Welcome Back, Potter!

I'm in a show! "Welcome Back, Potter" is mix of a movie spoof and a melodrama. I play Herniny ;). Here's the REVIEWS! Come and see it if you have the chance! It really is a lot of great fun!

March 07, 2009
James Scarbourough
Downtown Gazette

"Welcome Back, Potter," The All American Melodrama Theater and Music Hall
Why bury your head in the sand when you can gambol in a music hall that overlooks a lighthouse?
“Welcome Back, Potter,” written and directed by Jeff Tucker for the All American Melodrama Theater and Music Hall in Shoreline Village, offers pure escapism.
The tale isn’t just family friendly because it’s so over the top, because the staging is so jack-o-lantern fun, because the dialogue is20so witty and, I think, at-times improvised, or because the ac ting is so empathetic, it also bridges the popular culture icons of a couple of generations.
What a pairing, the cinegenic boy wizard Harry Potter and the sitcom premise of Welcome Back, Kotter. They go together like an iPhone and anything wonky and extravagant from its App Store.
Larry Potter (Ren Lescault) - yes, “Larry;” apparently Ms. Rowling watches over her franchise like an Owl - has recently graduated from wizard school along with his chums Hernniny (Amber Luallen) and Won (Paul Villano). Hernniny and Won decide to stay on and teach; Larry opens a rustic bed and breakfast.
Guess what it’s called?
The Pottery Barn.
Trouble is afoot. Of course it involves Waldemart (Michael Bailey), the lease to the school (and the future of educating young wizards), a quidditch match (of course it has to be called something else here), Larry’s triumphant return, a broom as well as one of those floor cleaner thingamajigs with the disposable cleaning sheet, romance (Hernniny has a twin sister – twins! – Jenny with a J, not to mention some levitation, some co njuring, and some prestidigitation.
The cast aced their roles. You find yourself yay-ing Lescault’s Larry because he’s so forthright and foursquare. He’s got an earnest voice, a full head of hair (An often overlooked physical requirement of melodramatic Heroes is their wholesome head of hair. Could you with clear conscience say yay to James Carville, Telly Savalis, or Dr. Phil?), and a posture like a ruler.
*Luallen’s Herninny and Jenny with a J have a face that could not only launch a thousand ships but steer them back home again. She’s the perfect match for Lescault’s Larry: virtuous without being all damsely, funny without being hapless, and a distillation of maidenliness.
And, ah yes, Villano’s Won. A delightful dork, a perfect scaredypants of a sidekick, and the missing link, literally, to this troika of magical alum.
Speaking of Oakland, Gertrude Stein may write that there’s no there, there. Here, though, on that dinky stage in the Long Beach Harbor, there is a there, there. A lot of fun, a catharsis. You think you’ve got it bad? The school’s something-like-quidditch team has been turned into an audience at a Long Beach melodrama. The school itself is going to be turned into a reta il outlet that undersells neighborhood merchants and blights the community.
Oh, the mellow drama!
Performances are 7:30 PM, Fri, 4:30 PM and 8:30 PM, Sat., 2 PM and 7PM, Sun. The show runs until May 3. Tickets are $14-20.The Theatre is located at 429 Shoreline Village Drive, Suite E. For more information call 495-5900 or visit allamericanmelodrama.com.


*I highlighted the most important part ;)