Vagabond

Albert S. Strappelli, a prominent figure in local amateur theater circles for nearly five decades, died Saturday of heart failure at his Ocean City home. He was 84. A colorful and rambunctious character actor who played a wide variety of roles during his career, Mr. Strappelli joined the Vagabond Players in 1936 and performed in scores of the company's productions. From 1958 until 1978, he performed the starring role of the villain in the classic melodrama "The Drunkard" at the old Four Corners Tavern in Jacksonville, Baltimore County.

Spreading `Rumors' The Vagabond Players continues its 85th anniversary season with Neil Simon's "Rumors," opening tomorrow. A farce set at the home of the deputy mayor of New York, the play begins with guests arriving for an anniversary party, only to find that their host has been shot. "Rumors" is directed by John Ford, whose experience with farce includes this past summer's rollicking "Noises Off" for Towson University's Maryland Arts Festival. The cast of "Rumors," which includes some holdovers from the Towson show, features Annmarie Amlick, Steve Antonsen, Barbara Gehring, Patrick Martyn, Paris Obligin, Holly Pasciullo, Bryon Predika and Tom Wyatt.

The plot of Tom Ziegler's "Grace and Glorie" concerns dying, but the play's themes concern living - both how we lead our lives and why. Although the situation Ziegler presents is formulaic, the relationship between the play's two characters is touching, and it's been staged with warmth and sensitivity by director Amini Johari-Courts as the opening production in the Vagabond Players' 85th season. The setup is relatively simple - two women from divergent backgrounds are brought together by extreme circumstances, and despite initial resistance, both benefit in the end. Grace and Glorie differ socially, economically, geographically, educationally and in terms of age. At the Vagabonds, Courts throws in another variable as well - they are also members of different races, an element that heightens their eventual role reversal.

Baltimore Playwrights Festival veteran Carol Weinberg returns to the festival this summer with a play grounded in the Civil Rights struggle. "Freedom Summer," which opens tomorrow at the Vagabond Players, tells the story of a housewife from Queens, N.Y., whose commonplace existence is upset by the disappearance of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, three young men who volunteered to register voters in Mississippi in 1964. Lynda McClary stars as the housewife, and Matthew Bowerman portrays Goodman.

Last call for `Elephant Man' This is the last weekend to see the Vagabond Players' production of Bernard Pomerance's 1988 Tony Award-winning play, "The Elephant Man." Based on the real-life story of John Merrick, a deformed man who lived in England during the Victorian era, the play presents Merrick without any graphic representation of deformity. Instead, an able-bodied actor portrays the character, indicating Merrick's misshapen form through posture alone, and thus allowing the audience to see the healthy, normal soul trapped inside.

"Have Arm, Will Travel."That could be the calling card for Neil O'Donnell, the former University of Maryland quarterback who has become a vagabond in the NFL.O'Donnell, who will quarterback the Tennessee Titans tomorrow against the Ravens, is playing for his fifth head coach and fourth team in the past five years.O'Donnell has become a symbol of the perils of free agency -- players who leave a good situation for a lucrative one that may not be a good fit for them.In just more than three years, O'Donnell has gone from Super Bowl starter, a quarterback who got a $25 million deal, to one who has been cut in successive years by the Jets and Bengals.

Peter Shaffer's "Equus" is just about to prance away from the Olney Theatre Center, where director Jim Petosa's powerful production closes Sunday. Meanwhile, another production opens in Baltimore tomorrow at the Vagabond Players.Directed by Barry Feinstein, the Vagabonds' version stars Christopher D. Carver as the troubled adolescent who blinds six horses and Joseph Moore as the psychiatrist who treats him. Although Olney chose to feature only one horse on stage, the Vagabonds' production will include the full complement of horses called for in the script.

Axis Theatre. "Telling Tales," a poetic collection of stories told from a feminine, Latino, big-city point of view. All female cast. 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday and next Monday at the theater, 3600 Clipper Mill Road. Call 410-889-0252.The Barnstormers. In residence at Catonsville Campus of Community College of Baltimore. "The Crucible." 7 p.m. tomorrow and Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday in Room 104 of the Administration/Faculty Building, on campus, 800 S. Rolling Road. Needed are 11 women, including two age 40 and two over 55; 10 men, including two age 40 and two over 55. Be familiar with the play.

Yesterday's Live section listed the wrong time for the Vagabond Theatre's Sunday evening show, which is at 7 p.m., as well as incorrect ticket prices for the theater. Admission is $10, $9 for seniors.The Sun regrets the errors.Pub Date: 11/13/98

John Bruce Johnson, the departing president of the Vagabond Players, has always guarded the F. Scott Fitzgerald chair like the sacred relic of some literary saint.Vagabond lore holds that in 1933 Fitzgerald dropped wearily into the huge throne-like chair after the dress rehearsal of his wife Zelda's play "Scandalabra" ran to five hours. Fitzgerald sat and drank beer all night and chopped away huge chunks of Zelda's huge clunk of a play.Johnson has preserved the venerated chair. But missing from the jumbled archive he's created in his office overlooking the square in Fells Point are other cherished pieces from Vagabond history: the 1916 program for their first production, H.L. Mencken's one-act satire "The Artist," and the original manuscript of "Bound East for Cardiff," which a young Eugene O'Neill brought for the 1917 season.