‘Once’ Twice: Two Local Theaters Stage Musical at the Same Time – and Neither Is Worried

Joel Beers
3 minutes ago
7 min read

Chance Theater and Electric Company Theatre open the actor-musician musical this weekend.

LEFT: Wesley Chavez as Guy and Mercy Thornton as Girl are the two leads in the Electric Theatre Company's production of "Once." Photo courtesy of TKTKTAK. RIGHT: Emma Laird as Girl and Morgan Hollingsworth as Guy in “Once” at Chance Theater. Photo courtesy of Chance Theatre/Doug Catiller — **LEFT:** Wesley Chavez as Guy and Mercy Thornton as Girl are the two leads in the Electric Theatre Company's production of "Once." Photo courtesy of TKTKTAK. **RIGHT:** Emma Laird as Girl and Morgan Hollingsworth as Guy in “Once” at Chance Theater. Photo courtesy of Chance Theatre/Doug Catiller

How much does Callie Prendiville Johnson love the musical “Once”? Its most famous song, “Falling Slowly,” which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008, played as she walked down the aisle at her wedding ceremony.

Not convinced? Try this: To appear in the stage musical in 2023, she learned to play the accordion – and will strap it on again beginning Sunday, Feb. 1 in the Electric Company Theatre’s production at the Charleston, a wedding and special events center in downtown Fullerton housed in a nearly 100-year-old building that has never hosted a play before.

How much does James Michael McHale love the musical “Once”? He’s performed in the show more than 200 times in four different productions since 2018.

Not convinced? Try this: the night before ECT opens its run in Fullerton, the McHale-directed production of “Once” officially opens at Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills.

That’s right: “Once” is being produced concurrently at two theaters located about 8 miles apart.

While it’s not unheard of for local theaters to produce the same play around the same time, it’s certainly rare. Licensing agents regularly place an embargo on granting rights to theaters in an area if a production is part of a national tour, such as the “Once” production in 2014 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, or produced by a regional theater, like South Coast Repertory, which staged it in 2017. The geographic span and time period of those embargos vary, but in some cases, mid-size and smaller theaters can be shut out from staging a play for years.

But a few years ago, the rights to “Once,” which began life as a 2007 Irish indie film and was turned into a Broadway musical in 2012 that won eight Tony Awards (and also a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album), became available in Orange County.

Since 2023, it has been staged five times locally, at the Laguna Playhouse and the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in 2023, at the Curtis Theatre in Brea in 2024 and now in Fullerton and Anaheim Hills.

The timing of the current productions is coincidental. Neither theater knew when announcing its season that the other was producing the show. But rather than worry that a simultaneous production in the city next door might hurt ticket sales, both Prendiville Johnson and McHale believe there is more than enough audience to go around.

Prendiville Johnson points to experience. She directed Electric Company Theatre’s 2023 production at the Muckenthaler, where the company serves as in-house theater producer. It sold out early in its four-week run and she sees the recent cluster of local productions as proof of its popularity in Orange County. She’s encouraging audiences to see both, offering a discount for patrons who see the Chance show and verify their ticket through email.

“I think these productions are going to be so inherently different,” she says. “The nature of doing it in a nontraditional theater setting is going to make ours wildly different, and with different people in the roles, it’s going to be very cool.”

McHale, who has performed in “Once” three times in the San Diego area and in Laguna Beach in 2023, also speaks from experience in knowing how every production – if not every performance – of “Once” is different.

“Shows can be imagined so differently,” he says. “Everything from the space to the artists’ personal interpretations shapes the experience. You can tell the same story and end up with very different productions. I think that’s exciting, and I hope people see both.”

The cast of “Once” at Chance Theater. Photo courtesy of Chance Theatre/Doug Catiller

Actor-Musician Musical

“Once” is a rare type of musical theater. The actors are also the musicians, playing instruments on stage and portraying characters performing songs that are unlike most musical theater in terms of sound (instruments range from guitar and mandolin to cello and violin), style (contemporary folk) and structure.

While all live theater is ephemeral, existing only in the moment and with no two performances being identical (in no small part because every audience is different), it goes further in “Once.” Not only are all the variables that exist in a non-musical play (everything from a line delivered slightly differently to a cell phone ringing) present, but so are all the various notes, chords and harmonies played and sung by up to 10 or 12 actor-musicians on stage at the same time. And unlike most musical theater, where characters suddenly burst into song to reveal internal monologues or advance the plot, “Once” revolves around characters who are musicians performing and recording songs on the street, in their homes or in the recording studio. The songs are as much the plot as the spoken dialogue.

