Chuck Annable's repertoire is growing, and acting

by PAUL MORTON

Associate editor

During the growing season, Chuck Annable can usually be found at Locke's Greenside Up Garden Center or out beautifying a client's landscaping. But on weekends from Feb. 4 to 21, you can find him trodding the boards as a member of the cast in Workshop Players' current production of Neil Simon's "Fools."

"As a kid in high school I had gotten involved with Workshop Players through Peter Hawkins," Annable said. "I was a gardener for him and his wife over on Edgemere Place when I was a kid in high school. I ended up working five or six plays at Workshop Players, running lights and sound, while I was in school."

He said that experience began a long affection for theater. He has long been a patron of Workshop Players, as well as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, Playhouse Square, the Cleveland Playhouse, and Oberlin High School drama.

He finally took the leap from audience to actor in 2005, when he appeared in the Workshop Players' production of "45 Seconds From Broadway." Two years later, in 2007, he played the lead role of Felix Unger in the Players' production of "The Odd Couple."

Right after that production, he purchased the garden center from Bert Locke. That kept him too busy to participate on stage until this year, after he closed the garden center for the winter.

"This year, the garden center's finally under control, so I've got a little time," Annable said. "I said I've got a couple months when I'm not plowing or anything. I'm going to go try out for that play. It comes up in February and runs three weeks in February, so it will be done before spring."

He said Simon supposedly wrote "Fools" as part of a divorce settlement with his wife, which decreed she would get all the royalties from his next play. Simon reportedly wrote it intentionally to fail on Broadway -- it closed after only 40 performances -- but it has been performed widely by community and regional theater groups and college theater departments, and has even been adapted as a musical.

"Fools" is set in the fictional late 19th century Russian village of Kulyenchikov, which is under a 200-year old curse, rendering everyone in town a fool. A new school teacher arrives and must either break the curse or lose his true love, who is, of course, a fool.

"It's kind of a silly little play," Annable said. "I play the postman, so I don't know if it's typecast or not."

Workshop Players operates in a former one-room schoolhouse at 44820 Middle Ridge Rd. in Amherst. Plays are presented "in the round" with the audience surrounding the stage on three sides.

"In some ways it's more intimidating than a proscenium stage, because you're right next to the audience, so you can see them," Annable said. "They try to light only the stage, but it's not very big, so the audience, you can see them quite well. On the proscenium stage, it's usually quite dark. You also have to be very aware of yourself. When you're not doing something, you have to be doing something, because otherwise you'll be blocking something for someone."

Annable said performing in theater provides him something he could not get from his garden center. He said for the time he is on stage he feels he becomes Felix Unger or Mishkin the postman.

"I guess I like theater because it allows you to step outside of yourself and your day-to-day existence for a moment," he said. "It's challenging, and it shakes things up."

"Fools" will be presented for 10 shows, Thursday, Feb. 4, through Sunday, Feb. 5; Friday, Feb. 12, through Sunday, Feb. 14; and Friday, Feb. 19, through Sunday, Feb. 21. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday shows are at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees are at 3 p.m.