Director Bryan Hurd has selected the cast for “Bullshot Crummond,” with community theater actors Joe Moye playing the title role as the farcical detective hero and Sean Measles as the villainous master spy, Otto von Bruno.

“Bullshot” marks the third production in The Acting Company’s 2002 season.

“Like these walls. Can we keep them?” the amiable Hurd inquired as he arrived for the “Bullshot” rehearsal. A stage crew was still finishing off last minute preparations for “Bugsy Malone Jr.”

While imagining the ambiance and uses of the abstract –glow-in-the-dark skyline “Bugsy” set decorators had painted on the side walls of the 50-seat theater, Hurd sketched out the “Bullshot” cast.

Jennifer Gage will play Bullshot’s prim love interest, Rosemary, while Ellie Palmer will portray von Bruno’s the seductive sidekick, Lenya.

Skip Morgan was tapped to play “Algernon,” and “all other characters,” as the credits in the original – take a deep breath -- Ron House, Diz White, John Neville-Andrews, Alan Sherman and Derek Cunningham production.

“Bullshot” first surfaced in the late 1970s, or thereabouts, as the joint creation of the above-listed actor-writers. It has since been an oft-produced number frequently seen on dinner theater has been a popular menu-topper at dinner theaters.

It was picked up by Handmade Films, a British film company backed by late Beatle George Harrison and turned into a movie of moderate success. It can be found through video rental services.

A videotape of an early production by the original cast is also to be had with a little searching around.

The plot is simple enough: Monocled spy and lusty sidekick crash land in England with a view to stealing the secret weapon from a dotty scientist. When Dottie scientist is seized and imprisoned in his home castle, prim and repressed Rosemary turns to acutely gentlemanly and preposterously dumb-but-lucky English hero Bullshot for help – and who could fail to get it up for an lady in distress, so to speak.

Algernon, Bullshot’s own sidekick, has the actors’ dream role of playing several different characters including the Alzheimer’s Moment scientist, an oblivious Bobbie and a much put-upon waiter in one of the play’s funniest sequences.

Also look for the quick-change act von Bruno-cum-Chicago hitman puts on, as shown in the videotape of the original cast production. It was a tour de force there, and could be here.

“Bullshot Crummond is scheduled to open at TAC, 815 B Street, Yuba City, Sept. 13 and run weekends through Oct. 6.

In a July 23, 2002 review of "Lenin," a book by Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, translated by George Holoch. Holmes & Meier, 371 pp, £35. Slavoj Zizek mentions a vast theatrical recreation of the Storming of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution:

He writes:

On 7 November 1920, on the third anniversary of the October Revolution, a re-enactment of the Storming of the Winter Palace was performed in Petrograd.

Tens of thousands of workers, soldiers, students and artists had worked round the clock, living on kasha (tasteless porridge), tea and frozen apples, to prepare the performance, which took place just where the original event had occurred. Their work was coordinated by army officers, as well as avant-garde artists, musicians and directors, from Malevich to Meyerhold.

Although this was theatre and not 'reality', the soldiers and sailors who took part played themselves. Many of them had not only participated in 1917, but were, at the time of the performance, fighting in the civil war - Petrograd was under siege in 1920 and suffering from severe food shortages.

A contemporary commented: "The future historian will record how, throughout one of the bloodiest and most brutal revolutions, all of Russia was acting"; the Formalist theoretician Viktor Shklovsky noted that "some kind of elemental process is taking place where the living fabric of life is being transformed into the theatrical."

Now THAT was what you might call communty theater on a grand scale.

Staci Johnson has kindly releaseed The Acting Company's publicity photos for "Bugsy Malone Jr." set to open Aug. 2.

The cast has been assembled, repositioned, disassembled, rejointed and reassembled more times than a Leggos Christmas gift, so let's just loo for the moment at the core group of performers -- although here, again, many of the dancers are missing.

Because some of the names of some of the actors are still outstanding, self-recognition and parents asking their kids, "Who's that your standing next to?" will have to suffice for identification.