10) Gordon Hinds. He's 89 and has been around a very long time (he played "Old Adam" in As You Like It fifteen years ago). This may be his last performance.In the third act he talks about how his son knew all the stars. "He'd set on the porch even's 'n tell 'em all by name. Yes, sir, wonderful." When Gordon says this, you feel the line comes out of his whole life. I am not kidding.
9) Mallory Hybl. She's 9 years old making her THEATREWORKS debut. She's a genuinely radiant girl. Those of her who know her family will take special pleasure in the moment where Rebecca Gibbs tells us what she loves most in the world, but she's even better when she's just looking at the moon.
8) Mark Arnest. Not a professional actor, never will be. But the music he's created up there in the church loft is all his own, and no one could have done it better even if and because it never calls attention to itself. And when he shows up drunk but hermetically sealed late night in Grover's Corners, you don't feel good about this.
7) Jean, Jinn and Dick. Older folks who all showed up just to sit in the town cemetery. They are very beautiful too. Real faces on every one of them.
6) Addison, Hela, Sean, Jeremy, Richard, Ashley, Silas, Mark, and Michael. And anybody else I somehow forgot to mention in Grover's Corners. Worthy citizens, worthy citizens!
5) Steve Wallace and Tom Paradise. Steve was 19 years old when he appeared as a fireman in the very first ever THEATREWORKS production in 1975. He's still a fireman. He's also a terrific Doc Gibbs--watch him give his son a late night talking to. Tom has been doing amazing work on our stage for three decades with no sign of stopping. Watch him talk--or try to talk-- to his future son in law in Grover's Corners. These guys are real treasures.
4) Stephen Weitz. You can call him Steve, but he'd rather you didn't. Smart guy and decent too. He played Hamlet last summer and came down here to stage manage in Grover's Corners. I think you'll like listening to him talking about everything from Babylon to all of New Hampshire. I do.
3) Emily Paton Davis and Leslie O'Carroll. Two of Colorado's, finest actresses. Watch Mrs. Webb at the wedding; Watch Mrs. Gibbs in the cemetary. Watch them both string beans together. Beautiful stuff.
2) The soda shop scene. Ben Bonenfant and Chrissy Bakkin do more than justiice to one of the best loved--and best--scenes in American drama. This is the way love goes when love goes right.
1) Our Town. It's a great play -- the only great play in our town at the moment. And you only have this weekend to see it before we turn the lights out.
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