Dos Pueblos High School’s production of “Moby Dick -- the Musical,” by the creative team of Robert Longden (book, lyrics, and music), Martin Koch (musical supervisor and orchestrations), and Hereward Kaye (music and additional lyrics), will be directed by the redoubtable Clark Sayre, and will star Josh Jenkins, Kat Brady, Kate Bergstrom, Gabby Shulman, and Trevor Dow. The show will play at 7:30 p.m. November 11-12, 16-17, and 19; 2 p.m. November 12 and 19; 4 p.m. November 18. For tickets and more information call the Dos Pueblos business office at 968-2541.

The girls of St. Godley’s School are in trouble! Money for the school has run out and the place will have to close. Leave it to these resourceful girls, and their unflappable headmistress, to come up with a plan to keep the school afloat. Using whatever they can find at hand, the girls mount an original production: a musical version of Moby Dick, featuring their headmistress in the coveted role of Captain Ahab.

A cult-favorite in London in the 1990s, “Moby Dick! The Musical” has been re-conceived for an American sensibility. As Melville rolls in his grave, our spirited girls run roughshod over the classic as they carry on with their presentation. Warning: this is NOT your ordinary musical version of “Moby Dick!” What “The Rocky Horror Show” does to late night horror movies, “Moby Dick! The Musical” does to Herman Melville!

As the girls perform their adaptation of the classic novel, they come to have an appreciation of education and camaraderie - NOT! Filled with double and triple entendre, and more goofy humor than you can imagine, the St. Godley School presentation of “Moby Dick! The Musical” is guaranteed to make you laugh in spite of yourselves.

UCSB Music offers two concerts

The UCSB Department of Music offers to excellent concerts next week.

At 8 p.m. Wednesday, November 16, in Lotte Concert Lehmann Concert Hall, the University Symphony will offer its Fall Quarter concert under the baton of maestro Sean Newhouse. On the program are three works: Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture, Opus 62, Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia,” and Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 in D Major, “The Clock.”

Tickets to the concert are $12 general, $7 for students, and will be sold only at the door.

Then, at 8 p.m. the next evening -- Thursday, November 17, Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall -- the always interesting University Wind Ensemble, Paul Bambach, director, will play a diverse program of works for winds, including a select ensemble in Mozart’s Serenade No. 11 in E-flat, K.375, and the full ensemble in William Schuman’s “George Washington Bridge,” Ron Nelson’s “Courtly Airs and Dances,” Vaclav Nelhybel’s “Trittico,” and the “English Folk Song Suite” of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Tickets to the concert are $12 general, $7 for students, and will be sold only at the door.

PCPA ‘Beast’ opens in Santa Maria

Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” will open PCPA Theaterfest’s 42nd season in a special production created especially by PCPA’s own artistic staff. Performances begin on November 10, 2005 and run through December 22 with the official opening night scheduled for Saturday, November 12 at the Marian Theatre located at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria. The popular family musical also opens the Summer 2006 season at Solvang’s Festival Theater on June 14 and runs until July 16, 2006.

Based on the award-winning movie, which made cinema history by becoming the first full-length animated film to receive an Academy Award nomination as Best Picture, the stage version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast features music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton. The score includes the delightful “Belle,” the show-stopping “Be Our Guest” and the Academy Award-winning title tune, “Beauty and the Beast,” as well as additional songs not heard in the film. Adapted from the classic fairy tale about the French beauty learning to love a hideous but sensitive monster, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is still running on Broadway after ten years.

For ticket prices, show-times and other information, call the PCPA box office at 922-8313.

COURTESY PHOTO

Caption: Sibelius looks forbidding, but he was a teddy bear.