The original cast of the 90s teen soap opera Beverly Hills, 90210, which has reunited as a traveling acting troupe called “The hakpear Ensemble,” is set to perform “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the Westco Café during senior week. Their Wesleyan appearance will be the second stop on their three-month long college tour.
Headed by Jason Priestley (Brandon), who brought the actors together after over a decade, the troupe consists of the cast members from the very first seasons of the show.
“I wanted to harness that raw energy of our first episodes,” Priestley said. “I believe that the nine of us create an irresistible dynamic.”
The nine members of the troupe are Priestley, Shannen Doherty (Brenda), Jennie Garth (Kelly), Luke Perry (Dylan), Ian Ziering (Steve), Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea), Brian Austin Green (David), Tori Spelling (Donna), and Joe E. Tata (Nat).
In order to arouse a spirit of togetherness, Priestley has ordered the troupe members to address each other only with the names of their 90210 characters. He referred to his years on the show as “his life, his precious rose.” A single tear fell from his blue eyes, which glisten like a flowing mountain stream in the sunlight, and disappeared into the folds on his neck.
The other members—or nearly all—are equally enthusiastic.
“Brandon has reminded us how important our craft is,” Ziering said. “I was living in a room above a garage, going door-to-door as a pharmaceuticals salesman, sleeping with women I couldn’t love, sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss of loneliness. Every night I smashed a bottle of Jack Daniels against my kitchen table and then licked it up off the floor in between sobs.”
As Demetrius, dogged pursuer of Garth’s Hermia, Ziering has rediscovered not only his love of acting but also his love of playing unrequited lovers of characters played by Garth who often plays characters with whom other characters are in love, or so she claims.
“I think everyone will be amazed at the depth and….iridescence that Kelly brings to the role,” said Ziering, who tried to hide the saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth but it was obvious and everybody noticed. “She’s almost as powerful as she was in the scene where she confessed to the girls at the slumber party that I tried to rape her. That was a hot scene. Heh.”
“I have twenty-seven children,” said Garth. “but I’m a babe. And I’m really plunging myself into this role, I mean I’m really plumbing the depths of my psyche or whatever. That’s what Brandon said.”
“It’s true,” asserted Priestley. “Just two bumps of cocaine and she’s absolutely luminous.”
Doherty is the only dark shadow over the endeavor. So dark, in fact, that her castmates have dubbed her the “Black-Hearted Beast from the Bowels of Hell,” and Austin Green has cut a record with that title. They aren’t sure if Doherty knows they call her that because they try to be nice and always invite her to lunch with them.
“Just between you and me,” said Doherty, “I know they think I’m a really great actress. I mean, without me I don’t think the show would hold up. But I wanted to stretch my acting muscle and play Puck, but Brandon cast Nat as Puck. What the fuck? I wanted Puck. Instead I’m like Helena or some shit. Fuck Helena. Fuck Puck. Fuck the world!”
Carteris will play Titania because she is the oldest and is expected to be just as boring and inconsequential as she was on 90210. Spelling plays the fairies, and Priestley plays all of the remaining roles. He also directs the show.
After Wesleyan The hakpear Ensemble will move on to other schools in Connecticut and the Northeast and finish up in Los Angeles. Priestley hopes the troupe continues next season with “Love’s Labours Lost.” In between seasons he will direct himself in Goethe’s “Faust.”
“I guess we’re excited that they’re coming,” said a member of the Student Events Collective whose name doesn’t matter. “We told them ‘no’ about five hundred times, but Jason Priestley kept hounding us with phone calls and emails. Finally we gave in.”
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