Bringing great theater to the American stage
Fellowship Theater in Red Bank begins season with ‘The Mouse Trap’

The stage has been set for this year’s Fellowship Theater production of Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap. And putting together the set for the production recently was Gil Rambach, the producer of the play and the founder of the theater located in Fellowship Hall at the United Methodist Church of Red Bank, 247 Broad St.

According to Rambach, this is only the second mystery that the company has produced in its eight-year history. "But you can’t really call it a career in theater if you haven’t taken a swing at the longest-running play ever."

Even if Rambach had not produced two mysteries, he can say that he has had a career in theater. This year, he will celebrate the production of his 150th play, about 30 of them at the Fellowship Theater.

"We only do the greats, but we do throw in a new play every now and then," he said. One of them was a musical that he had written in 1998. Called Shoop, Shoop, Shoop, Shoop, it was performed to a packed house at the Fellowship Theater in May 1999. "We billed it as the world premiere with a world-premiere atmosphere," he explained. "The cast arrived in limos and we had a red carpet with flashing cameras. There was a lot of excitement that night."

Rambach says he wrote his first play 20 years ago, "a party-game murder-mystery, mostly improvisation."

He is married to a Methodist minister. In 1997, he wrote Isman, his first one-act play with a religious theme. "Now I am working on a series of one-act biblical plays, each with only three characters. I plan to put eight to 12 of them together in a book."

As a producer or director, he does just about everything to get a production off the ground. He designs the sets and even acts from time to time. "During Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the actor playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek couldn’t go on. The character is a tall, skinny guy, which I obviously am not. I had to squeeze this body into his costume. It was interesting," he said.

Rambach thinks that everyone is as interested in theater as he is. "It goes without saying that it’s an interesting, amazing place," he said. "It’s like living in Disneyland all of your life."

Before establishing the Fellowship Theater, he was a part of the Arnold Theater in Point Pleasant.

"It had been a vaudeville theater," he said, "and was in a terrible state. I found out who owned it and got permission to fix it up and produce plays there. We had a new show every two weeks. I lost about 100 pounds. It was a killer.

"After about a year, the theater was sold to a bank and we had to leave. The last performance was Romeo and Juliet. I hoisted a piece of scenery up in front of the building with Hamlet’s dying words written on it: ‘The rest is silence.’ "

But Rambach wasn’t to be silenced. He found the stage in Fellowship Hall at the Methodist Church. "It was filled with unsold rummage that had been piling up for 20 years. It was like a big closet," he said.

Now it is a performance stage with a behind-the-scenes setup which includes a small library, sound and lighting equipment, and a dressing room.

Rambach says he loves collecting sounds like the halved coconuts that he uses for the sound of horses’ hooves or the old bicycle pump he uses for the squeaking door in The Mouse Trap. "You know," he said, "doors make one sound when they are opened and another when they close. So does the bicycle pump," he added while demonstrating that it indeed does make two different sounds.

"I see theater production as a series of problems to be solved and challenges to be met. OK, we need the door to squeak, find a squeak."

Rambach says he chooses to do only the greats because "great theater, and great writing, is so much easier to produce. You don’t have to be afraid of Shakespeare or Arthur Miller. I want audiences to find out why the greats were great.

"Our job is to move audiences with plays that make you feel, like Death of a Salesman. The great plays do move the audience. And America needs it," he said. "Americans don’t know how to experience emotions."

Warming to his subject, Rambach says, "No one is telling us to pay attention to the arts. Television is leading to a long-term dulling of our wits. That’s why theater is important."

It is important for another reason, he explained. "I love sports. I am a big sports fan. It’s important to note that, but I think that the national investment in sports is way out of line. I always thought competitive sports, especially football, should be eliminated from schools. Why should we spend our tax dollars getting kids to do what they will do anyway. Instead of 44 kids in each town playing football, leagues would crop up."

Besides, he believes that sports teaches children the wrong lesson. "It teaches that you can’t have a winner unless there’s a loser," he said. "In the arts, nobody loses even though greatness is displayed. Only performing well matters."

Rambach’s interest in theater started early, but it was not satisfied until he went to college. In high school in Wayne, Rambach said he wanted to be in plays, but there was one big obstacle.

"The drama teacher hated me because I was the class clown," he explained. "I never got into a play in high school until the last semester of my senior year when I played a dead soldier. That’s not as bad as it sounds because the play was about the dead rising up, so I actually got to speak."

At Waynesburg College in Pennsylvania, however, he got into plays right away. "Before I had a chance to annoy the professors," he quipped.

During his senior year in college he was asked to be in a play that was going to New York. "The only catch is that I would have to quit school. My mother wouldn’t allow it so I didn’t go. The play was Grease."

An opportunity was missed, but Rambach says he hasn’t given much thought to how his life might have been changed.

The Agatha Christie play takes place in a living room in an English country manor. As Rambach sat on the stage couch, one of five owned by the theater company, his thoughts turned to details. "Couches are my nemesis," he said, adding, "You can use the same props for many different productions because they fade into the background, but couches are noticed so they have to be right."

As with all opening nights at the Fellowship Theater, a dinner that complements the play was served just before the show. Opening night of Mouse Trap was no exception; fish and chips were served.

The Mouse Trap, the first of five plays this year, will be presented at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays thorough Oct. 28. There will be no performance Oct. 13. For further information, call (732) 741-6190.