Theater Bartlesville is announcing the cast of the final show for the 2016-2017 season, Enchanted April. This delightful show by Matthew Barber is a charming, romantic, funny play slated to be performed in mid- April, right at the height of Bartlesville’s own enchanting spring.
The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim, was a best-seller in both England and the United States, where it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and set off a craze for tourism to Portofino. More recently, the book has been an inspiration for a major film and a Broadway play Enchanted April, by Matthew Barber, being a 2003 nominee for Best Play of the Year. Providing a delicious recipe for happiness, the show is comprised of four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.
When married British women Rose Arnott and Lotty Wilton decide to take a break from their respective spouses, they stay at a castle in Italy for a quiet holiday. Joining the ladies is Caroline Bramble a young socialite, and Mrs. Graves an older aristocrat. Liberated from their daily routines, the four women ease into life in rural Italy, and each finds herself transformed by the experience
The cast will be comprised of: Maggie Rickords as “Lotty Wilton”, Bernie Meadows as “Mellersh Wilton”, Kimberly Wright as “Rose Arnott”, Alan Gentges as “Frederick Arnott”, Shelley Holdman as “Caroline Bramble”, Adam Molloy as “Antony Wilding”, Eloise Needleman as “Mrs. Graves”, Nancy Matthews as “Constanza” and Stephen Berg as “Stephano”.
Feeling lost in the shadows of marriage and the post-WWI society, the two unhappy London housewives rent the villa in Italy for a ladies-only holiday away, reluctantly recruiting the pair of difficult upper-class women to share the cost and the experience. The women at the center of Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find the castle in a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon, and then find themselves blissfully under the Mediterranean sun in April. The four women clash — and then begin to bond and bloom — the ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with such joy. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete!
Enchanted April will open Thursday, April 13, at 7:00pm and will also show on Friday April 14 and Saturday April 15 at the same time. The production will continue the next weekend April 21 and 22 at 7:00 pm and also April 23 at 2:00 pm. Tickets are available online 24 hours a day at www.theaterbartlesville.com and are available at the Theater Box Office, Monday through Friday 11am-2pm at 312 S. Dewey, or call 918-336-1900.