Village Squire, 1978-06, Page 10A
proven
success
Huron Country Playhouse Is set to welcome record crowds for its
seventh season.
BY FRANCES BARRICK
The Huron Country Playhouse at Grand Bend opens its
seventh season this summer with a salute to six decades.
James Murphy, artistic director and general manager, said in
an interview this year's six plays evolved from an idea to revive
many of the great popular classics which are representative of
the decades from 1920 to 1970.
The barn theatre's first classical production from the 1960's is
Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. This play is a comical look at how
two friends, Oscar, who is a slob, and Felix, who is compulsively
neat, share an apartment. Opening night is July 4, and the
production runs for two weeks until July 15.
Representing the 1920's is the revival of the play Parlour,
Bedroom and Bath. Co-authoured by Canadian playwright
Charles Bell, the play became a smash hit on Broadway and later
a Hollywood film starring Buster Keaton. Remaining a favourite
throughout the 1920's. the play then fell into obscurity. The
playhouse will give its first showing in perhaps 40 or 50 years.
Mr. Murphy said this Broadway hit, which is a hilarious story
of a timid husband trying to live up to his wife's image of him as
a lady's man, is an innocent farce of the manners and customs
and enormous prudery of the 1920's. It runs from July 18-22.
For the 1970's, the playhouse will give the first performance of
a new Canadian comedy, Two Below. Written by George
Robertson, the play is about an utimate women's libber and an
unwilling recluse banding together in a half -wrecked Toronto
tenement. This play will appear from July 25-29.
The legendary Rogers and Hammerstein musical comedy,
PG: 8. VILLAGE SQUIRE/JUNE 1978.