Gary Bolen of MPC Theater

Gary Bolen is just a really, really naturally funny guy. Watch him work the crowd in between acts in the lobby of the Morgan Stock Stage. He has a satyr’s glint to his eye. Or maybe it’s the way he keeps the top few buttons of shirt undone and brandishes a big piece of swinger’s hardware on his hairy chest.

I don’t know. But the guy cracks me up. Just talking with him in the lobby, you can see him winding up, his impeccable actor’s sense of timing spring-loaded and ready to fire. “Do you know Ryan Masters?” he asks as a friend approaches. “Great writer. This guy can tweak a press release like nobody’s business.”

Ouch. I’m taken off-balance, but when I look back at Bolen I can tell he’s enjoying every second of my discomfort. The man’s a rogue and a trickster and a carnival barker. He’s also a great song and dance man, a fine actor, and one of the main reasons that the Monterey Peninsula Theater Company continues to make great theater while mollifying the blue-hairs.

Bolen may be the smartest guy in the local theater scene. Or the craziest. He keeps the droves happy with low-budget, high quality musical revues by Sondheim and Gilbert and Sullivan, then pulls the rug out from under them by luring them to a full-blown production of something like Urinetown. More than smarts, it takes guts, and Bolen’s got those in spades. You have to either be crazy or full of courage to make a living in the dramatic arts. Bolen is both.

And he can write a mean press release.

ALL IN THE TIMING, A REVUE OF THE WORK OF DAVID IVES, opens in the MPC Studio Theater on Sept. 7. OUR TOWN opens on the Morgan Stock Stage Oct. 19. For more information visit mpcfaculty.net/drama_dept/default.htm.