Morgan Hollingsworth, who plays Guy, one of the show’s two main characters, in the Chance Theater production, says that distinction is crucial.

“The general rule in musical theater is that when a character’s emotions get too big, they sing,” says Hollingsworth, who has appeared in four previous productions of “Once” and is playing Guy for the third time. “But this show is different because the songs already exist in the story. They aren’t necessarily progressing the plot in the way a normal musical does, but it’s still a huge expression of these characters when they sing their own songs that they have written. And instead of the band being separate, like somewhere offstage or in a pit, they’re onstage in the moment, and that makes the music very much part of the storytelling.”

With the songs grounded in the story rather than spontaneously erupting from whatever ether harbors musical theater songs, McHale says a deeper, more subjective connection between those songs and the audience is fostered (perhaps accounting for its popularity among local theaters and audience).

“In traditional musicals, actors are usually singing their inner dialogue, but this is different. It sounds like something you might hear on the radio, something that gives you a personal connection to the music. And then you have the rest of the story, which is so beautiful and grounded, and it’s being done right in front of you. That’s something audiences don’t get a lot of.”

The Story

“Once” revolves around Guy, a struggling Dublin street musician with an arsenal of original songs but on the verge of abandoning his dream. While busking, he meets Girl, a Czech immigrant who plays piano. They bond over a shared love of music and she convinces him to record a demo of his original songs and songs they’ve written together, assembling a ragtag backing band in the process. Both characters are wrestling with emotional baggage and as the story unfolds – through dialogue and the emotional rawness of the songs – a will-they-or-won’t-they romantic tension emerges.

For Emma Laird, who plays Girl in the Chance production and previously played the role in the Curtis Theatre production in Brea, the emotional core of the play is found in the songs, something she recognized when first seeing the film while in college in Boston.

“I was hooked immediately,” Laird says. “The songs rip me apart every time I listen. It’s such an honest delivery of music and emotion, and you root so hard for these characters.”

What makes that connection between audience and performer stronger, she says, is how relatable the characters are.

“They’re just ordinary people who also happen to be going through some of the biggest transitions of their lives,” Laird says. “Some moments are joyful, some are devastating, and the music becomes the way they escape” and persevere.

New Venue but Muck Still Home

Though the Electric Company Theatre’s production of “Once” features most of the cast of its 2023 production, this is not a reprise. That show was done in the round inside a gallery in the mansion with a bar onstage open to the audience before the show. This one will be performed in one of the well-appointed Art Deco rooms inside the Charleston, a wedding and special events hall originally built in the 1920s as an Odd Fellows Temple.

Purchased by the owners of the adjacent Bourbon Street Bar and Grill – now known as the Eliot – the property includes a 3,000-square-foot ballroom and adjacent bar on the second floor, along with three other gracefully designed rooms with bars that can be booked separately for private or corporate events,or as part of a wedding package.

The room where “Once” will be performed is on the third floor, a former dance studio with ornate tin ceilings and original 100-year-old chandeliers now used for wedding ceremonies. There is a small stage and the room can accommodate about 100 chairs.

This marks the first time the ETC has staged a play off-site since partnering with the Muckenthaler in 2021. But the choice fits the company’s aesthetic. At the Muckenthaler, it has staged plays in the outdoor amphitheater and mounted site-specific productions in and around the mansion.

“This is sort of a signature thing of ours, doing theater in unexpected ways and unexpected places,” Prendiville Johnson says.

This is also the first time a play has ever been staged in the stately building, but don’t expect it to become a regular occurrence. The opportunity came about because a company member also helps book the Charleston; yet, because the venue does most of its business on weekends, the play will run only Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesdays, with the exception of its opening night Sunday.

But the room sounds terrific, Prendeville Johnson says, and the intimate seating configuration makes what is already a deeply intimate story of heartbreak, hope, struggle and perseverance even more so.

“You might hear somebody playing guitar at a bar when you’re at a restaurant or in a bar, but to be in such close proximity to a cello or violin, we don’t get that opportunity to be in a space like that very often,” she says. “Being that close to all these incredible musicians is really a visceral experience.”