Naperville North serving up 'The Man Who Came to Dinner'

Director Bill Burghardt shares his thoughts on Naperville North High School's production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner."

Directing a show for the second time always rekindles memories of the first production and comparisons are bound to arise. This was one of the first shows I directed at North, and I have always had fond memories of that, but there's more to those memories than just pure old nostalgia.

This play, along with another Kaufmann and Hart play from the same time period ("You Can't Take it With You," which won the Pulitzer Prize two years before "The Man Who Came to Dinner") is one which has gracefully and tastefully survived the span of time of some 70 years without missing a beat.

The play debuted on Oct. 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. Since that time, "The Man Who Came to Dinner" has enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals (most recently featuring Nathan Lane in the lead part of Sheridan Whiteside) and, along with YCTIWY, is one of the most performed works on high school stages coast-to-coast.

It's all in the characterizations and the writing, which drive this comedy like a fine-tuned Studebaker.

The play is set in the small town of Mesalia, Ohio, in the weeks just before Christmas. The famously outlandish radio personality and writer Whiteside has been invited to dine at the home of noted businessman Ernest Stanley and his family.

However, before Whiteside enters the house, he falls and slips on a patch of ice outside the front door and injures his hip, requiring him to be confined to the home for about two weeks, stranded in a wheelchair.

Whiteside takes over the house, invites a nonstop entourage of celebrities to phone and visit, as the Stanleys try and accommodate the wisecracking, quick-witted, amusing and insulting guest. A romantic subplot drives the action as nonstop hilarity ensues.

Not much has changed in this staging, for which I am glad. Often they change the time period for, say, a Shakespeare play (let's do "Hamlet" in the Stone Age!) but not for this gem... it's perfect in the period it is set. Come and enjoy this American classic.