The Main Street Players, Alliance’s community theater group, will be presenting “The Best of Main Street Players” at Newberry’s Tuesday June 20th. A social hour with cash bar and finger food begins at 7:00pm, with the performance starting at 8:00pm.
Main Street Players Creative Director Elaine Bleisch tells the Post, “We decided to do a variety show with scenes from past productions as an introduction to our group, for those who have never attended one of our performances. This also gives us a chance to say farewell to three of our cast members who are moving on: Bill Graham and Angela O’Leary, who are moving later this summer; and Elora Bleisch, who is starting college in the Fall.”
Bleisch says the fast-paced variety show will include sketches and musical numbers from previous Main Street Players productions including “Annie”, “The Odd Couple”, “A Christmas Carol”, “Dracula”, “It’s All In The Timing”, “A Salute To Carol Burnett” and more. The show will also include newly written sketches based on previous performances: “We wrote a Family Feud sketch that pits the crew of The Love Boat against the Gilligan’s Island castaways, as a flashback to plays we did based on those TV shows. We are also doing a ‘Golden Girls’ sketch–several years ago we staged an evening of TV spoofs and the hit of the night was the Golden Girls, as performed as one girl and three guys!”
According to Bleisch, “This show features just some of the many and varied productions our group has staged in the last 15 years or so. We’ve done serious productions like ‘Bus Stop’ and Shakespeare In The Park, and we’re doing ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ this Fall. But most of our shows tend to be comedies–we enjoy doing them and they tend to be popular with audiences.”
Appearing in the show along with Graham, O’Leary and Elora Bleisch are Chris Obershaw, Caitlin Obershaw, David Kuskie, Elaine Bleisch, Kent Bleisch, Tristan Bleisch, Linnea Bleisch, Jason Hager, and Jason Wentworth.
Tickets for the “Best of Main Street Players” show are $10 at the door.