Treasure Island in Topanga

Recently I wrote about Hollywood’s Blacklist era, as chronicled in a special exhibit at DC’s Capital Jewish Museum.  This past weekend saw me at a place deeply steeped in memories of that difficult time. Actor Will Geer (born in 1902) is best remembered as TV’s folksy Grandpa Walton from 1972 until his death in 1978. (His passing was ultimately written into the plot of The Waltons, allowing him to be publicly mourned.) Though a lifelong actor on both stage and screen, one who was nominated for multiple prestigious awards, Geer had many other passions. Politically he was a deeply committed activist with long ties to the American Communist Party, During the Great Depression he spent much of his free time touring labor camps with close friends like folksingers Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie. He also had a great love for  botany, and earned a master’s degree in that field at the prestigious University of Chicago.

 Geer’s refusal in the 1950s to “name names” of Communist sympathizers at the behest of the House Un-American Activities Committee naturally led to his being shut out of the Hollywood movie community for a number of years. Though he starred in Salt of the Earth, a 1954 independent film about a New Mexico’s miners’ strike, he was long barred from more mainstream productions. That’s why he and wife Herta Ware built a simple performance space on their rustic property in SoCal’s folksy Topanga Canyon, which became a popular gathering spot for fellow blacklisted performers. At the same time, they began growing fruits, vegetables, and herbs as a way of feeding their growing family. Eventually, following Geer’s financial success from The Waltons, they launched a nonprofit corporation known as the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. The many offspring of the Geer family, by then launched on their own theatrical careers, joined together to stage works by Shakespeare and others in a rustic outdoor environment. Today the troupe is still going strong, mixing seasoned professionals with newcomers just learning to tread the boards.

 I try to visit the Will Geer at least once a year. The troupe is most active in summers, and its signature production is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s romantic fable for which this is the perfect sylvan setting. Other offerings for 2026 include Romeo and Juliet, along with an obscure Noel Coward farce (I hardly think of Coward as suited to a rustic backdrop, but never mind) and an inventive dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The script for this adaptation was prepared by Will Geeer’s daughter, longtime co-producing artistic director Ellen Geer, and her own daughter Willow (also an artistic director) here plays one of the drama’s most colorful roles. As always the troupe finds creative ways to use its permanent stage area, which consists of rough-hewn wooden building facades and beautiful old-growth trees. I’m happy to say that seating has improved a great deal over the years. The audience is shielded from the summer sun by a large canopy, but those concrete benches really cry out for cushions shlepped from home. 

 If you’re planning a day or evening trip to the Theatricum Botanicum, do save time to explore the premises. There is, for instance, a small wooden shack called The Shelter. Once a hang-out spot for the visiting Woody Guthrie, it now houses a collection of historic memorabilia from the 1950s onward. There are also places to buy food and souvenirs, and some gorgeous flowering plants to admire. For the full experience, make dinner reservations at Topanga’s mostly-outdoor Inn of the Seventh Ray, a magical venue full of other-worldly vibes. 

 

An Autumnal Tribute to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Anita Louise as Titania, the Fairy Queen

As a long-time theatre buff, I’ve been suffering serious withdrawal symptoms during the pandemic. The few opportunities I’ve had to see actors on stage have been outdoor performances, sometimes awkwardly staged in parking lots. But I did celebrate the end of summer with a Midsummer Night’s Dream in the most magical locale you can imagine. Topanga Canyon’s Theatricum Botanicum was founded in 1973 by the actor Will Geer (Grandpa on TV’s The Waltons). Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Geer had moved his family to the wilds of Topanga to live off the land. Eventually, their domain became an artist’s colony, and the site of an annual repertory season. The playing area is entirely outdoors, and it’s no wonder that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a standard annual offering. Ensconced in surprisingly comfortable seats in a beautifully woodsy glen, you truly feel as though you too are in the middle of a vast forest, communing with fairy creatures.

 (My pleasure in this particular performance was enhanced by the fact that a neighbor’s son, Steven Taub Gordon, had risen from the ranks of the understudies to play one of show’s quartet of lovers, the charmingly addled Lysander.)

 Back when talkies were something new and exciting, Hollywood’s big studios went out of their way to launch prestige projects, including elaborate screen versions of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays. MGM, for instance, staged a 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet, starring members of the studio’s prized acting stable: John Barrymore as Mercutio, Basil Rathbone as Tybalt, Edna May Oliver as Juliet’s nurse. The two young lovers were played by long-in-the-tooth Leslie Howard (age 43) and Norma Shearer (the 34-year-old wife of producer Irving Thalberg). It’s a well-spoken production, but also one that’s stiff and unconvincing in its portrayal of youthful passion.

 Up until now I’d never managed to see the Warner Bros. contribution to the Shakespeare derby. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which had been staged as an early silent film back in 1905, was filmed in 1935 by Austrian stage and screen director Max Reinhardt, who had just fled rising anti-Semitism in Europe. Reinhardt adored spectacle, and the film spends much of its length on musical interludes, featuring woodland creatures (fairies, nymphs, trolls) frolicking in the moonlight to the lush strains of Felix Mendelssohn. Today all those supernatural beings, photographed in shimmering black & white, can get a bit tiresome, with the oodles of fairies (all with long silvery tresses and filmy gowns) seeming not far removed from the stylized routines that made Busby Berkeley famous. Still, Victor Jory (wearing what looks like a crown of twisted twigs) makes a stalwart Oberon, and Anita Louise is a lovely Titania.

 Among the mortal lovers, perennial juvenile Dick Powell plays Lysander as a ready-for-anything college boy, in a performance that has always been much scorned, even by Powell himself. Opposite him is the very young Olivia De Havilland, making her screen debut. They and the two additional star-crossed lovers, Ross Alexander and Jean Muir, are pretty silly, in roles that always require a certain amount of silliness.

 Naturally, it’s the most earth-bound characters who come out best, particularly James Cagney as Bottom the Weaver and the wide-mouthed Joe E. Brown as Flute, who must don a dress to play opposite Bottom in the world’s wackiest performance of the tragic “Pyramus and Thisbe.” Young Mickey Rooney’s antic Puck sounds like a good idea: he was a small, energetic fifteen-year-old who was talented and ready for anything. But Rooney’s hyperactive performance should only be sampled in small doses. After seeing it, you’ll be ready for a Midsummer Night’s snooze.