By Dave Kempa

It’s always a joy to see where the peripatetic Green Valley Theatre Company is going to pop up for its next production.

In this summer’s “The Three Musketeers,” they’re putting on a wonderfully choreographed show in one of the more unusual settings you’ll experience in live theater.

The quirky roving troupe has transformed St. John’s Lutheran Church’s Midtown “church hall” — which is regularly employed, among other uses, as a venue for feeding the unhoused community — into a double-sided venue. Director Christopher Cook, in his side gigs as set/costume/lighting/sound designer, places the 60-person audience right onstage with the performers, in rows down opposite sides of the open-room stage.

The result is a delightfully intimate experience with multiple vantage points from which the audience can enjoy chaotic, dynamic fight scenes.

Based on Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel of the same name, “The Three Musketeers” follows young D’Artagnan’s journey into 17th century Paris, where he dreams of joining the ranks of the musketeers; the elite swordsmen serving as the personal guard of the King of France.

It’s an inauspicious beginning for D’Artagnan, whose earnest, ambitious demeanor is captured with deft by Isaiah Leach, as he inadvertently offends three separate men on three separate occasions — each a musketeer, and each challenging him to duel around the same time and at the same place, as luck would have it.

Rather than die by one of their famed swords, D’Artagnan quickly earns the trust and friendship the impeccably cast would-be foes: Kevin Fitzgerald wins as the amorous, extroverted Porthos; Scott Divine nails the weathered, melancholy Athos; and Scott Beatty shines with bacchanalian bluster as Aramis.

There’s a lot to be celebrated in visiting a community theater production: sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with family of the cast in an intimate production; witnessing the many marvelous methods crews use to stretch their hard-fought production funds; taking a nip off the flask off-premise during intermission because the church venue does not have a liquor license. 

The drama comes early and often for young D’Artagnan and his new band of brothers, as tensions rise between the musketeers and the scheming Cardinal Richelieu’s armed guard.

For such a bootstrap operation, Green Valley operates with a massive cast, which Cook employs effectively in large battle scenes. One can attend this presentation on three separate nights from three different angles and still not capture everything that happens in the riotous melees. 

Fight Captain Jason Henrikson and Swordsmith Douglas Leonard turn a ragtag gaggle of drama nerds into battleworn swordsmen and women. Cook and Divine assist Henrikson in applying the dizzying choreography employed in battle scenes. Not every feint or thrust in every fight will land as intended in these scenes, with dozens of bodies flying to and fro, but that just adds to the joy of live theater.

D’Artagnan’s woes multiply as he is soon employed by the queen, played wonderfully by Jessica Kaufman, to cover up her high-stakes affair with a British duke. The skulking, ambitious Cardinal Richelieu, channeled with joyful sleaze by Erik Dahl, is revealed to have plans to supplant the king.

Not to be forgotten in this tale — adapted by Linda Alper, Douglas Langworthy and Penny Metropulos — are the throughlines of romance and revelry, bar brawls and brotherhood. It’s simply a fun, accessible production.

The Green Valley team put their own stamp on the play, with self-sewn wardrobes; hats off to Lead Seamstress Megan “Tilly” O’Laughlin and stitchers Melinda Cook and Iris Dimond. Actors clad in cloaks employ them with hilarious flair whenever they turn — in a huff — to exit a scene.

What I love about Green Valley is that they wear their lack of a brick-and-mortar base of operations as a badge of honor. “Oh, we don’t have a permanent rehearsal and performance location? Who cares? We’ll perform high-brow, or profane or downright bizarre productions anywhere, any time.”

“The Three Musketeers” plays through Sunday, Sept. 1. Once you’ve enjoyed their production of this stage classic, get ready for their always raunchy rendition of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” this fall — location to be determined.

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.