An Afternoon At The Theatre, "I'll Never Be Hungry Again"

Bill and Kathy Cissna saw this and thought it was absolutely hysterical. Then I found out that Gary Bartholomew, who wrote the music, is Jim Bowers' partner. So we got a work group together to see the show.

Here's the premise: David is a black grad student assigned to read Gone With The Wind for a Southern Lit class. But David doesn’t want to read any novel about “white crackers getting rich off the sweat of their black brethren” so he puts it off until the night before the test. Then, under the influence of too much partying, David passes out in the middle of the story only to wake up and find himself at Terra Firma, the plantation home of Starlett O’Hara. It’s only a wild, crazy-ass dream, right? Or is it? David begins to wonder as he gets pulled into the plot of America’s most famous romance; slightly skewed and fraught with musical zaniness. Will Starlett and that scoundrel Whet Butler ever hook up? Is Smelanie Hamilton really that sweet? Can Whammy teach Sissy how to tap? All these questions and a zillion more you never thought to ask… well, they won’t be answered, but who cares? We’ll worry about that tomorrow.

Here's a list of the characters in the show:

• Starlett O'Hara
• Whet Butler
• Whammy
• Sissy
• Smelanie
• Ghastly Wilkes

To make it even more interesting there's some doubling of roles. The actor who plays David, the grad student, also plays Sissy. The actor who plays Whet Butler also plays Whammy. Whet/Whammy was played by a mustached Nick Koesters, and he was outstanding. Erin Parker played Starlett and she was also fantastic.

Bill and Kathy were absolutely correct. The show is side-splittingly hilarious. Many times I laughed until their were tears in my eyes.