Aiken Community Playhouse offers an escape with season

Recently in the mail I received a brochure advertising the 2009-10 season of the Aiken Community Playhouse.

The cover photo features a couple of audience members in silhouette, facing an illuminated stage. Emblazoned across the top of the image is one word: "Escape!"

One of the several dictionary definitions for the noun "escape" is a "temporary freedom from worry, care or unpleasantness"; this would certainly appear to be one of the principal aims of the seven plays featured in the upcoming season beginning in September and concluding in May.

Comedies and musicals abound. The first play, in fact, combines both.

Opening on Broadway in 1978, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" is based loosely on the fate of a real-life brothel called The Chicken Ranch in Fayette County, Texas. This establishment, which had the implicit support of the local sheriff, became the subject of an expose by a consumer reporter from a television station in Houston. The sheriff in question, not happy with the imminent closure of the whorehouse, scuffled with the reporter and snatched his toupee.

The latter confrontation is perhaps the most memorable scene in the 1982 movie version of the musical, which starred Dolly Parton as the madam, Burt Reynolds as the sheriff, and Dom DeLuise as the crusading journalist.

Following "Whorehouse" in September is the one exception to a season marked by alternating comedies and musicals; it is the suspense drama "Night Watch," which runs for seven performances in late October and early November.

In this thriller, it would appear that no one, especially her husband who is carrying on an affair with her best friend, believes that a high-strung New York heiress has just seen two dead bodies.

Is this all part of a plot to drive her mad or is there a murderer in the neighborhood? In the 1973 film based on the play, Elizabeth Taylor starred as the neurotic wife, and Laurence Harvey played her psychologically abusive spouse.

Just in time for Christmas, the next play on the calendar is a musical version of the popular Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life." Debuting in Dallas in 1998, this two-act stage adaptation of the 1946 motion picture was the brainchild of Bruce Greer, who won the Dove Award, a Christian music prize, for his musical "Mary, Did You Know?" and Keith Ferguson, who was a music minister in Texas for more than 20 years.

Everyone knows the basic plot points of the narrative in which a small-town businessman on the verge of suicide is taught with the help of his guardian angel that his life has been far from worthless.

The new year is ushered in with a production of "Squabbles" by Marshall Karp. This is a comedy about squabbling in-laws forced to live under the same roof: Abe Dreyfus, whose heart attack gains him the solicitude of his pregnant daughter, and Alice Schwind, whose house fire causes her to seek shelter with her son, the father-to-be. Thus, the young couple's justifiable stress over the fact that they are about to have a baby is exacerbated by their respective bickering parents.

Following this comedy/farce is a dramatic adaptation of the 1944 musical "Meet Me in St. Louis," which focuses on the machinations of four young women, all sisters, who face two challenges: How to dissuade their brother from marrying the wrong girl and how to prevent their father's job transfer to New York so that they don't miss the World's Fair in their hometown. The musical, which featured Judy Garland, was based on a series of short stories by Sally Benson. This version was adapted by Christopher Sergel, who specializes in translating films and novels to the stage.

Gender-bending is the name of the game in the next play entitled "Leading Ladies." From the pen of Ken Ludwig, who wrote "Lend Me a Tenor" and "Moon over Buffalo" (a Carol Burnett vehicle), this comedy explores the fate of two underemployed Shakespearean actors who decide to impersonate the long-lost relatives of a dying woman in order to gain her fortune. What they don't know, at first, is that the nephews that they hope to counterfeit are actually nieces. It's as if the Duke and Dauphin in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" meet Kip and Henry in "Bosom Buddies."

The last show of the season is "The Fantasticks," which opens on May 21 and closes on June 5. The original New York production of this musical ran for more than 40 years, from 1960 to 2002, and it showcased such classic songs as "Try to Remember" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain." Broadway aficionados consider "The Fantasticks" to be the quintessential show about the triumph of love and the magic of life.

For more information on the season calendar and ticket availability, visit the Aiken Community Playhouse on the Web at www.aikencommunityplayhouse.com. Subscription tickets can also be reserved by phone at 648-1438 and in person at the box office at 126 Newberry St., Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m.

A Carolina Trustee Professor, Dr. Mack holds the G.L. Toole Chair at the University of South Carolina Aiken.