman theater? The story behind the Troubies’ ‘Haunted House’

Share

The Getty Villa, that reproduction Roman estate in the Pacific Palisades where the J. Paul Getty Museum keeps an antiquities collection, has presented a Greek or Roman play in its outdoor amphitheater every September since the remodel and reopening of the villa in 2006. On opening night, museum director Timothy Potts introduces the performance with a brief scholarly lecture.

Potts is tall, slim and dashing, with a crisp Australian accent and an aura of erudition. On his way onstage to introduce this fall’s production, “Haunted House Party: A Roman Comedy,” adapted and performed by L.A.’s Troubadour Theater Company, he elegantly navigated a freewheeling circus.

Cast members were juggling pins and catching rings with their heads. Others meandered among the aisles, noodling on mandolins and chatting up audience members.

Advertisement

When they saw Potts coming, they scattered like rabbits and took cover behind the set. People in the audience sat up straighter, as if bracing themselves for education.

Potts smiled apologetically and began to discuss drama in ancient Rome and the works of playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. The audience reacted with howls of laughter. Potts, looking startled, glanced behind him. Of course. The irrepressible Troubies, as members of the 20-year-old company are fondly known, were clowning around, peeking impatiently through the windows and doors of the set.

That’s what happens when you invite the Troubies to your house: You become part of their show. Latecomers — hit with spotlights and taunted by the performers — are part of the show. Flubbed lines and prop fails are part of the show. And even though the script was written 2,000 years ago, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ryan Lochte, the hit musical “Hamilton” and other modern phenomena are part of the show too.

Troubie fans could have warned the Getty Villa. The troupe performs all over the city but most regularly in Burbank at the Falcon Theatre, owned by the late Hollywood director Garry Marshall, who adopted the company in 1998. There members honed their campy and oddly addictive specialty: setting the works of Shakespeare to the tunes of Three Dog Night (“Twelfth Dog Night”), Fleetwood Mac (“Fleetwood MacBeth”), Prince (“Hamlet, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Denmark”), Barry Manilow (“Frosty the Snow Manilow”) and a long list of other pop acts.

Because the Getty Villa sits in a residential neighborhood, use of the outdoor theater is subject to restrictions. The sound can’t exceed 65 decibels. “That’s about as loud as a shower,” said Matt Walker, the company’s founder. No amplification, no microphones, no drums, no electric instruments, no wailing pop vocals. The audience is even asked to applaud respectfully.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter »

Advertisement

Fans know they’ll be serenaded with “You’re So Late” (Carly Simon-style) if they try to sneak in after the curtain. They hope a performer will mess up and Walker, the company’s director, adapter, star and occasional referee, will throw his foul flag.

But of course the Getty Villa knew what to expect too, because it has worked with the Troubies before. Back in 2008, Ralph Flores, the project specialist for the theater program, invited the Troubies to develop a play in the Getty Lab, which provides a budget, access to its collections and scholars, two weeks of rehearsal time and a weekend of performances in its auditorium.

The Troubies pitched some titles: “Electra Light Orchestra,” “Duran DurAntony and Cleopatra” and the winner, “Oedipus the King, Mama,” a Sophocles-Elvis mashup that ran in 2009. That was followed by “For the Birds,” based on Aristophanes’ “Birds,” in 2011, and “ABBAmemmnon” in 2014. A partnership that initially seemed a mismatch in brow heights had turned into a fertile and mutually enthusiastic collaboration.

With “Haunted House Party,” the Troubies move outdoors to the 450-seat Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater, which initially had seemed out of reach.

“I actually thought we would never have a chance to program the outdoor classic theater because of the noise restrictions,” Walker recalled during a conversation with Flores and fellow Troubies.

“So when Ralph approached us two years ago and said, ‘We think we can make it work out there,’ our eyes got real big.”

Advertisement

The challenge of adapting the Troubies’ energetic pop sound to this environment fell to Eric Heinly, who has been the group’s musical director since 1998. He initially hoped to score the show using only instruments that were available in ancient Rome.

