Musical 'Kiss Me, Kate' set to open at Temecula theater

By: James Curran - Staff Writer | Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:12 PM PDT ∞

He's not exactly a jilted lover, but for the record: Joey Arreola would probably give Fred and Lilli six months, tops.

"I would give it a short life span," Arreola said when thinking of the two protagonists of "Kiss Me, Kate," directed by Beverly Stephenson, which debuts at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater on Friday for a two-weekend run.

Arreola will play Bill Calhoun, a gambling addict working in a Baltimore theater in the 1940s who gets caught up in something that looks more like a love pentagon than a love triangle. Arreola's character doesn't get the girl in the end, but at least Calhoun might have another shot in short time.

"These musicals always end happily, but in reality, how long, honestly?" Arreola speculated as if the characters were real-life people. "Seeing two performers together, the egos get in the way."

Arreola is a veteran of the UC San Diego theater program. "Kiss Me, Kate" offers him a chance to take part in a memorable play with numerous chances for comedy. He plays an actor trying to dodge the mob and keep his girlfriend during a presentation of "The Taming of the Shrew."

For example, only in theater would you get singing mobsters advising leading man Fred Graham (played by Jason Call) to use Shakespeare to win back his ex-wife, Lilli Vannessi (played by Ashley Lohman), from under Calhoun.

Not exactly the most stable people in the world, Arreola said.

"My character kind of gets really fed up with it, but it still has that big happy ending, typical Shakespeare," Arreola said. "(Lilli's) singing 'I'm true to you' to my character, which really means 'I'm true to you, in my own way.' But in the end, everybody's still happy-go-lucky."

Arreola said one of the things that appeals to him about "Kiss Me, Kate" is that it takes characters people normally would not want to befriend and makes them likable. Arreola reads the part and sees Calhoun, who forges names on his growing list of IOUs, as simply "this really bad habit."

"That's the interesting thing about musicals; it amplifies the flaws," Arreola said. "Yeah, (Calhoun) does bad things, but he's with this woman who kind of gets around. That plays into the sympathy factor. You can't really hate him, totally."

Arreola said his role presents particular challenges. One is not to go over-the-top during farsical parts of the show.

"I'm very much of the mind-set of being realistic; that's the school of thought there," he said. "My character can ham it up a little, but if you do too much, you become a caricature, and those are the ones you can't make memorable.

"My goal is to have the audience say, 'Wow, this guy was onstage for 20 minutes, but I remember him.' "

The secondary challenge is to give Paige Patterson (who plays Calhoun's steady girlfriend, Lois Lane) plenty to work with. Arreola called Patterson "talented," but his compliments are tempered by the fact that his experience exceeds that of the recent Paloma Valley High School graduate.

"In a community production, you want to bring the aspects of a professional production in," Arreola said. "She's a very talented lady in her own right. Having the chance to talk to her, work with her, you have to be able to develop a relationship."