Halloween-themed Play at Fire Hall

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

It’s again the season for live theatre in Grand Forks, with three memorable productions on local stages last week. Two, unfortunately, were limited runs, but the third continues this weekend and next (appropriately for this month with its subject material involving witches, warlocks, and magical spells).

The UND Theatre Department put on the recent play by Donald Marguilies, “Time Stands Still,” last Tuesday through Saturday in the basement lab theatre. This thought-provoking drama, directed by new faculty member Ali Angelone, is a tight, four-character script dealing very effectively with issues of media reporting vs. becoming involved in news events, and personal life choices. It covers a few months in the lives of Sarah and James, a photojournalist injured by a roadside bomb and her longtime boyfriend and print journalist, and their friends, Richard and Mandy, a middle-aged magazine editor and his new, much younger girlfriend.

Performances were strong all around, especially Emily Elisabeth Hogenson as Sarah. Nick McConnell provided an effective counterpoint as James, with Daniella Lima and Jordan Wolfe as Mandy and Richard playing well off each other and off the other couple with very different priorities.

Central High School’s first fall production was the classic Arthur Miller drama, “All My Sons,” and played last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the historic Empire Theatre in downtown Grand Forks. (Coincidentally, UND will be staging the same show next February). This powerful play is an intense character study and still-relevant social commentary set in a small town two years after the end of World War II. It dramatizes several complex relationships involving an aging family patriarch’s conflicts between himself, his family, and his neighbors, stemming from a wartime factory incident that had sent him and his partner to prison.

Ryan King and Gabe Figueroa were outstanding as the no-nonsense factory owner and his sensitive war-vet son. Strong support came from Lynneah Thompson as the mother who keeps insisting her missing other son will eventually return from the war, Leah Biberdorf as the daughter of the factory owner’s disgraced and still-imprisoned father, also the missing boy’s girlfriend, now loved by the surviving son. Equally powerful was Mike McGurran as her bitter brother.

The Greater Grand Forks Community Theatre’s production of Jon Van Druten’s supernatural romantic comedy “Bell, Book & Candle” opened last weekend at the Fire Hall Theatre in downtown Grand Forks. Directed by Nicole E. Quam, performances continue at 7:30 nightly Wednesdays through Saturdays through October 29th, with a 2 pm Sunday matinee on October 23rd.

Local stage veteran Jenny Morris stars as Gillian Holroyd, a self-confident young New York witch who is strongly attracted to the young man subleasing her upstairs apartment and casts a spell to make him feel likewise about her. She soon discovers, however, that she’s falling in love for the first time, which means she’ll lose her powers. Fire Hall veteran Jared Kinney co-stars as the young publisher unexpectedly enchanted by his attractive landlady, despite being on his way to his engagement party.

Jane Braaten is hilarious as Gillian’s eccentric Aunt Queenie, especially when playing off the sly comic expressions and timing of Morris. David Kary does a good job as Gillian’s fun-loving warlock brother Nicky, and Brad Werner is a lot of fun as Sidney Redlitch, the often-drunken author who is researching local witchcraft for a series of books.

“Bell, Book, and Candle” is the perfect show to get in the Halloween spirit with a lighter alternative to the season’s typical horror fare.

Questions and Comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)