Hardin Simmons University - Bronco Yearbook (Abilene, TX)

Page 32 text:

 Audiences enjoy carnival on stage Van Ellis Theatre opened its 1988-89 season with Jean Anouilh’s Thieves' Carnival, a comic work differing from Anouilh's usually more dramatic pieces. Director Dr. Trish McAdams, said the play was selected as one to showcase the strengths of a department full of new faces. The play appears to take place in Europe at the end of the Nineteenth Century. One reviewer described it as a cotton-candy land, and between Larry Wheeler's set and the characters them- selves, it indeed came across just that way. Among the main characters are a British family of the jet set who have gone to the French resort of Vichy. There, senile Lord Egard (Roderick Vann) and his wife, Lady Hurf (Marcie Lea), encounter the father-son duo of Dupont-Dufort, crass opportunists try- ing to assure their fortune by marrying the wards of the elderly British couple. But the Dupont-Dufort threat of Dean Nolen and Zach Richardson is not the only one as three thieves, masquer- ading as Spanish grandees, worm their way into the English family’s good graces. Chris Haas plans to take the family’s riches, but his plans are upset by the romantic involvement of the youngest thief, played by Jeff Thompkins, with the younger ward, Ju- liette, played by Tammy Taylor. Sara Wetzel played the older ward who, al- though often chased was never loved. Jay Cline played the third thief who could not win Eva (Wetzel). 29