Chapter Two
In a comedy that is full of one liners and quick repartee, Simon tenderly tells the story of his second marriage after the loss of his first wife to cancer. In a courtship that is too quick and marriage that is too sudden, between a grounded and beautiful young woman (Marsha Mason), and a man who still loves and mourns his dead wife, the playwright tells the story of how the passionate and intelligent partners feel their way through the new relationship they have created. Moving and funny, Chapter Two blends humor and poignancy into a memorable evening of theatre.
The Spitfire Grill
Our second musical for the season has a distinctive bluegrass, country music flavor. It is set in the tiny town of Gilead, Wisconsin, a town that with the closing of its granite quarry and the loss of its young people is slowly disappearing. Enter Percy Talbott, a battered young Appalachian woman newly out of prison. She comes to work at the run down grill, the only restaurant in town, peopled with the other characters from town: the sheriff, postmistress, a young woman dominated by her bitter husband and the grill owner, an old woman with a secret. Gradually as she becomes part of the community, Percy’s love of Gilead and her unstoppable spirit resurrect the optimism and self-respect the town once had.
Going to St. Ives
In this interesting drama, two women meet and their lives become indelibly intertwined because of the request that one, the mother of a despot in Africa, makes of the other, a world-renowned eye surgeon. Blessing probes the nature of emotional responsibility as the women deal with the consequences of their actions in this provocative play. You may be thinking about May and Cora for months!
Moonlight and Magnolias
It is 1939 and David O. Selznick, the legendary producer, has stopped production on his movie, Gone With The Wind. He has fired the director and scrapped the screenplay because the story is not being told the way he wants it to be. He pulls legendary director Victor Fleming off The Wizard of Oz and calls in legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht to rewrite the screenplay. They have just five days and there is just one little problem: Ben Hecht is the only person in America who has not read Gone With The Wind. Locked into Selznick’s office with only brain food (bananas and peanuts) to live on, the three men hilariously manage to pull it off. With Selznick and Flemming acting out the scenes page-by-page, Hecht fashions the new screenplay despite constant wrangling with Flemming and artistic differences with Selznick and Margaret Mitchell. You’ll love this rollicking comedy and you’ll never see the movie the same way again!
