Three area high schools tonight present a trio of fun and wacky plays. Which one to attend may depend on your taste - and location.
By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published November 21, 2003
DUNEDIN - Some zany things will happen just after dark tonight at three area high schools.
In Dunedin, Pippi, Mauvins, Buzzy and the others will huddle together and try to figure out the rebus.
In Clearwater, Joe, AKA Josephine, and Jerry, AKA Daphne, hide out in an all-women band after witnessing a mob hit.
And in Palm Harbor, a witch-boy attempts to become a human after falling in love with a girl.
The three plays, Bone Chiller, Sugar and Dark of the Moon, are being performed by students at Dunedin High School, Clearwater High and Palm Harbor University High.
Why are so many high school plays opening this week?
"Football's over," said Ron Shaw, drama director at Dunedin High.
He said he and his 13-member cast are "having a lot of fun" dramatizing the 1985 comedy/mystery by Monk Ferris about quirky rich people at a reading of an eccentric relative's will.
"There are lots of double crosses going on," Shaw said. "You think the character's one thing, but turns out to be another."
At the center of the plot is a rebus, a type of puzzle with crude drawings.
This rebus is also the dead man's will.
While the cast attempts to figure out its meaning, the audience can follow along. The puzzle is printed on the back of the programs each audience member receives when they enter the auditorium.
"It's pretty complicated," said Katherine Townsend, 17, a senior who plays Pippi, the parlor maid. "I don't know if they'll get it, but they can try."
Clearwater High's production of Sugar is a little easier to figure out.
Based on the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, the story is about two out-of-work musicians who accidentally see a murder. They flee in an all-female band disguised as women.
"It's very, very funny," said Joy Roche, drama director. "The (actors) sing and dance. There are 14 numbers."
The two-and-a-half hour, $15,000 production includes a full orchestra and elaborate sets.
Carla Webster, IB/Traditional Theatre Teacher at Palm Harbor University High, said her play, Dark of the Moon, also has some pretty amazing set designs.
"We have an eight-foot-high, 25-foot-long mountain that we roll on and off the stage," she said.
The school's production, which received a Superior rating at the Florida Theatre Conference in Lakeland two weeks ago, is about a Smoky Mountain folk legend involving a spirit witch who tries to become human after falling in love with a beautiful young woman.
"Supposedly, in the Smoky Mountains, witches live for 300 years," Webster said. "And when they die, they become fog on the mountains."
The cast is made up of 30 actors and one fiddle player, a lad named Ian Malinowsky.
Be first in line tonight for tickets to Bone Chiller at 7 p.m. at Dunedin High, 1651 Pinehurst Road; Sugar at 7:30 p.m. at Clearwater High, 540 S Hercules Ave.; and Dark of the Moon, at 7 p.m. at Palm Harbor University High, 1900 Omaha St. Tickets are sold general admission on a first come, first served basis.
