Theater maven Joyce Maltby returns for variety show

Joyce Maltby is back.

Almost exactly one year after her 23-year tenure at Hawaii Pacific University ended in the spring of 2015, Maltby is returning to the local stage in the dual roles of director and performer, for a Sunday matinee production of “Joyce Maltby and Friends: As Time Goes By.”

“It’s been good to be get back to doing what I love doing most, which is to be involved in some way or other with acting or directing,” said Maltby, 79.

The variety show, which includes dramatic readings, monologues and musical performances, is being presented by the Glenn Cannon Foundation as a fundraiser for Temple Emanu-El; proceeds will proceeds be used to purchase and install new playground equipment for the temple preschool.

Maltby hasn’t directed a show since her final HPU production, “You Can’t Take It With You,” closed a year ago. Her last appearance onstage as a performer in a regular-run show was 10 years ago. “It was ‘Gin Game,’ acting with Don Pomes at HPU in 2006,” she recalled. “So it’s been a good long while, and it’s been exciting to me to get back to work on what I love doing.”

Maltby took part in a one-shot production for the Glenn Cannon Foundation in May. The foundation is the namesake of the late Glenn Cannon, a veteran film and television actor who taught at the University of Hawaii-Manoa for 45 years; Cannon died in 2013.

“I think his wife, Sam Cannon, would like to make this a yearly thing, and the temple would,” Maltby said. “That’s how all this came to be.”

Maltby could have done a revival of her critically acclaimed one-woman show “Ain’t I a Woman?” which she introduced at HPU in 1998. She thought about it but decided to do something different.

Notably, film actor Earll Kingston and well-known poet and author Maxine Hong Kingston are involved with the production. Kingston will appear in a segment; Hong Kingston will read from her book “China Men.”

“I wanted it to be more than just me,” Maltby noted. “Earll and Maxine Hong Kingston were in town in January, and Sam and I were having lunch with them. We talked about the fact that we’d be doing a Glenn Cannon Foundation production. That’s how they got involved.”

The phrase “as time goes by” explains the concept, Maltby said. “It starts with the longings of a young girl and ends with some wisdom on life and marriage and other things in between.”

Shari Lynn and Larry Bialock will sing “Married,” a poignant selection from “Cabaret,” and Maltby has a big musical number with “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Bialock also takes a solo showcase number with “Mr. Cellophane,” a highlight reel showstopper he performed with excellent impact in Diamond Head Theatre’s 2002 production of “Chicago.” Lynn will perform “My Yiddishe Momme,” a vaudeville classic from the 1920s.

“It’s going to have a nice variety,” Maltby said. “I’m doing several monologues from shows I’ve done — and even shows I haven’t done — and some poetry. Some short things, some funny things, some sad things. … Don Conover is a very important person (as keyboardist), because I needed someone really good to accompany the singers.”

Maltby returns to the theater scene for a longer period this summer, when she’ll direct The Actors’ Group’s production of “Mothers and Sons” in July.

“The auditions are the week after this show closes, so after having this break from theater, I am now back in full force,” she said.