An Academy Award-nominated director is reintroducing the melodrama to Santa Monica.
By JAMIE WETHERBE Special to the Daily Press
“Golden Prospects,” a time-honored tale of bad things happening to good people, begins with a family of farmers setting out from Nebraska in the early 1900s with notions of fulfilling their orange grove dreams in California. But the Goodmans are soon swindled out of their money and must make a go of it in Los Angeles with nothing but their wits and Midwestern morals.
The Neurotic Young Urbanites Theater Company and the Powerhouse Theater (3116 Second St.) portray this story of misfortune, making repeated efforts to keep in line with the city’s past.
“Los Angeles history is really just a collection of swindles,” said writer and director Colin Campbell, of Silverlake. “This town is built on it.”
Midwesterners originally flocked to Los Angeles to buy orange groves, and that industry boomed and busted, said Campbell. Then oil was discovered with the same boom and bust. Now the movie industry is exploding.
The acting’s so bad, it’s good — just the way Campbell drew it up.
“Melodrama doesn’t mean bad acting,” said Campbell, who was nominated in 2001 for an Academy Award for his short film “Seraglio.” The actors’ over-the-top gestures set to live piano music are both inspired by the few melodramas of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Campbell said the films inspired him to write a melodrama about this city.
“Los Angeles is all about selling,” Campbell said. “People still come in droves and some of them do find their dreams... and manage to do wonderful things in spite of it all.”
This spirit embodies seems “Prospects.” Campbell said he’s in the process of rewriting the script — which received the Janet & Maxwell Salter playwriting award — into the modern silent film, “The Sad and Lamentable True Tale of Dr. Lance Zango.”
Campbell is a regular participant of Instant Films — where his films have won best writer and director awards. He has directed for the Mark Taper Forum’s New Works Festival, A.S.K. Theater’s Common Ground Festival, the Actors Gang, Cornerstone Theater, Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival.
His second short film “S.U.V. LUV” will soon appear at film festivals.
The Urbanites — founded by a group of New York University graduates — have been performing in Los Angeles for close to a decade. The group has earned several Garland and Dramalogue awards.
For more information or tickets, call 310-572-6748, or visit www.powerhousetheatre.com.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 20, 2004. Read the original PDF.