Parents will do just about anything for their kids. But Tara Wharton-Price’s son caught her off guard with his request.
“My son Justin's in the show,” said Wharton-Price. “He's been asking me to do a show.”
The same thing happened to Cara Bolin.
“So, my daughter got involved at this theater,” said Bolin. “She's done two shows. She's doing two more this season, and she's like, 'Mom, you should get involved.' I just want to assistant direct and they're like, we have a part for you. So, I got thrown onstage.”
Both women have acted before. Twenty-five years ago, to be exact. In college.
Memorizing lines in just four weeks has been their biggest challenge. Wharton-Price used a time-tested technique.
“I went completely old school,” Wharton-Price said. “I just went back to old school flashcards.”
So did Bolin.
“I did the flashcards like Tara, but I actually have my daughter running lines with me and my husband, though, it's really funny with my husband, because he literally would do the pages like, you're not dead yet, you’re not dead yet, you’re not dead yet.”
The women have enjoyed their return to acting, and they think audiences will enjoy the show.
“It's a British farce, so it's funny,” said Bolin.
But without all the door slamming.
“While the Lights Were Out” runs through September 27.
MORE INFORMATION:
“While the Lights Were Out” is set in Bermuda. The play starts with a dinner party for a cast of characters that mostly include bumbling members of the aristocracy. Things are moving along when suddenly the lights go out and a shot is fired. When the lights come back on, a lovely blond dressed in black lace is standing over a body holding a knife dripping in blood. But when the constable examines the corpse, he announces the poor guy's been strangled, not stabbed. That’s just the beginning of playwright Jack Sharkey’s silly, twisty murder mystery.
The story unfolds inside the Wickenhams' mansion, which sits on a cliff 250 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Lord Clive and Lady Monica are having a heated argument over arrangements for their upcoming dinner party. Not only has Lord Clive instructed the cook to prepare mutton for dinner, but he’s also scrimped in other areas and ways that infuriate his longsuffering wife.
Suddenly, they are interrupted when police arrive unannounced just as the first guests arrive to check on a mysterious note they received.
Parrish Danesh and Paola Cifuentes play Lord and Lady Wickenham. Audiences will be treated to a different side of Danesh. The Lord is crotchety, at best, and a mean, malevolent tyrant at worst. In fact, Lady Wickenham likens him to that parsimonious skinflint from Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge.
She underestimates his maliciousness.
The lord’s tightfisted demeanor (he calls it frugality) is all the more incongruent when the audience discovers that the painting that hangs in the living room is Paul Gauguin’s “Tahitian Woman Under the Palms.”
Although Gauguin started out as an Impressionist, he eventually broke with them, becoming the father of the Symbolism and the Primitive schools of painting. Many of Gauguin's paintings date from his time in rural areas of either Tahiti or the Marquesas Islands. One of the hallmarks of Gauguin's work is his use of large blocks of color, rather than intricate details. Another is his employment of exaggerated proportions.
In 2015, a Qatar museum paid an estimated $300 million for “Two Tahitian Girls” (“Nafea Faa Ipoipo” or “When Will You Marry"), meaning that Lord Clive had more than enough money to afford steak and lobster instead of mutton.
Those who follow Joey Bostic will thoroughly enjoy his portrayal of the bumbling constable, Benjamin “I Knew That!” Braddock. In fact, he knows very little in the guise of a homicide detective.
Fortunately, his sidekick sergeant, Alma Threedle, is as apt and perceptive as he is obtuse and clueless. Peyton McCarthy is Sherlock Holmes disguised as Watson, a delightful composite of Hercule Poirot, Inspector Clouseau and Agatha Christie.
Dinner guests and household staff alike have complex backstories and unresolved romantic and family relationships that confound Braddock and Threedle in their assessment of who may have murdered not one, but two of the people inside the Wickenham mansion while the lights were out during a raging thunderstorm.
Dea Boozer plays the extravagant clothing designer Bibi Cavendish with farcical flair and finesse. Justin Price is her brooding, earnest and equally pedantic paramour, Pierre Pourri.
Kiernan Strosser and Grace Koltz play Fredonia Custardine and her duplicitous daughter, Chloe.
DeVaughn Parris is mutton-struck housekeeper and ersatz cook, Jasmine Perdoo. Aidan Tatro portrays stoic butler Roderick Remley.
Beckie Gould shows up while the lights were out in a black negligee as the “unidentified blonde” interloper with the bloody knife.
Ethan MacKay plays Lord and Lady Wickenham’s somewhat malodorous son, Algernon. True to his classical persona a la “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Algernon is witty, charming and something of an egocentric dandy leading a double life – engaged to one woman while courting another. As it turns out, he also has something to hide and something to gain as the evening unfolds and the body count mounts.
Tara Wharton-Price plays housekeeper Nancy Stafford. It’s her first role in decades.
“So I'm very excited about it,” said Wharton-Price. “I love it. But I'm always involved in the arts. Both my boys are in the arts.”
Wharton-Price found that remembering lines has become more difficult with age.
“But I think that's good,” she said. “More older people should do it. It keeps your brain active.”
Memorizing her lines has been complicated by Belle Theatre’s relatively short rehearsal schedule for the production – just four weeks compared with the six- to eight-week timeframe employed at most community theaters.
Kara Rossi Bolin plays American Jasmine Perdoo. Like Wharton-Price, she was surprised by how difficult memorizing lines proved to be.
“I can still remember the entire prologue of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that I memorized that 20 years ago, so why am I finding it difficult to memorize lines now?” she asked rhetorically. “Why can't I replace those words with these words? I guess you have fewer brain cells than the slots to stick them into.”
Memorizing lines is only part of the challenge with a farce such as “While the Lights Were Out,” which has a large cast of over-the-top characters.
“So much is about the timing,” observed Bolin.
Bolin also enjoys having a death scene in the play.
“It's fun. I keep saying maybe I'll die differently every night,” Bolin said, joking. “We've been playing with it, trying to figure it out as they've added more props to the bar. I've had more to play with each night. But actually, my goal is for my death to be very funny. So as long as people find it funny, I feel like I will be successful with the scene.”
For Bolin, the return to acting is not just a welcome escape from reality. It’s a return home.
“I've watched a lot of theater over the last 20 years,” she explained. “I found other creative outlets over that span. I found pottery studios, and I've lived in many different places. I work for a travel company, so I've had many opportunities to travel. I've always felt like being creative is very important but, for some reason, I just haven't found a theater home in all the different places I've lived. So, I'm very thankful for my daughter getting involved in theater and finally finding a home, a creative outlet, and this show’s a little bit different than what The Belle Theater normally produces.”
While Belle Theatre has built a reputation for musicals, Bolin believes audiences will thrill to “While the Lights Were Out.”
“It's funny, but the mysterious element will keep people on the edge of their seats,” Bolin predicted. “Why did they die? Who was the murderer or murderers? The whodunit element will keep people enthralled until the end of the show.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
