The Library’s ninth season of Script-in-Hand performances, featuring the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre continues with Same Time, Next Year.
George and Doris have separate families, separate lives — and a physical attraction and growing emotional bond that bring them to the same California country inn every year. One of the most popular romantic comedies of the past century drops in on their clandestine relationship every five years for 25 years. The times change. They change, experiencing the ups and downs of marriage, career change, and childrearing against a backdrop of national turmoil. Their annual weekend together becomes a time of solace, reflection, challenge and, when Doris shows up eight-months pregnant, even birth.
The Script-in-Hand series is underwritten by Country Club Bank. A reception, provided by Cosentino’s Market, follows for members of the Friends of the Kansas City Public Library. Guests who are not members may join at the door.
(Kansas City, Missouri) - The Kansas City Public Library continues its popular Script-in-Hand series—featuring the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre—with two classic romantic comedies in March.
• Same Time, Next Year on Sunday, March 8, 2015.
• Barefoot in the Park on Sunday, March 29.
Both performances begin at 2 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St., and follow the series' ninth-season theme of Love Stories. The season's first presentation, the drama Love Letters, drew an audience of 325.
Same Time, Next Year, one of the most popular romantic comedies of the past century, revolves around the illicit, once-a-year affair between a man and a woman at a California country inn. George and Doris' annual weekend together becomes a time of solace, reflection, and challenge as each changes and the times change with them.
Bernard Slay's play drops in on the clandestine relationship every five years for 25 years. The production ran for more than three years on Broadway and was adapted into a 1978 film starring Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda.
Barefoot in the Park was Neil Simon's longest-running Broadway hit before similarly hitting the big screen in 1967, featuring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. It focuses on newlyweds Paul and Corie as they begin their life together in a tiny, fifth-floor apartment in a New York City brownstone. He is a strait-laced attorney. She's a far more spontaneous free spirit who wants him to loosen up—to walk barefoot in the park.
The couple also must contend with a lack of heat, a skylight that leaks snow, several long flights of stairs, oddball neighbor Victor Velasco, and Corie's well-meaning mother. Marriage, it turns out, isn't so easy.
All Script-in-Hand performances are staged by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre with local talent and featured actors reading their lines from scripts carried in their hands, a subtle reminder of the power of the written word and an ideal way to present plays in a Library setting. The 2015 season concludes Sunday, May 10, 2015, with the musical The Light in the Piazza at the downtown Central Library.
The series is underwritten by Country Club Bank. A reception, provided by Cosentino's Market, follows each performance for members of the Friends of the Kansas City Public Library. Guests who are not members may join at the door.
Admission is free. RSVP at kclibrary.org or call 816.701.3407.