Ghost story

A student's painted portrait of a fictional character named Mary Meredith will dress up the set of "The Uninvited," Naperville North High School's fall theatrical production.

And stagecraft magic will seem to conjure a ghost during the show, set to run today through Saturday.

"A ghostlike figure is one of the challenges (of the script)," said director and faculty adviser Bill Burghardt.

The show, set in the 1940s in a house on an English cliff, is a classic ghost story, Burghardt said.

"There's a seance, the nursery's cold, the cat won't come back," he said. "It's your typical ghost story that you're used to, but we're trying to do it in a different way. We're going to try to make it as scary as we can."

The story centers around Pam Fitzgerald's arrival in the old house with her brother, Roddy, and the creepiness they detect therein.

"I like playing Pam because she's smart, she's savvy and she never stops questioning what's going on around her," senior Steta Boarini said. "She tends to be intuitive and figures out the mystery of the house."

The play's time period calls for 1940s-style glamour.

"We've got Zoot suits and high-waisted pants," Boarini said. "It's really a fun show. It's not terribly scary, but it is suspenseful."

Senior Rob DeBruin plays Roddy.

"He's an aspiring playwright. My character and Pam's, we're kind of the straight men compared to the eccentric characters," DeBruin said. "It's our job to react. It's a good, old-fashioned ghost story. It's funny, spooky and cheesy all at the same time."

The two-act play's cast of 10 not only has to be convincingly spooky, but they've got to pull it off with British accents.

"We brought in a dialect coach," said Burghardt, adding that because the characters hail from different sectors of the United Kingdom, including England and Ireland, the accents are all subtly distinct.

DeBruin said learning to modulate his voice and add appropriate inflections was the toughest part of achieving the right sort of English accent.

By often staying in character even after rehearsals ended, he said, he was able to produce an authentic-sounding English accent.

Burghardt said "The Uninvited" was chosen as a lighter follow-up to last season's heavy drama, "Wings," the story of a stroke victim.

The script for "The Uninvited" was written by Tim Kelly and based on a novel by Dorothy MacArdle. It was made into a movie in 1944.

"(The students) read it and said it was cool. They didn't think it was corny. They thought it was fun," Burghardt said.

And the show's conclusion, he said, is not what most people might expect.

"The ending is a surprise," he said, "even to seasoned viewers."

If you go

What: "The Uninvited," staged by Naperville North High School

When: 7 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday

Where: Naperville North High School auditorium, 899 N. Mill St., Naperville

Tickets: $7 for adults, $6 for students and seniors

Info: (630) 420-6480 or www.ncusd203.org/north

North's cast

Stella Meredith: Emily Novak

Pamela Fitzgerald: Steta Boarini

Roddy Fitzgerald: Rob DeBruin

Cmdr. Brooke: Mike Deely

Lizzie Flynn: Tara Morrow

Mrs. Jessup: Britney Jarrett

Wendy: Nikki Wilson

Max Hilliard: Max Wright

Dr. Scott: Dan Wood

Miss Holloway: Maura Sokol