Vanguard kicks off season

Costa Mesa’s Vanguard University brings up the lights on its new

theater season tonight, with two familiar offerings bookending a

slate composed primarily of unfamiliar material.

The opening selection, “Schoolhouse Rock Live,” will be familiar

to frequent playgoers at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse and Newport

Theater Arts Center, both of which have produced the show recently.

Likewise, the season closer, “The Secret Garden,” has been around the

local block a few times as well.

The other four shows, with one minor exception, will be brand new

to Vanguard patrons.

“Schoolhouse Rock Live,” directed by Amick Byram, is the stage

adaptation of an Emmy-winning Saturday morning cartoon series from

the 1970s that made learning a little more fun. Subjects like math,

science, history, grammar and politics come alive in hummable songs

such as “Unpack Your Adjectives” and “Conjunction Junction.”

The show bows tonight and will play through Oct. 1 at Vanguard’s

Lyceum Theater, 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, running Thursdays through

Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Next up is one of the new entries, Arlene Hutton’s “As It Is in

Heaven,” a play based on historical events involving a community of

Shakers whose lives are disrupted by a newcomer’s visions of angels

in the nearby woods. Shaker hymns and dances provide the religious

flavor of the show, which runs from Oct. 21 to Oct. 30.

“Oklahoma Rigs” by David McFadzean -- creator and producer of the

TV show “Home Improvement” -- is a dramatic comedy centering on two

young men who dream of starting their own trucking company in the

Midwest of 1960. This is an unpublished work, to be directed by Vanda

Eggington, that earned a Kennedy Center award. Performances are Nov.

18 through Dec. 4.

Melodrama rears its comical head from Jan. 27 through Feb. 5, when

“Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch” rides into town under the direction

of Andrew Levy and Mark Parker.

The usual stock characters will be aboard; only this time the

sheriff is a lady. Tom Griffin’s drama “The Boys Next Door,” which

had a production at Orange Coast College several years ago, focuses

on four men with varying degrees of mental and emotional disability

who live together, along with the social worker who attempts to help

them.

Susan Berkompas will direct this show, which will be on stage from

Feb. 24 through March 5.

Finally, the other familiar show will close out the Vanguard

season. “The Secret Garden” has played at two other Costa Mesa venues

-- the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Civic Playhouse

-- and traces the adventures of a young girl restoring life to an

abandoned garden, as well as to those around her.

Byram will return to stage the Marsha Norman-Lucy Simon adaptation

of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel, which will play from

March 31 through April 15.

Theatergoers should call the Vanguard University Theater

Department box office at (714) 668-6145 to purchase tickets or for

more information about season subscriptions and group rates.