Azle Arts Association’s Popcorn Players announces 2009 season

by Shawn Parikh

If you haven't noticed, there is a theater company out in Azle, The Popcorn Players, which produces a full season of shows from comedies to musicals to dramas. Tickets are only $5-10 for each production and their first show of the season begins in just a couple of weeks. Here is the lineup for the upcoming year:

• Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring. From January 30 - February 8. The play, a clever combination of the farcical and the macabre, centers on two elderly sisters who are famous in their Brooklyn neighborhood for their numerous acts of charity. Unfortunately, however, their charity includes poisoning lonely old men who come to their home looking for lodging. The two women are assisted in their crimes by their mentally challenged nephew who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and who frequently blasts a bugle and yells ‘‘charge’’ as he bounds up the stairs. Matters get complicated when a second nephew, a theater critic, discovers the murders and a third nephew appears after having just escaped from a mental institution. In his adroit mixture of comedy and mayhem, Kesselring satirizes the charitable impulse as he pokes fun at the conventions of the theater. Directed by Monica Goth.
• Cheating Cheaters, by John Patrick. From March 6 - 15. What do you get when you cross two middle-aged sisters that scam for a living, a cat burglar who is not all that he appears to be and a lowly policeman with suspicious intentions? Throw in the surprise of a "loving" niece coming to live in the house and you have a rousing comedy of who is actually cheating who. Directed by Rita Davis.
• Funny Girl, by Isobel Lennart, Julie Styne and Bob Merrill. From May 1 - 10. A semi-biographical story based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedienne Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nicky Arnstein. The musical is set in and around New York City just prior to and following World War I. Ziegfield Follies star Fanny Brice, awaiting the return of husband Nick Arnstein from prison, reflects on their life together, and their story is told as a flashback. Fanny is shown as a stage-struck teen who gets her first job in vaudeville. Her success as both a comedienne and a singer leads her to meeting the sophisticated Nick Arnstein. They soon become romantically involved and marry. As Fanny becomes a major star with Ziegfield, Nick's business ventures fail and he is arrested for embezzelment. Directed by Lisha Goth.
• Curse You Otis Cummy or... A Rip In Old Calico, by Tim Kelly and TBD. From August 7 - 16. The Azle Arts returns to its roots with the presentation of two one-act shows all in one night.Sit back and enjoy a quick-witted, humoruos show for one act. Then, after a quick intermission the same actors return for an entirely different show. The first show: The silver mines of Calico, California, have gone dry, and the little town has fallen on hard times. Our villain, Otis Crummy, pretends he is giving shelter to the unfortunate. Actually, he's running a gang of pickpockets, burglars and sneak thieves. Our hero, Real McCoy, is a crusading newspaperman who pretends to be a member of the gang to get the goods on Crummy. Enter Cheerful Goodykoontz, our heroine. She has run away from a nearby orphanage. She makes out a will giving everything she has to Crummy because he has been kind to her (or so she thinks). Naturally, Crummy thinks she's a nutcase--especially when she admits she is penniless. Enter Lawyer Muggleworth with the news Cheerful has come into a fortune! If Crummy can dispose of Cheerful, the fortune is his! Luckily, Real McCoy defeats Crummy in a laugh-a-second finale. Real McCoy and Cheerful fall in love, and the town's good name is restored. Show two: TBA. Directed by Larry Thompson.
• Southern Hospitality, by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, Jamie Wooten. September 18 - 27. If you were present for the hilarious comedy Dearly Departed, then all you need to do is travel a short way down the road to the tiny town of Fayro, TX. It is here that their neighbors are up to the same uproaringly fun mischief. The Futrelle Sisters - Frankie, Twink, Honey Raye and Rhonda Lynn - must come up with an extremely great idea to save their beloved town. It seems a salsa manufacturing factory is looking to relocate, and a company representative is headed to Fayro on a scouting mission. Honey Raye, as the president of the Chamber of Commerce, makes promises that are not to be believed in order to woo the rep to choose Fayro. In fact, Honey Raye has told them that on the very weekend of the rep's visit, the town just happens to be having their biggest celebration of the year: "Fayro Days," which includes a craft show, a pet costume parade, a beauty pageant and a huge Civil War battle reenactment. So now it's up to the citizens of Fayro to quickly make her promises a reality. The biggest hurdle to impressing the salsa representative is staging a Civil War battle reenactment with only fifteen participants. Added to this is the dilemma of Twink being so desperate to get married that she's practically dragging the unwilling groom, Deputy John Curtis Buntner, to the altar. It is only the tip of this funny iceberg...Directed by Lisha Goth.
• Rain Maker, by N. Richard Nash. From November 13 - 22. Set in a drought-ridden rural town in the West in Depression era America, this dramatic play tells the story of a pivotal hot summer day in the life of spinsterish Lizzie Curry. Lizzie keeps house for her father and two brothers on the family cattle ranch. She has just returned from a trip to visit cousins, which was undertaken with the failed expectation that she would find a husband. As their farm languishes under the devastating drought, Lizzie's family worries about her marriage prospects more than about their dying cattle. The arrival of a charming confidence trickster named Starbuck promising to bring rain in exchange for $100 sets off a series of events which enable Lizzie to see herself in a new light. Directed by BD Smith.