The Elden Street Players Win Big at Theater Gala
Thursday, March 8, 2007; Page VA08
The Elden Street Players were the big winners at the Washington Area Community Theatre Honors, or WATCH, taking home seven awards for two of their productions last year and nearly sweeping the top tier of categories.
The Herndon group was awarded six of the eight top honors at the seventh annual awards gala, held Sunday night at the Birchmere. Another heavy favorite, the Arlington Players, which had 21 nominations, received five awards in mostly secondary categories.
  From left, Tom Pentecost, Laura Russell and Barbara Raffaele in Little Theatre of Alexandria's production of "Blithe Spirit," which won a WATCH award for outstanding special effects. The Elden Street Players won six top honors. (By Peter Piraneo -- Little Theatre Of Alexandria) Blog |
Elden Street's production of the rarely performed musical "Blood Brothers," a dark and emotionally compelling tale of twin brothers separated at birth and fatefully reunited, won four awards, including outstanding musical. Andy Izquierdo was chosen as outstanding lead actor in a musical, Anita Miller was named outstanding lead actress in a musical for the role of the twins' conflicted mother, Mrs. Johnstone, and Gloria DuGan received the award for outstanding direction of a musical.
The theater company's production of Edward Albee's drama "Three Tall Women," an unsentimental character study of a woman's life, received three top awards. The nod for outstanding lead actress in a play went to Carla Scopeletis, who played the character known as A. Rosemary Hartman won for outstanding direction of a play, and Karen Havener Handley, who played the character called B, received the award for outstanding featured (supporting) actress in a play.
The Arlington Players walked away with five awards for three shows. Top honors went to Mark V. Deal for outstanding music direction and Kay Casstevens for outstanding choreography, both for the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "The Pirates of Penzance." Rodrigo J. Vega, who played the Sergeant of Police in the show, won the award for outstanding featured actor in a musical. The comedy "Noises Off" earned Tom Witherspoon top honors for stage combat choreography, and Jennifer Diffell, who played Fruma-Sarah in the familiar musical "Fiddler on the Roof," won for outstanding cameo in a musical.
Twenty-five musicals and 71 plays produced by the 26 community-based theater companies that belonged to WATCH in 2006 were in the running. Five nominees were selected in 28 production and performance categories, based on the average scores of at least eight judges. The Elden Street Players were outdone in terms of the number of awards by the Port Tobacco Players of La Plata, which won eight. However, those wins were in secondary technical categories and did not include performance-related awards.
Little Theatre of Alexandria picked up one award for outstanding special effects, which went to Russ Wyland, Bob Gray and Ken and Patti Crowley for their work on the Noel Coward comedy "Blithe Spirit." Alexandria's Port City Playhouse and Tapestry Theatre Company each had one nomination.
The winners were announced before a sold-out crowd of 500 at a three-hour program that featured performance highlights from the nominated musicals. The lively ceremonies were sandwiched between a pre-show dinner and after-show parties.
A highlight of the evening was Laura Wehrmeyer's performance of the romantic aria "Poor Wand'ring One" from the Arlington Players' production of "The Pirates of Penzance," which was nominated for outstanding musical.
For a list of the winners, visithttp:/