“We had a vision of some guy sitting there playing the lyre,” he said. “And maybe some flutes and trumpets. But those antiquated instruments, they’re really just mood pieces, whole-tone instruments that have five, six, seven notes. We had to use something that could play more notes.”

Finally he added a harpsichord, an anachronism but at least a quaint and acoustic one, along with a cello, an accordion, some mandolins, lutes, whistles and a melodica. With only these instruments, Heinly had to select and orchestrate a pop score that would humorously illuminate the characters and plot of Plautus’ “Mostellaria” (“The Haunted House”).

The Troubies tend to start with a title — the more ridiculous the better — and then develop the show that fits it. (They have plenty of possibilities in the pipeline, including “The Merry Wives of Earth, Windsor and Fire.”) In this case, they had the play before they had the score. The Getty staff, after a run of tragedies (“The Persians” in 2014, “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” in 2015), was in the mood for a comedy.

“Security guards were approaching me and saying, ‘Please, we need a comedy. We’re tired of people slicing their wrists,’” Flores said. “I was, like, ‘OK, I’m on it.’”

Advertisement

The team chose “Mostellaria” for its accessibility. “I call it a ‘Three’s Company’ episode,” Walker said. “The master goes away, and the scheming servants are, ‘Oh, gosh, we’ve got to pull the wool over his eyes.”

In his father’s absence, a young man throws a house party that lasts for three years. When his father suddenly turns up, the young man has to stop him from going inside. His clever slave comes up with the idea of pretending the house is haunted.

We’re excited for audiences to go, ‘Is that Air Supply? Are they really doing Air Supply on a harpsichord?

— Troubador Theater Company founder Matt Walker

“We started riffing on the title,” Walker said. “‘Mostell-REO Speedwagon’ was one of the ones we came up with. But then it was decided that you can’t really spoof a title that nobody knows. So we worked with the Getty scholar and our dramaturge, Amy Richlin, to see what we could get away with, and she thought ‘Haunted House Party’ was a great fit.”

They spent months choosing party songs from the pop canon.

“We’re excited for audiences to go, ‘Is that Air Supply? Are they really doing Air Supply on a harpsichord?” Walker said.

To provide historical context, Getty education specialist Shelby Brown provided tours of the antiquities.

“Shelby’s so passionate when she explains a vase and what’s happening on it,” said Beth Kennedy, a Troubie since 1998 and one of the producers of “Haunted House Party.” “She’s so knowledgeable but really just digs it, and she’s able to explain it to me in a way where I would have just walked by it in the past, but now people come and I’m like, ‘This is what this guy’s doing, and see how he has a flute …”

The more the Troubies learned about Plautus and his era, the more uncanny their emerging adaptation came to seem. Because there were no established theaters in ancient Rome, plays were performed by traveling troupes. The actors, Brown writes in the play’s program, talked directly to the audiences, “ad-libbing in the moment, and using slapstick and bawdy jokes.”

“This has been sort of a goose-bumpy experience,” Walker said. “In 1995 we formed as a troupe. We called ourselves Troubadour because we had no home or permanent space. We were disparate actors, clowns, musicians — all different disciplines. To learn about Plautus troupes, how they were itinerant and collected performers as they went, how they were topical, political, how they included improvisations in their performances, they had musical interludes … it was, sort of, are we those people, 2,000 years in the future?”

Advertisement

------------

‘Haunted House Party: A Roman Comedy’

Where: Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Outdoor Classical Theater at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; ends Oct. 1

Tickets: $40-$45

Information: (310) 440-7300 or www.getty.edu

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Follow The Times’ arts team @culturemonster.

ALSO

Review: The Troubies turn an ancient Roman comedy into a modern ‘Haunted House Party’

Advertisement

Review: Resilience and dignity are the rich, bluesy music of ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

Review: Better than Bryan Cranston? Star of South Coast Rep’s ‘All the Way’ delivers a most convincing LBJ

Ivo van Hove brings his stripped-down ‘View From the Bridge’ to Los Angeles

Advertisement