(l-r) Producer Barbara Marder, Fred Fletcher-Jackson (Dorante), Director Steve Tobin, Assistant Director Dave Carter, Natasha Joyce (Clarice), and Stage Manager Ernie Morton. Photo courtesy of Chuck Hoag, The British Players

The Colonial Players’ early 2015 production of The Liar wins the big trophy: the Ruby Griffith Award for All-Round Production Excellence!

When it comes to the Ruby Griffith Awards, The British Players’ annual kudos for Washington-area community theaters, nobody has bragging rights like those of The Colonial Players of Annapolis. And now we add one more shining jewel to the crown. This year’s main Ruby Griffith Award, for All-Round Production Excellence, went to The Colonial Players’ production of The Liar, directed by Steve Tobin. (The appropriate response to that, we believe, is “woot-woot!”) That brings it to an even 10 times that we’ve landed “the Ruby”—more than any of the dozens of other excellent non-profit theaters in our highly competitive neck of the woods. Only Silver Spring Stage comes close to that total, with seven. The Liar is an adaptation, by American playwright David Ives, of the 17th-century French farce Le Menteur, by Pierre Corneille.

For this honor we have lots and lots of gifted and dedicated people to thank. On stage were, in order of appearance, Nicole Musho and Mike Winnick (the “stagehands”), Jeff Sprague (Cliton), Fred Fletcher-Jackson (Dorante), Natasha Joyce (Clarice), Rebecca Ellis (Lacrece), Sarah Wade (Sabine/Isabelle) Seth Clute (Alcippe), Ethan Goldberg (Phileste) and Mark Rehr (Geronte). These marvelous actors knocked it out of the park every night of the play’s four-week run in January and February, never failing to leave the audience in stitches. That’s no easy task when every barb, punchline, pun and wisecrack came packaged in iambic pentameter. It was very impressive, and enormously entertaining, as anyone who saw the show will tell you—including, obviously, the three Ruby Griffith judges.

The Liar during production. Photo courtesy of CP

Backstage for The Liar was the usual powerhouse team of smart, dedicated and talented people: costume designer Linda Swann, set and floor designer-painter Krisztina Vanyi (joined in the painting by her daughter, Czeni Szabo), assistant director Dave Carter, stage manager Ernie Morton, lead carpenter Dick Whaley, carpenters Norm James, Bob Mumper, Jim Robinson and Ted Yablonski, lighting designer Alex Brady, sound assistant Wes Bedsworth, sound/lighting technicians Kevin Brennan and Lyana Morton, properties designer Emily Parry, and properties assistants JoAnn Gidos and Beth Terranova. Barbara Marder was the play’s producer and Rick Wade served as play consultant.

In director Steve Tobin’s director’s notes in the show’s playbill, he seemed prophetic in suggesting that this choice of a verse-only “classic” was not as risky as some folks thought it might be. “I’ve never understood why many people are put off by verse plays,” wrote the Yale-trained theater vet (who is back in the Colonial Players family after taking a 25-year break to . . . well, to have a life). “Maybe it’s because we were forced to read Shakespeare in school, instead of experiencing it on the stage. There is such fun in plays like this. They are not ‘deep’; they are not ‘Theater.’ They are funny, silly and entertaining. They are as enjoyable as Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Don’t think of Corneille as ‘classical.’ Think of him as the 371-year-old man (apologies to Mel). In any case, I hope that this production leads to bringing back more of the ‘classics’ to East Street.”

We’re inclined to agree with Steve. And if we begin to doubt ourselves, we need only go to the theater lobby and ogle the Ruby Griffith trophy itself, a great big, gorgeous silver cup adorned with silver tragedy/comedy masks.

Ruby Griffith was the founder of The British Players (formerly known as the British Embassy Players), and she was its guiding light and most active director until her unexpected death in 1968, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Since then, The Colonial Players has won the coveted All-Round Production Excellence trophy 10 times: I Never Sang for my Father (1973), Butterflies Are Free (1974), Godspell (1976), The Runner Stumbles (1979), Tribute (1984), Baby (1990), The Boys Next Door (1992), A Little Night Music (1994), I’m Not Rappaport (1997) and, now, The Liar.

In 1992, two more awards were added to the Ruby Griffith honors—Outstanding Achievement in a Play and Outstanding Achievement in a Musical. Counting those awards over the years and the first- and second-runners-up certificates given in all three categories, Colonial Players has a total of 21 Ruby Griffith honors. Again, our only competitor is Silver Spring Stage, which edges us out (barely) with a total of 22. Other notable Ruby Griffith nods for The Colonial Players over the years have included five second-runner-up awards for All-Around Production Excellence, for The Shadow Box (1981), 70, Girls, 70 (1983), They’re Playing Our Song (1985), I Do, I Do (1987) and House of Blue Leaves (1991). In 2006, The Colonial Players won Outstanding Achievement in a Musical for its production of Enter the Guardsman, and in 2013 won Outstanding Achievement in a Play for its production of Shipwrecked! The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougement (as told by himself). The Colonial Players was first runner-up for Outstanding Achievement in a Play three times—2014’s These Shining Lives, 2007’s A Moon for the Misbegotten and 1993’s Fences—and second runner-up in 1996 for MacBeth.

Speaking for the entire Colonial Players family, we offer a hearty and grateful congratulations to the cast and crew of The Liar! Thank you all for making us enormously proud of what this theater does, and has always done, so well.

—Tim Sayles, Marketing Director, The Colonial Players