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HCP’s 22nd Year
Written By: Jenny King | Issue: 2017/05 - May
Highlands Cashiers Players’ fourth play of their 22nd season is “Don’t Cry for Me, Margaret Mitchell,” directed by HCP board member Donna Cochran.
Written by the mother-son collaborative team of Virginia Cate and Duke Ernsberger in 2006, this hysterically funny play depicts an actual event in Hollywood, 1939. Producer David O. Selznick has purchased the rights to the blockbuster novel “Gone with the Wind.” Three weeks into production, he has decided he hates the script and has burned all copies. Losing money at the rate of $50,000 a day, he decides only one screenwriter can save the day, the legendary Ben Hecht. With director Victor Fleming as his accomplice, they kidnap Hecht and sequester him in Selznick’s office until a new script can be produced.
There is only one problem − Hecht has never read the book!
Laugh along as Selznick and Fleming struggle to recreate the iconic characters and scenes of this memorable motion picture for the captive screenwriter so he can produce an acceptable script.
The director first saw the play performed in Charleston in 2015 and felt the subject would appeal to Highlands’ audiences. It’s a comedic treatment of a real occurrence; and the production staff has made considerable efforts to be historically faithful in costuming, set design, and character development. These are real people in a real, if very
funny, situation.
Four veteran actors are in the play, all of whom Cochran has directed before − David Spivey as Selznick, Lance Trudel as Victor Fleming, Rick Siegel as Ben Hecht, and Marsha Shmalo as Mrs. Peabody, Selznick’s long-suffering secretary.
Donna Cochran is being assisted by Elizabeth Gordon. Scott Paxton has designed the set as a faithful replica of Selznick’s office, and Ken Knight and crew will construct it.
This light-hearted production will play at the Highlands Performing Arts Center Thursday through Sunday, May 18-21 and May 25-28 (Memorial Day weekend). Evening performances are at 7:30 P.M. and Sunday matinees are at 2:30 P.M.
Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (828) 526-8084 or visiting at HighlandsCashiersPlayers.org.
