She Loves Me: Broadway magic lights up No Square Theatre’s stage
By MARRIE STONE
Laguna can thank the pandemic for its role in scoring a New York City actor/director for our local community theater. Broadway star Lauren Elder grew up vacationing in Laguna and, when COVID drove her out of New York, chose her childhood timeshare to shelter in place. That’s when she discovered No Square Theatre. “We’ve come to this timeshare every summer for the last 40 years. It’s the one place in my life that has stayed the same. And it’s two blocks away from No Square,” Elder said.
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Photos courtesy of No Square Theatre
Broadway actress, singer-songwriter and director Lauren Elder will be directing “She Loves Me” at No Square Theatre this month
Last May, Elder taught musical theater in their Wisdom of the Masters series and, this month, she’ll direct their final production of the year, She Loves Me. The classic rom-com musical is the fourth adaptation of the 1937 play Parfumerie, following the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner and the 1949 musical version In the Good Old Summertime. It surfaced again in 1998 in the film You’ve Got Mail, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
Shop employees Georg and Amalia have a rocky co-worker relationship. Constantly bickering, each are unaware that they’ve met through a lonely-hearts ad and are now secret pen pals.
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Griffin Glenn and Anna Martin star in “She Loves Me,” on stage this weekend at No Square Theatre
The opportunity to direct this classic arrived at a poignant time in Elder’s life. This fall, she suddenly lost her dear friend and fellow star Gavin Creel to a rare and aggressive cancer. The two had performed together in the 2009 Broadway production of Hair, and Creel starred in She Loves Me on Broadway in 2016.
“The same week I was asked to direct the play, Gavin received his cancer diagnosis,” Elder said. “I messaged him right away saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m directing this.’ I told him I’d been listening to him a lot and felt like he was right there with me. He was too sick to even use his phone at that point, so I didn’t get to talk to him again. We’ll be dedicating this show to Gavin.”
Despite the tragic coincidence, Elder has found nothing but joy on No Square’s stage. Having worked professionally in the industry for decades, she’s blown away by the talent she’s discovered in our own backyard.
“I scoured Southern California to find these people because it’s a really challenging show to do at the community theater level,” Elder said. “It’s a challenging score, so finding actors with the vocal chops, who aren’t already working professionally and who have the time is a hard combo. I’m overjoyed with the cast. They’re incredibly talented and, on top of that, they’re just wonderful people.”
Several of those people have appeared on No Square’s stage before. Anna Martin, who plays leading lady Amalia Balash, appeared in Legally Blonde this past summer. Co-star Griffin Glenn, who plays Georg Nowack, starred in 2023’s The Shape of Things. Rob Harryman, No Square’s managing director and longstanding actor, plays Mr. Maraczek.
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The cast of “She Loves Me” doing a table read (Clockwise from bottom) Sean Paul Hawkins, Connor Sheehan, Anna Martin, Ava Balbin, Oscar Aguilar, Brianne Pusztai, Lauren Elder, Griffin Glenn and Rob Harryman
For a musical that’s normally performed on a Broadway stage with revolving sets, the logistics posed by this little black box theater tested Elder’s directorial skills. The payoff, however, is an incredibly intimate experience for the audience.
“I’ve staged this in a really immersive way,” said Elder, who directed a similarly challenging off-off Broadway production of Rent a few years back. “When I got to No Square, I saw it could be like that. So, I leaned into it, using the whole space. The action is happening everywhere, all around everyone. It creates a magical element to the show.”
This is Elder’s first time doing community theater since her teen years, almost 30 years ago when she built her high school’s theater department. “I’m definitely pulling from things I learned while directing Rent on a thrust stage, as well as my very early theatrical roots.” (A thrust stage extends into the auditorium, so the audience is seated on three sides.)
But as far as the actors are concerned, Elder says there’s little difference. “I’ve worked with people just as talented, and maybe even less talented, at the professional level,” Elder said. “This cast is amazing. They’re all very dedicated.” The only constraints, she said, are budgetary.
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The cast takes time out from rehearsal for a quick selfie
For a cast mostly in their 20s and fresh from college theater departments, being directed by Elder is a rare opportunity. Especially for Martin, who recently graduated from Concordia University with a degree in musical education and vocal performance and hopes to one day be a high school choral director.
“I’ve learned something new every single rehearsal,” she said. “Whether Lauren teaches us a new vocal warmup or technique, or she’s joking with us about moving the sets around (something union actors are prohibited from doing), she’s a teacher at heart and this experience is so educational.”
For Griffin Glenn, who says he lacks some of the vocal chops of his fellow cast members, gaining self-confidence was key and Elder was there to deliver. What he lacks in musical experience, he’s making up for in hard work. “As my mom says, ‘Be bold on the first one and ready for the next one,’” he said.
“For someone like me who’s not that confident in this, Lauren’s been great at giving me the tools I need to succeed. She’s such a wealth of knowledge and so skilled at what she does that we all want to work harder, knowing how good she is,” Glenn said.
He, too, appreciates the intimacy of the No Square stage. “Those massive theaters don’t allow actors to be entirely truthful to the circumstance. You have to be so big to make sure the people in the back can see you that you’re not always authentic to the character,” Glenn said. “But in these tiny black box theaters, where the farthest person is only 30 feet away, you get to tell the story in a much more intimate and honest way.”
Griffin relies on his background in kickboxing – another time in his life when he was called on to perform in an intense way – to give him the confidence to carry off this role.
“Martial arts and theater both give me a confidence that I’ve performed a hard task. So, when I walk into a room, whatever hard task awaits me, I feel ready for it.”
The whole cast sounds more than ready for She Loves Me, which opens Saturday, Dec. 7 and runs through Sunday, Dec. 15 for five shows. Tickets start at $27. More information and tickets can be found here.
