On the play trail, again

We've been keeping up our theater-going escapades lately, with three very different shows in three very different venues but each of them chiefly light-hearted and good for a chuckle.

We started by taking in the opening night of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," the musical, performed quite ably by six young actors on the Kernersville Elementary School stage. Kernersville Little Theatre normally does a musical in June each year, and this was one of the best I have seen (and we've seen most of them since 1990 or so). The show used only one keyboard (on-stage) and the six performers in great costumes to represent their respective "Peanuts" comic strip characters. It was a lot of fun to watch, and pretty much glitch-less on the technical side as well.

The very next night we were off to sit in "our seats" at Triad Stage in Greensboro, for their updated and shortened version of Moliere's "Tartuffe." It was not a show or story I was familiar with, but the tale of hypocrisy and fraud in the name of religion certainly had its moments. I found it to be just a slight bit over-the-top in some of the posturing, with the understanding that it was, after all, period comedy updated. All in all, still an entertaining stop in the theater.

Finally, we caught Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance's very fun second run of Del Shores' "Sordid Lives," which included fave area actors Cheryl Roberts and Ken Ashford along with others in the long-and-narrow theater space the Alliance now uses. We also caught up with Mikey Wiseman, who was helping backstage, in town from his extended run in Fort Myers with "Church Basement Ladies." He's about to go back out, on tour this time, as the understudy to William Christopher (who played the Chaplain in the TV version of "M*A*S*H"). Busy man!

Meanwhile, I came back from Spoleto with an idea for a 10-minute script, and I'm getting closer to finalizing that one. Another script is on its way to yet another competition, so at least the playwriting is not entirely moribund.

Soon, we're off to see 12 different ten minute plays being done, so more about that soon.