Summer is Over -- Run for Your Wife

Today is Halloween, which means tomorrow is the first day of November, and, coincidentally, the day that daylight savings time ends. Days are getting shorter. The air is getting colder. The leaves are pretty well off of the trees.

All of this is basically to say: "Summer is over."

"Uh... summer has been over for a while...," I hear some of you saying. True, in one sense, but who else has experienced that lingering "summer feeling" when looking up at the beautiful leaves or going to one of the many festivals or concerts that litter the early fall? For me, November usually marks that feeling's end...

Gone are the Players and Monadnock Music and the other professional arts organizations that provide us with summer entertainment, but I was reminded last night of our vibrant collection of community arts organizations. I went to see "Run for Your Wife."

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that my dad (Peter Eisenstadter) stars in this play. However, readers of this blog should get used to that, because he's basically in everything around here.

The play is hilarious, set in the part of London with the really funny accents. It is about a man named John Smith (Eisenstadter) who leads a double life with two wives and two apartments, and what happens when an event accidentally brings those two worlds together. I can say that not only was I laughing the whole time, I was on the edge of my seat with suspense.

Part of the fun of community theater is that sometimes you know the people up on stage, and there is magic in seeing them play someone else. Good actors make you forget that you know them. As it turned out, I was actually somewhat acquainted with every single member of the cast, each for a different reason. The two wives were played by Sue Massey, who used to work with us at the Ledger-Transcript, and Allison Barrows, who I interviewed once for an arts story (she is the author of the comic strip Preteena). The reporter character, CJ Leake, I know from the Monadnock Folklore Society, and one of the detectives, Matt Johnson, I have met randomly in the bars and coffeeshops in Keene. This play was a debut for both of them.

The two I found the funniest (sorry Dad) were the two neighbor characters, played by Burt Torsey and Jonathan Flower. Torsey's character is trying to help Smith, doing everything in his power to keep the wrong people from finding the wrong things out, even changing his voice to that of a rural farmer, and Flower's character is a flamboyant homosexual, expertly portrayed with totally over the top acting.

The acting was very good, especially for a community theater show. I think the director, Lori Goldring, even managed to get the actors to do a good job with the accents, something even the Players have trouble with.

So yes, the summer is over beyond a doubt, but even without the professionals to entertain us, we have community organizations that do a good job as well. "Run for Your Wife" plays at the Marlborough Community House tonight and Nov. 6 and 7 at 8 p.m. with a Sunday 2 p.m. show on Nov. 8. For more information, visit www.branchrivertheatre.com.

While you're at it, you might also want to check up on other community theater groups like Small Pond Productions in Marlborough, Actors Circle Theatre in Peterborough, and the Edge Ensemble and the Hourglass Readers both in Keene.