The theme of this year’s show is “Fractured Fairytales.”
There are few circumstances in
which a gap-toothed child of
six or seven can make the following
requests without raising
alarm: “Make me into a dead cheerleader
– with a knife wound across my
neck and a black widow on my forehead.”
Or, “I wanna be a dead baseball
player-with small pox and a nosebleed.”
Or how about, “A green witch
with red eyes and purple hair with a
snake. Can you do pus?” Welcome to
the backstage hair and make-up department
at Witchie Poo, Sonoma’s
own 27-years-running Halloween Variety
Show, where the Blues Brothers
guest star in the Rocky Horror Picture
Show dressed as Muppets in a unique
combination of macabre and shtick.
And unless you count the Cramps’
annual Halloween show in San Francisco,
I’ve been hard pressed to fi nd
any other annual late-October theater
production with a near three-decade
stint.
I remember the fi rst time we took
the kids to see Witchie Poo eight years
ago. I vowed, as a mother and lover
of all things “monster,” to enroll my
children for life as Witchie Poo Players.
Never before had I seen so many
dozens of children on stage in ghoulish
make-up and ratted, fl uorescent
hair, dancing to Zombie syncopation
in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. We
stared in silence while Andrew Spear,
a hometown break dancing prodigy,
brought the house down, his white
sweatshirt glowing under black lights
and his sneakers disappearing in the
dry ice mist that crept across the stage.
I remember Amy Alioto’s tap dancing
vampiresses. And the little monsters,
and the scary music sing-alongs and
ARRRGGGGHHH! The pirates! And
Lemmie, Witchie Poo’s androgynous
sidekick, nearly unclassifi able as species
but irreplaceable as comic relief
during those awkward and hilarious
leaps over dropped lines that Witchie
Poo shows are so famous for. This, I
thought, this is what children’s theater
is all about — this is the art of self-invention.
As one of the many long-time
Witchie Poo families, many of us might
consider Witchie Poo to be an ongoing
avant-garde theatrical experiment in
song, dance and sanctioned weirdness.
Going back to the beginning (for the
uninitiated), the character of Witchie
Poo actually started on the H.R. Puff
N Stuff show starring Jack Wild, who
most people know these days as the
Artful Dodger in the movie adaptation
of Oliver. That Witchie Poo was a
little bristly and not entirely inclined
towards children. When Diana Rhoten
fi rst incarnated her own Witchie Poo
persona, it was with a puppet at Flowery
Elementary School in the early
1980s. She said she couldn’t fi gure out
why she scared the kids until she fi nally
took off the prosthetic nose. “I guess
the nose was too much,” she says.
Witchie Poo History
Rhoten recalls, “At fi rst we were part
of the Boys & Girls Club. We called it
“Safe and Sane Halloween at Witchie
Poo’s House.” This was during the
time in the early ‘80s when everyone
was paranoid about sending their
kids trick or treating.” Eventually the
show moved from Flowery Elementary
School to the Boys & Girls Club
on First Street East where it stayed
for several years. “It really became too
much work to set up the show and take
it down. When Flo McCann, the previous
manager of the Sebastiani Theatre,
offered to let us perform there, it
was so much easier. All of a sudden we
had a stage. In those days, before we
had all the choreography, there was a
lot more magic with Roger Rhoten the
Magic Man. A lot more. Poor Roger.”
Soon after, local teacher and musician
Bob Gossett came on the scene
and started writing original songs for
the Witchie Poo show such as “Halloween
Night” and “Witch Living Under
My Bed” – highly singable songs for
all ages that endure (and endure and
endure, even past Easter in our house).
When management of the theater
turned over to Roger Rhoten, Diana
Rhoten said, “We also inherited Amy
Alioto (then Amy Bellevue) and we got
real choreography — tap, hip hop, jazz.”
She said her Witchie Poo Player policy
has always been that “any kid can be
in the show as long as they come to rehearsal.”
Over the years, young Witchie Poo
Players have come and gone, some of
them still returning to perform. (I’m
waiting for Sonoma Valley goofball extraordinaire
Spencer Rank to return to
his role as Napoleon Trilobite but he is
in London, studying “theatah.”) A few
stalwart regular characters anchor the
show such as Jake and Elwood Cruise,
(based on the Blues Brothers), Count
Flatula and Son of Flatula and Skeleton
Jack, to name a few. Roger Rhoten’s
protégée, Tobias Weinburger-the-
Mystic-Man, performs his mesmerizing
glass ball routine and is known
to swallow glowing red hot pokers,
long, sharp swords and walk on coals
(scantily clad). Roger Rhoten always
introduces Tobias with a gentle warning
to the audience: “Kids, don’t try any
of this stuff at home. I really mean it.”
He usually says this right
after he saws Diana Rhoten
in half.
As soon as October 1
rolls around, Sebastiani
Theatre matron Susan
Bellach shows up to decorate
the lobby in her best
black lace and cobwebs. This year she
has out-done herself with a Gothic
theme that would put the Haunted
Mansion to shame, in a theater already
rumored to harbor a local poltergeist
(one who apparently prefers balcony
seating.) Rhoten encourages everyone
to come in and take a look. “The
theater is something we all share as a
community and all enjoy. It’s really fun
when we have a full house. We used
to have a contest for kids who came
in costume but they were all so cute,
we didn’t want to have to chose. Now
any kid in costume can participate in
a raffl e. That way, they all get to stand
onstage in their costumes.”
The theme of this year’s show is
“Fractured Fairytales” but audience
members should be prepared, as always,
to expect large and dramatic
deviations from any structure of plot
and theme. No two shows are ever the
same. Kim Rhoten has put together,
as usual, an exotic and creative array
of costumes and stage sets. Parents
of young children need not worry
too much about the scary young faces
on stage – by the second number the
make-up has mixed suffi ciently with
juice boxes and pb&j’s to be disturbing
only in a general sense. If Witchie Poo
is not the oldest annual Halloween Variety
Show around, it is defi nitely one
of a kind.
Show times are Saturday and Sunday,
Oct. 27 and 28 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets are $9 for adults and $6 for
children and seniors. Tickets are
available at Reader’s Books and the
Sebastiani Theatre, 476 First St. E.,
Sonoma; www.sebastianitheatre.com, 707.996.2020.
