The empty nest will fill up again in an upcoming domestic comedy.
“Alone Together” will be presented July 10-22 at Mountain Playhouse, Jennerstown.
Author Lawrence Roman has two middle-aged parents thinking they have rediscovered marital bliss when their nest empties, only to find their sons are returning home again.
Director Chan Harris said the play is not on its feet yet, meaning the actors are not on stage.
“These are really funny people,” he said. “We sit around a table, and they make me laugh. Out here at the playhouse, we can spend time sitting around figuring out relationships and what’s under the words.”
“They all seem to fit together and know each other well. It’s fun to watch their dynamic.”
Harris had a bit of real life experience with his play’s plot when his younger brother returned home to their mother.
“They would both call me to tell what the other was doing to them,” Harris said. “With the economic climate, this is happening today.”
In the play, Ben Mackel plays the oldest son, a professor at MIT who has set himself up for an impossible situation by attempting to solve a mathematic equation that has never been solved.
When he fails, he returns home.
The middle son, played by Todd Adamson, has been thrown out by his wife because he’s a womanizer.
“They’re running from their own problems,” Harris said.
“The parents want their lives back and the adult kids need their parents to take care of them again.”
After their sons experience some hard knocks in the real world, Mom and Dad, played by Mary Ehlinger and Larry Tobias, have quite a time getting them out of the nest again.
The youngest son, played by Ryan Glover, a Westmont Hilltop High School graduate, is driving to Stanford when he meets a girl, played by Carolina Reiter, who is going to school in Los Angeles and needs a place to stay, so he invites her home.
“It reads like an old-fashioned situation comedy, like ‘The Brady Bunch’ or ‘My Three Sons,’ Harris said. “There are a lot of similarities.”
The play takes place in the 1980s, but Harris said he isn’t doing much with the time period.
“It’s specific to the ’80s because there are no cell phones, Facebook or email,” he said. “There are fantastic bits of comedy in the show that could not be updated to the communication technologies of today, so we are taking in the spirit of the 1980s and using that to enhance the production.”
It is now a different world for parents because the style of parenting has drastically changed in this time period.
“They grew up on Dr. Spock, so there were no modern theories,” Harris said. “Parents
didn’t know what to do or how to deal with it. The kids weren’t acting like their own younger generation.”
If you go ...
What: Comedy “Alone Together.”
Where: Mountain Playhouse, Jennerstown.
When: July 10-22.
Curtain times: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays and 3 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets: $12 to $18 for preview, $17 to $30 for matinees and $22 to $34 for evenings.
Information: 629-9201, option 1.
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