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Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05
July 3, 2008 issue
Fast-Paced Situational Comedy Leading Ladies Continues Through July 12
Story by Anna Oakes
The audience won’t need a laugh track to signal when to snicker, giggle or outright cackle at the Blowing Rock Stage Company’s production of the farcical comedy Leading Ladies.
In fact, “you’re not going to be able to control when you laugh,” said Ben Corbett, who plays Jack, one of the two lead characters in playwright Ken Ludwig’s hilarious comedy. Leading Ladies opened at the Hayes Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock on June 27 and is showing through Saturday, July 12.
Two English actors, Jack and Leo, are so down on their luck that they are forced to perform “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. When they hear that an old lady in York, Penn., is on her deathbed and leaving her fortune to a pair of long-lost English nephews, the duo schemes to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and take off with the woman’s money. But then they learn the lady’s relatives aren’t nephews—they’re nieces!
As the characters alter their wardrobes and vocal intonations, the play unfolds in a fast-paced, high-energy series of absurd events, with mistaken identity, quick entrances and exits and outrageous slapstick.
Jack, for his part, happens to fall in love with a woman during the train ride to Pennsylvania, making his predicament all the more awkward and frustrating. “One thing leads to another, and Jack finds himself ensconced in this plot of deception and greed, but he just wants to stop and have a wife and a pleasant life,” Corbett said.
The role as Jack is Corbett’s first for the Blowing Rock Stage Company. Corbett, a native of Tulsa, Okla., has experience as an actor, director and vocal coach at the Barter Theatre in Virginia, the Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh and the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, as well as in Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. And in all those years, Corbett has had quite a few opportunities to portray a member of the opposite sex.
“This is not new to me,” he said. “I’ve thought about buying my own character pair of high heels!”
In Leading Ladies, Corbett finds himself channeling several different people—women and men, real and fictional—in his role as a man masquerading as a woman. They include a female friend of his, Joe/Josephine from Some Like It Hot—“that kind of vocal break in his voice, I think I have that as well,” he said—and Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers.
For Corbett and Jim Ballard, who plays Leo, the comedy involves six costume changes, a lot of running and quick thinking.
“There’s not a lot of time for pauses and deep reflection,” Corbett said. “It’s very fast paced, both physically and mentally, which I think the audience will enjoy.”
While “two guys in dresses is comic gold,” what really makes the play funny is the fact that the actors act as though the events are actually happening, Corbett said. The comedy comes from the characters wanting things and not being able to get them—there’s no “wink-wink” to the audience to tell them when to laugh, he added.
Performance times are 8:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays and Saturdays and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays. The Friday, July 4, performance will be at 6:00 p.m.
Tickets are $26 for adults and $14 for students. Friday and Saturday evening shows are $1 extra.
The Hayes Center is located at 152 Jamie Fort Road off U.S. Highway 321 in Blowing Rock. For more information, call 828-295-9627.
Want To Go?
Dates: Thursday, July 3, to Saturday, July 12
Times: 8:00 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays/2:00 and 8:00 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays/2:00 p.m. Sundays/6:00 p.m. July 4
Location: Hayes Center, Blowing Rock
Cost: $27 adults/$14 students/$1 extra Friday and Saturday nights