Culture
ABC Player’s Production of ‘Auntie Mame’ Coming to Stuart’s May 3-5
< < Back toIn this side-splitting comedy, New York socialite Miss Mame Dennis attracts a parade of sophisticated and stimulating New Yorkers to her apartment at 3 Beekman Place: publishers, artists, writers, educators, and holy men. When Edwin, Mame’s brother in Chicago, dies, leaving his ten-year-old son, Patrick, in her care, Mame bounds into the role of parenting with relish: “Darling! I’m your Auntie Mame!” An unconventional parent, Mame introduces Patrick to her cosmopolitan world in which, for example, the skill of mixing a good martini is as important as learning arithmetic.
This production features many of the area’s favorite community theater actors as well as some new faces. After an absence of several years, Carol Ault returns to the stage as the irrepressible Auntie Mame. Patrick, who matures during the story is played by William Morosko, Ethan Cooper, and Caleb Bryant. Tatum L’Heureux plays Mame’s servant, Ito, and Cecilia Rinaldi is Norah Muldoon, who brings Patrick to New York from Chicago.
Joe Balding plays Dwight Babcock a trustee of the Knickerbocker Bank who is bound by Edwin Dennis’s will to see that, in raising Patrick, Mame doesn’t do “anything too damned eccentric.” An early point of contention concerns Patrick’s schooling. Mr. Babcock favors St. Boniface Academy, an elite boarding school in Massachusetts, while Mame favors a nearby experimental school.
When the Stock Market crashes, Mame seeks work on the stage through her friend Vera Charles, an English actress from Pittsburgh. When that doesn’t work out, she attempts retail sales at Macy’s. Her supervisor, Mr. Loomis (played by Terrence J. Smith) fires her for incompetence, but not before she meets and eventually marries a southern gentleman, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, played by Brittan Posey. Ronni Smith plays Sally Cato MacDougal, an old girlfriend who doesn’t want to lose Beauregard, and Sean Wendelken is Emory, Sally Cato’s little brother. Sylvia Abbott plays Beauregard’s formidable mother.
Later in her life, the publisher Lindsey Woolsey (played by Jason Morosco) persuades Mame to write her biography, and she brings into her household Irish poet Brian O’Bannion (played by Ezra Thobaben) to help with editing and Agnes Gooch (played by Riley Maffin) to type the result.
Doug Bentley and Martha Carson play the parents of Gloria Upson (played by Hannah Sickles), an overprivileged and empty-headed girl whom Patrick brings home from college to introduce to Mame. James McGee-Moore has the role of Pegeen Ryan, who is everything Gloria is not.
“As well as a script full of plot twists and laughs, this play has themes that are highly relevant to today,” says director Celeste Parsons. “Patrick is not the only character who matures during the play; Mame becomes more than an idle socialite. But her core personality traits remain her loyalty to her friends, insistence on judging others by their actions rather than their social categories, and her zest for life.”
This production of Auntie Mame is sponsored by the Rocky Outdoor Gear Store. Auntie Mame will be at Stuart’s Opera House May 3-5 at 7:30 p.m. and May 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12 ($8 for students). Tickets are available at www.stuartsoperahouse.org or by calling 740-753-1924. Remaining unsold tickets may be purchased at the door.