Foiled! There is no escape for the vil­lain once again.

Fall, 2013, has rolled into Julian, and a cas­cade of events has begun that will not let the car­pets roll up until the last week of Decem­ber. Octo­ber is arguably Julian’s busiest month, but of course why not, the fall air and fresh col­ors have a way of redi­rect­ing our sens­es to apple pie. Just steer the car toward a day on Main Street, USA, but dur­ing this time of year try to arrive in town before noon.  Julian is nes­tled in a lit­tle moun­tain mead­ow of lim­it­ed space and park­ing is a prob­lem on some days.  Still, it retains the invi­ta­tion to vis­i­tors a town only three and half blocks long and about half that wide can do.

Bob­bi intro­duces the 2009 play

The most “Julian” of events is quite pos­si­bly the Julian Melo­dra­ma and Olio, and it’s some of the best enter­tain­ment, old-time or oth­er­wise, to be found any­where. Last year’s pro­duc­tion was the first in thir­ty-five years with­out the show’s phe­nom­e­nal pro­duc­er and direc­tor Bob­bie Green, who had kept the show authen­tic to the art form and local­ly act­ed for as many years.

Since 2012, the expe­ri­enced and tal­ent­ed Gar­nette Welch has tak­en the helm, not only direct­ing and pro­duc­ing but also wear­ing the essen­tial hat of piano play­er.  The plays are wit­ty, fun­ny and tra­di­tion­al­ly writ­ten by local Julian­ites with a flair for such things and the plots are usu­al­ly his­tor­i­cal­ly based (we won’t say if they’re his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate!) What is most charm­ing are the stu­dious play­ers who know their lines per­fect­ly…most of the time—but of course, that’s what actu­al­ly makes it perfect.

Click on above pho­tos for enlarge­ment and descriptions

The Julian Melo­dra­ma and Olio plays at Julian’s Town Hall at Wash­ing­ton and Main Street, Julian every week­end through­out Octo­ber. This year, there will be two after­noon mati­nees each Sat­ur­day, but only two Sun­days of the month will offer after­noon show­ings.  Two great web­sites list the offi­cial sched­ules for mati­nee and evening per­for­mances: julianmelodrama.com may have up-to-date info about dates and tick­et prices. (Update: as of Sep­tem­ber, 2020, julianmelodrama.com is a parked domain, pos­si­bly because of per­for­mance can­cel­la­tion because of COVID-19.  We can always try again in 2021.)

When I first heard about Julian’s annu­al Melo­dra­ma and Olio, I spelled out the word “oleo” in my head and thought this referred to the “oily” char­ac­ter of the vil­lain. I was soon set straight that the melo­dra­ma had noth­ing to do with mar­garine. An “olio” is a sideshow of sorts that goes along with the main act. Julian’s Olio adds a string of lit­tle vignettes between melo­dra­ma scenes, rang­ing from stand-up cow­boy jokes to moun­tain dul­cimer-play­ing on home­made instru­ments. Mrs. Spoon­er is a reg­u­lar act, with her abil­i­ty to tan­gle almost every oth­er word in the telling of a fairy tale.

It’s a tra­di­tion in the olio for young ladies aged 7–10 or there­abouts to per­form the annu­al can-can on the Town Hall stage around mid-play, so the actors can change the set behind the cur­tain to get ready for the last scene. The girls are well pre­pared and all atten­tion is on cen­ter stage. Believe me–if there’s no gold to be had in Julian these days, there is cer­tain­ly a gem or two like this be found. A delight­ful offer­ing from the 2012 Junior Can-Can:

Floozies show off in the July 4 parade

Then, there are the floozies—those saloon girls who ride buck­board on the show and can appear any­time before, between and after acts to lead us in song or per­form skits and will, occas­sion­al­ly, remind us of the dire need for sobri­ety (they then pro­ceed to guz­zle a mys­te­ri­ous bev­er­age they call Lydia Pinkham’s Medicinal!)

Julian doesn’t have any saloons any­more, but at the height of her gold min­ing days the town had sprout­ed some 27 bars. That was back when Julian was near­ly elect­ed the coun­ty seat, los­ing by only one vote to San Diego. The sto­ry goes that the min­ers had been pro­vid­ed a bit too much of the med­i­c­i­nal the night before (by sus­pect­ed nefar­i­ous evil-doers from the city), and the men for­got to vote the fol­low­ing day!

There is only one Rule to remem­ber when see­ing the Julian Melo­dra­ma and Olio: When you see the vil­lain, don’t for­get to BOO and HISS! And when you see the hero or the hero­ine, it’s time to APPLAUD and CHEER!

Pho­to cred­its (top-down): Bar­bara Swan­son, Richard Stephens, Lee McComb, Richard Stephens, Bar­bara Swanson.