Batavia drama students stage Southern comedy
Batavia High School will present the hilarious comedy “Dearly Beloved,” by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, and directed by Joshua Casburn.
The performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, April 19-21, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 21.
This marks the first major Batavia High School production that will take place in the Black Box in the newly opened Batavia Fine Arts Centre.
Tickets are available online at BataviaFineArtsCentre.org and at the box office. Tickets are $12 online and $14 by phone and at the office.
This is Casburn’s sixth BHS production. Teaming up again with Casburn is technical director Michael Baglieri, a 2009 BHS alum.
“The Black Box presents fascinating new opportunities and challenges for the audience and the actors,” Casburn said. “It will take a special kind of comedy to introduce this fantastic new theater space to the community. I think that’s the play we’ve chosen.”
This comedy takes place in the small town of Fayro, Texas, where the bride is missing. To the rescue comes the Futrelle sisters: Honey Raye (sophomore Glynis Gilio), Twink (senior Mary Alcott), and Frankie (junior Molly Hohman).
Honey Raye, who has been through five different husbands and is looking for the next “tall, dark and unemployed” man that she can find, refuses to admit that she is going through “the change” that happens to middle-aged women. Twink’s problem is that even though her friend, “fortune teller” Nelda Lightfoot (sophomore Katie Bertness), has predicted that she would finally be wed to her noncommittal boyfriend of 15 years (played by senior Charles Grimse), he has taken sick. Her solution: pump him so full of a concoction of cold medications that he can only manage hallucinatory mumblings.
Frankie and Dub Dubberly (played by sophomore Jacob Livingston) are just trying to get their daughter married, despite their own marital problems. Additionally, Frankie is dealing with an unexpected medical secret of her own which will have shocking consequences.
They’ve sent officer John Curtis Buntner (freshman Michael Gustin) to retrieve the runaway bride, despite his propensity to get distracted. To make matters worse, the minister is also missing and will be replaced by a nervous, love-struck UPS man named Justin Waverly (played by sophomore Andrew Tucker). Meanwhile, the bride’s twin sister, Gina Jo (played by junior Claire Heronemus), has fallen for the new minister.
Also in the show are senior Megan Warren, playing the stuck up mother-of-the-groom; senior Emma Kegerris, playing the cranky old wedding coordinator; as well as juniors CJ Chandler, Michael Hudetz, and Christina Carr and sophomore Kyle Cutrara playing musicians who frantically try to entertain the increasingly frustrated wedding guests.
The BHS Drama Club is serving Bub’s BBQ as a fundraiser to buy microphones for the new Batavia Fine Arts Centre. The fundraiser will take place from 3:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday, April 21, between the matinee and the final performance.
“A grand facility that we have been blessed with by the community deserves to be stocked with the best equipment,” said Dominic Cattero, director of the BFAC, “for our students’ sake as well as the patrons who attend our performances.”