VPA gives audiences ‘The Sting’ in new production

WASILLA — One of the great joys of community theater is the chance to see people you know outside the theater inhabit new roles on stage.

Wednesday, just before dress rehearsal, Dave Nufer, who dozens of Finger Lake Elementary School children know as Principal Nufer, expressed sympathy to Sam Allred, the YouTube sensation who stole the show as the Mayor of Munchkinland in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“I’m sorry you broke your arm,” Nufer told him, using his slow, calming principal’s voice.

Minutes later Nufer was on stage, inhabiting the role of Doyle Lonnegan and ordering a hit on a con man who’d scammed his numbers operation out of a $12,000 payment.

“We’ve got to discourage this kind of thing, you follow?” he told his crony with a tough-guy Irish accent.

Soon after, he flew into a rage and throttled Johnny Hooker over a lost poker game and a pilfered wallet.

Nufer is one of a few dozen Valley-ites cast in Valley Performing Arts’ production of “The Sting,” the stage version of the celebrated Robert Redford/Paul Newman movie about Chicago gangsters in the 1930s. The play, which features knives, guns and plenty of grifters and saucy dames, opens April 5 and runs through April 21.

Speaking of transformations, how about that D.J. Rotach? He was a lunatic in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a victim of a haunting in “The Woman in Black” and the sheriff in “Trip to Bountiful,” none of which are really anything like the swaggering, vengance-seeking con man Hooker.

“A guy with Johnny Hooker’s talents can always find money lying around in someone else’s wallet,” Mrs. Vanderkieft, played by Suzanne Hermon, who serves as the play’s narrator, says in introducing Hoooker.

Hooker, for the unfamiliar, is the role Redford played in the cinematic original.

Inhabiting the Newman role of Henry Gondorff is Larry Bottjen, who you might remember from, well, frankly dozens of VPA productions.

Gondorff is the experienced con man who takes Hooker under his wing to teach him the elaborate “long con” game and separate Lonnegan from his money as payback for the hit on Hooker’s former mentor.

Also of note are Bianca Purcell and Jake Libbey. Purcell inhabits a bunch of roles throughout, most notably introducing the show with a little bit of gangland gun-moll moxie. Libbey is Kid Twist, who scouts locations and interviews con men to play roles in the eventual takedown of Lonnegan.

And, as far as transformations go, probably the most interesting is Mat-Su College Director Talis Colberg, who plays a bit part as Combs, a mid-level henchman leaning on one branch of the numbers racket for quicker, bigger payouts.

“I hadn’t seen it until I rented the movie after I got the part,” Colberg said of his familiarity with the source material.

Forrester said tickets are selling fast with just a few left for opening night. The last VPA show, “Clue the Musical,” sold out. Usually, sold-out shows give a bump to the next performance from folks who didn’t manage to get a ticket.

He said audience members will get a treat for this production — ragtime music in the lobby before the play and at intermission, courtesy of pianist David Baker. In a pre-show pep-talk, he seemed confident the show would be great.

“We’ve got a really good play and you guys are doing really, really well,” he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.

What: Valley Performing Arts presents ‘The Sting’

Where: Fred and Sarah Machetanz Theater, 251 W. Swanson Ave., Wasilla

When: April 5 through April 21 with shows at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 2 p.m., Sunday.

Tickets: To buy tickets head to valleyperformingarts.org or call 373-0195.