Two local actors stand above crowd in 2003

Tom Titus

This is the final column in a series reviewing the year 2003 in local

theater.

The true measure of a stage performer is one’s ability to create

an infinite number of strong, contrasting characters and sustain them

to the point where the actor appears to be assimilated by the persona

presented to the audience.

Local theater is blessed with a number of these talents, but two

in particular have entertained and entranced playgoers over many,

many years, both on the professional and community theater level.

Acting is their life’s work, and they do it superbly.

Both are professionally trained and each has a litany of stage

credits, both as leading players and in character parts, spanning

several decades, to the sheer delight of their audiences. They are

Don Took and Teri Ciranna, the Daily Pilot’s man and woman of the

year in theater for 2003.

Took is the senior member of South Coast Repertory’s coterie of

founding artists, joining the troupe that was to become the repertory

40 years ago. Ciranna comes from across the pond in London, where she

trained alongside such future luminaries as Peter O’Toole and has

become a familiar, most welcome face on the stage of the Newport

Theater Arts Center, among other venues.

Two years before South Coast Repertory adopted its name, Don Tuche

(as his name was spelled at the time) was a roommate of Martin Benson

at San Francisco State. He followed Benson and fellow San Francisco

Stater David Emmes to Long Beach, where they mounted a production of

“La Ronde” in 1963. Then came three summer shows there in 1964 before

the big move to Newport Beach and South Coast Repertory’s Second Step

Theater in 1965.

When that theater opened, the play was Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting

for Godot,” with Took in a leading role and Benson supporting. Later

he drew audiences and critics’ attention in such productions as “The

Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker” and “Othello.”

After South Coast Repertory moved uptown to Newport Boulevard in

Costa Mesa in 1968, Took stretched his acting muscles in a number of

stellar roles -- as Harpagon in “The Miser,” Mitch in “A Streetcar

Named Desire” and Commander Lloyd Bucher in “Pueblo.” He showed his

comic flair with leading roles in “We Bombed in New Haven” and “Room

Service.”

Following the company’s latest relocation, into the present Folino

Theater Complex in South Coast Town Center, Took gained a new

generation of fans with his door-crashing entrance as Marley’s ghost

in the annual production of “A Christmas Carol,” a role that’s kept

him employed over most of the last two dozen holiday seasons. He also

reveled in two plays by Roger Reuff, written particularly for Took

and his fellow founding artists, “BAFO” and “Hospitality Suite.”

“It’s been a wonderful journey,” Took said. “And it will

continue.”

While Took and South Coast Repertory were etching history locally,

Teri Ciranna was launching a stage career on the community theater

level. After training in London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts for

two years -- and winning the school’s Shakespeare Prize -- Ciranna

performed professionally in England before moving to the United

States in 1958.

She began in Ridgecrest and performed in San Francisco and Upland

before moving to Southern California, where she took a position as a

curriculum specialist at Irvine Valley College and delved into the

local theater scene. One of the diminutive (5-foot-2) actress’ most

memorable roles was that of Dotty Otley in “Noises Off” at the Laguna

Playhouse before that theater became an Equity operation.

She earned two “Bobbi awards” for performances at the Huntington

Beach Playhouse in “Ladies in Retirement” and “Blithe Spirit.” This

column conferred its “best community theater actress of 2002” title

on Ciranna for her commanding performance as Queen Eleanor in the

Newport Theater Arts Center’s stunning production of “The Lion in

Winter.”

Her signature role, however, is the title character in “Driving

Miss

Daisy,” which she performed both for Newport Theater Arts Center

and the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse. She also excelled as Cora in

“Morning’s at Seven” and Abby in “Arsenic and Old Lace” for the

Newport theater.

This classically trained actress also has become a popular

performer in Newport’s summer children’s productions. She “uglied”

herself up to deliver richly comical performances as the Sea Hag in

“Popeye” and Witch Zelda in “The Princess and the Magic Pea.”

Most recently, Ciranna drew raves as the domineering Lady

Bracknell in Newport’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a rare

return to her roots as an Englishwoman. Recently retired from her

Irvine Valley College position, she fills her time doing television,

student films and voice-over work in addition to her local theater

appearances.

There are few local performers around with the litany of credits

and the finely trained acting “chops” of Took and Ciranna, who

command playgoers’ attention whether in a leading or supporting

assignment. They are most deserving of the accolades “man and woman

of the year,” if not the last few decades, in theater.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.