Vaudeville roars back into town

Vaudevillian Saul Tannenbaum is back — and he’s joining forces with Lord Franzannian for Franzannian’s ninth annual show, opening Friday (Nov. 6).

As much of the South Sound theatrical crowd knows, both Tannenbaum and Franzannian are fictional characters, but that doesn’t affect their vaudeville chops.

Franzannian, played by Olympia theatrical dynamo Elizabeth Lord, hosts Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show. Lord does the work of selecting the acts and sometimes helping to polish them. Then the red-cheeked, mustachioed Franzannian hosts with great enthusiasm.

And Tannenbaum is a vaudeville star created and portrayed by Josh Anderson. The musically talented but easily confused Tannenbaum was an Olympia staple from 2009-12, but has not been seen in town since Anderson moved to Seattle.

“I’m really excited about it,” said Anderson, who’s the resident musical director at Bainbridge Performing Arts. “Saul Tannenbaum is just the nicest guy in the world, and what a wonderful way to spend an evening being the nicest guy in the world.

“I certainly miss Olympia,” he added, “and I miss being on an Olympia stage for an Olympia crowd.”

Anderson’s act is one of 20 in the show, which will run a bit longer than it has in past years.

“Part of my decision-making when selecting acts is, ‘Can we fit them all into an evening of entertainment without the show being too long?’ ” Lord said. “I’m pushing it this year.”

In fact, it’s so long that it doesn’t look as though Lord will be performing, as she has in most years past. (Franzannian, of course, will be there introducing the acts and keeping things on track — and, no doubt, leading the whole cast in the rousing closing song.)

“If I wanted all the people I wanted in the show, there wasn’t any time left for me to do little vignettes,” she said.

“On audition day, people just kept coming in and in and in until the little Midnight Sun was full of people,” she said. “It was a tremendous turnout.”

About 70 percent of the performers have never appeared in the show. In fact, more than half have never even seen it.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a leap of faith,’ ” she said. “It astounded me.”

While Tannenbaum is among those who’ve never performed at the spectacular, Anderson has. He provided the live music for the second show — on a piano borrowed from King Solomon’s Reef.

“I have this very fond memory of Elizabeth and I rolling the piano that was in there down Fourth Avenue to The Midnight Sun,” Anderson said.

“I rented a piano dolly and we walked it down the sidewalk,” Lord said. “We didn’t have much of a budget then, and they let us borrow it at no cost.”

Finances have since improved: The show pays performers a stipend, and a portion of the proceeds is set aside to help fund production the following year.

Besides playing the piano, Anderson did a bit of acting.

“He was a relative of Lord Franzannian,” Lord said, “and we did this bit where I played all these different family members from the Franzannian family.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Vaudeville roars back into town."